The novels of André Malraux : a restatement of man's tragic dilemma in contemporary terms

Abstract

Writing about Eighteenth Century England, and more particularly about the age of Johnson, Trevelyan gives us an admirable definition of a classical age: It is a "classical age, that is an age of unchallenged assumptions, when the philosophers of the streets such as Dr. Johnson, have ample leisure to moralise on the human scene, in the happy belief that the state of society and the modes of thought to which they are accustomed are not mere passing aspects of an ever shifting kaleidoscope, but permanent habitations, the final outcome of reason and experience. Such an age does not aspire to progress, though it may in fact be progressing; it regards itself not as setting out but as having arrived." To apply this definition of a classical age to the protean Nineteenth Century might, at first glance, seem impossible or at least dangerous. Yet it is only when we see this century - and more particularly the period 1871-1914 - as a truly classical age, as the classical age of the Bourgeoisie, that we can understand the direction and meaning of the revolt during the Twenties and Thirties of which Malraux' work is so representative. Introduction, page 1.