A la recherche d'un nouveau genre? dans Les antimemoires

Abstract

Between 1943 and 1976 André Malraux wrote six different literary versions about a single subject -his life. Departing from the nineteenth century French novel, approaching to the American novel of the beginning of the century, and finally also departing therefrom, he searched in other literary kinds the graphic or visual support as well as the adequate structures for the projection of his particular metaphysical concerns, which he further includes within the spiritual quest of mankind as a whole. To attain this goal he aids himself with two different kinds: the Novel (1943,1945,1948) and the Memoirs (1967,1972,1976). By means of a comparative study of different writers of Memoirs, we reach the conclusion that Malraux, although starting from the structures of the Memoirs, exceeds them in order to create another "kind" which is nonetheless a sort of compendium of the kinds already present in his earlier works.