2023-08-21 05:45:10
Find all the episodes of the series “A president, an artist” ici.
Dressed in his impeccable beige canvas summer uniform, General de Gaulle rushes into the official car leaving the Ministry of the Armed Forces, rue Saint-Dominique, in Paris. This Wednesday, July 18, 1945, he has just won, from the first meeting with André Malraux, the game he lost with the Catholic writer Georges Bernanos: “Tie him to [son] char. » Can he guess it’s for life? And that this friendship will be deep and reciprocal with the committed writer on the left, Prix Goncourt 1933 for The human condition ? In front of his aide-de-camp, Claude Guy, the man of June 18 exclaims, almost perky: “He is famous, your Malraux! »reports Christine Clerc in De Gaulle-Malraux, a love story (Nil, 2008).
Beyond a brilliant political coup, favored by a “conspiracy” of his entourage, begins the exceptional relationship of a man of power and a creator. There will be few of this temper. “De Gaulle protects Malraux, whose weaknesses he knows, and Malraux defends the General in all circumstances”, summarizes Christine Clerc. “All the kings of France had their artist. But this meeting is love at first sight. They realize the failed relationship between Napoleon and Chateaubriand”, abounds Alexandre Duval-Stalla, author of another cross biography, André Malraux-Charles de Gaulle. One story, two legends (Gallimard, 2008).
Since the first dialogue between the two men took place without witnesses, we must trust the Malrucian gesture of the cache memories, a book published in 1967 by Gallimard, twenty-two years after the events, to know its content. Beyond that, what does the General want to know, having come to power through the front door, that of the Arc de Triomphe? In July 1945, he had already given the right to vote to women, nationalized the Renault and Air France factories, created works councils, the High Court of Justice (for Vichy)… He wanted to make sure that Malraux, once qualified by writer’s right « Bolshevik »don’t lean towards the Communists.
France, their compass and their Grail
Of the man Malraux, de Gaulle already knows everything. His crazy trip to Indochina with his wife, Clara, in 1923, in a temple near Angkor to cut out bas-reliefs with a saw to make ends meet – because he ruined his rich wife. Then the support that the latter managed to obtain, in Paris, from writers like Aragon, Breton, Mauriac, Gide, Paulhan or Jacob to avoid prison for her husband. In the land of literature, it is a virtual absolution! De Gaulle, poor art lover but great reader, both a returning writer and future author of bestsellers, admired the breath, the immense culture and the style of this autodidact, whose books made a strong impression before the war: The Temptation of the West (1926), The conquerors (1928), The Royal Way (1930) at Grasset, then The human condition et Hope (1937) at Gallimard.
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