The Quality of Man

Man’s Hope. By André Malraux. Translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert and Alastair Macdonald. Random House. $2.50

To say that Man’s Hope is not a novel in the traditional sense is not to question that it is a significant work of art. It belongs to some intermediate literary type which is coming into being under the pressure of contemporary subject-matter and the contemporary spirit. The case is all the more impressive in view of the fact that, in Man’s Fate, in Days of Wrath, in The Conquerors and in The Royal Way, Malraux has expertly employed the devices of fiction as they were developed by a long line of novelists, French, Russian and English. Above all in Man’s Fate he is master of what we may call the psychological close-up, of what James calls the “constituted occasion” or “scene,” of all that makes for intimacy and immediacy. This means that, along with fact and idea, he has been at least equally concerned with illusion, the framed and calcium-lighted illusion of the stage. In Man’s Hope the case is different. Everything seems to move either on the plane of fact or on the plane of idea; and while the story is conducted in the form of scenes of action and dialogue, there is a curious disregard for the sort of build-up of setting and character which makes for dramatic illusion. He has, he seems to say, so much to do of primary importance that he cannot take time to prepare his effects and spotlight his characters.