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André Malraux

Geburtstag: 3. November 1901
Todesdatum: 23. November 1976
Andere Namen:André-Georges Malraux

André Malraux war ein französischer Schriftsteller, Drehbuchautor, Filmregisseur, Abenteurer und Politiker.

Zitate André Malraux

„Die Wahrheit eines Menschen liegt hauptsächlich in dem, was er verschweigt.“

— André Malraux
Antimémoires, 1967

Über Menschen, Über Wahrheit

„Eine Kultur kann nur an ihrer eigenen Schwäche sterben.“

— André Malraux
La tentation de l'Occident, 1926, S. 103

„What is man? A miserable little pile of secrets.“

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— André Malraux
Antimémoires, preface (1967)

„Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.“

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— André Malraux

„Once the masterpiece has emerged, the lesser works surrounding it fall into place; and it then gives the impression of having been led up to and foreseeable, though actually it is inconceivable — or, rather, it can only be conceived of once it is there for us to see it.“

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— André Malraux
Context: Once the masterpiece has emerged, the lesser works surrounding it fall into place; and it then gives the impression of having been led up to and foreseeable, though actually it is inconceivable — or, rather, it can only be conceived of once it is there for us to see it. It is not a scene that has come alive, but a latent potentiality that has materialized. Suppose that one of the world's masterpieces were to disappear, leaving no trace behind it, not even a reproduction; even the completest knowledge of its maker's other works would not enable the next generation to visualize it. All the rest of Leonardo's oeuvre would not enable us to visualize the Mona Lisa; all Rembrandt's, the Three Crosses or The Prodigal Son; all Vermeer's, The Love Letter; all Titian's, the Venice Pietà; all medieval sculpture, the Chartres Kings or the Naumburg Uta. What would another picture by the Master of Villeneuve look like? How could even the most careful study of The Embarkation for Cythera, or indeed that of all Watteau's other works conjure up L'Enseigne de Gersaint, had it disappeared? Part III, Chapter VI

„Mutilation is the scar left by the struggle with Time, and a reminder of it — Time which is as much a part of ancient works of art as the material they are made of, and thrusts up through the fissures, from a dark underworld, where all is at once chaos and determinism.“

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— André Malraux
Context: Our characteristic response to the mutilated statue, the bronze dug up from the earth, is revealing. It is not that we prefer time-worn bas-reliefs, or rusted statuettes as such, nor is it the vestiges of death that grip us in them, but those of life. Mutilation is the scar left by the struggle with Time, and a reminder of it — Time which is as much a part of ancient works of art as the material they are made of, and thrusts up through the fissures, from a dark underworld, where all is at once chaos and determinism. Part IV, Chapter VII

„It was not man, the individual, nor even the Supreme Being, that Robespierre set up against Christ; it was that Leviathan, the Nation.“

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— André Malraux
Context: An individualism which has got beyond the stage of hedonism tends to yield to the lure of the grandiose. It was not man, the individual, nor even the Supreme Being, that Robespierre set up against Christ; it was that Leviathan, the Nation. Part IV, Chapter I

„Neither revolution nor war consists in doing what one pleases.“

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— André Malraux
Context: There are not fifty ways of fighting, there is only one, and that is to win. Neither revolution nor war consists in doing what one pleases. Part 2, Section 2, Chapter 12

„The great Christian art did not die because all possible forms had been used up; it died because faith was being transformed into piety.“

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— André Malraux
Context: The great Christian art did not die because all possible forms had been used up; it died because faith was being transformed into piety. Now, the same conquest of the outside world that brought in our modern individualism, so different from that of the Renaissance, is by way of relativizing the individual. It is plain to see that man's faculty of transformation, which began by a remaking of the natural world, has ended by calling man himself into question. André Malraux, Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951) Part IV, Chapter VI