Antimémoires

These memoirs, which claim not to be memoirs at all, form the first part of the Miroir des Limbes and remain perhaps the most compelling work of Malraux’s later years. Jean Schlumberger admired their “secret architecture: […] you are a man in whose feelings death has wrought harsh ravages; […] behind your eloquence there is that silent note to which I attach more value than to eloquence itself” — that celebrated eloquence which Malraux found so hard to shed, and which earned him some criticism. Nonetheless, as Schlumberger had sensed: “The whole ending of your book did not merely interest me: it moved me.” (Letter to Malraux, 9 October 1967).