There is one thing, at the least, that Ireland should be grateful for in the tempestuous life of Andre Malraux, adventurer, soldier, writer, Gaullist Minister, whose ashes have now been laid in the Pantheon in Paris, along with the other immortals. It is a book, a history of the Celts, which he commissioned when Minister for Culture under de Gaulle.
It was part of a massive publishing programme which covered, in a series of exquisitely produced books by authoritative persons, an over view not only of western civilisation from pre history to the Celts, down the ages through the Middle East, the Egyptian world, the Greek world, and so on to the twentieth century. But also went on to a series on the world beyond the west: Islam, the Nordic world, India, China, pre Columban America and other places, and then went on to the world "Hors de l'Histoire": Oceania and Black Africa.
Some of these categories included up to six volumes. On the book to hand, Les Celtes is by Paul Marie Duval, whose standing and qualifications would take a hundred words and more. Professor au College de France (chair of Archaeology and History of Gaul), Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur and so on, the amateur can offer no valid critique. But the quality of the exposition, if it is in line with the ingenious and eye opening illustrations, will be worthy indeed. For so many objects of Celtic art, with which many will be familiar, are here presented in brilliant colour and detail and from unusual angles. Also, at the back of the book are a legion of fine line drawings showing the bones, so to speak, of the designs on the stone, the bronze or the gold. And maps to show the progress across the landmass from the Steppes to the Atlantic. It was published by Gallimard, in French, of course, in 1977. Stylish, showy some may say, as was said so often of Malraux, who died the year before.
He had a wonderful nerve. Who else could have made a book out of conversations with de Gaulle? It is called, in French, Les Chenes Qu'on Abat, and in English Fallen Oaks. In the fore word Malraux, who had no stenographer present, no tape machine, mourns the fact that Voltaire did not record his conversations with Frederick the Great. And, if Napoleon received Goethe, it was for an "audience". The recorder, he writes, has to give life to the interview. It is not an audience. And "creativity has always interested me more than perfection."
De Gaulle does come alive. Originally meant to be a part of Malraux's own autobiography Antimemoires, it came to be a book on its own. The "Fallen Oaks" are from a couplet by Victor Hugo, who refers to them being cut down for the funeral pyre of Hercules. Malraux had his heroes.