Thursday, October 12. 1961 University Daily Kansan
Page 7
French Interpretation Given by Peyre
In a world where absolutes have been destroyed, mankind may still be able to find salvation from chaos and death in a universal language of art.
This is the interpretation given the life and works of Andre Malraux Tuesday night by Henri Peyre, professor of French literature at Yale University, at the first of the current series of Humanities Lectures in Fraser Theater.
The absolutes that have been destroyed for Western man and which have sent him searching desperately for new universal values are rationalism, progress, success and even Christianity, Prof. Peyre said.
THE YALE PROFESSOR, described in an introduction by Reinhard Kuhn, associate professor of Romance languages, as "a man who has read everything," lectured on his subject for one hour and 20 minutes at a rapid-fire pace and without reference to notes.
"Malaux," Prof. Peyre said, "has tried to find the common bond between East and West and the Northern and Southern hemispheres, to tie up the Humanities in one great universal entity." The universal language for this bundle of humanities is art.
"To Malraux," Dr. Peyre said, "the duty of a modern man, to become an intellectual, is to pass from the realm of thinking to the realm of action."
MALRAUX'S ENERGIES NOW Prof. Peyre, are directed to "finding a new language, to effect a breakthrough in the humanities the same as that which has taken place in the sciences."
Malraux's thesis is:
What is tragic is not that the
world may be destroyed. What is tragic is the most lamentable and regrettable display of inhumanity exhibited by man to man.
Continuing his interpretation
Dr. Feyre spoke in French on "The New Novel in France" Tuesday afternoon at Swarthout Recital Hall.
HE EXPLAINED HOW THIS new novel was a reaction against the traditional psychological novel of Proust, Gide, and other turn-of-the-century writers.
Praises Novel
After a word about the young novelists, such as Michel Butor, Nathalie Sarrute, Marguerite Duras, and Claude Simon, he said their most important idea is that they want to observe reality, objects, and extricate themselves from the states of mind of each writer.
Dr. Fevre felt the new literary force opposes the intellectual novel of writers who want only to express themselves with no interest in communication with the public; they want to write for the public. Their aim is creation of a novel which can be understood by everyone. These modern novelists wish to give the public something stable and comprehensible. For these reasons their novels seem impersonal and systematic, only because they want to maintain an objective point of view.
DR, PEYRE CONCLUDED, saying that the modern French novel has a universal mode of expression, joining closely abstract painting and motion pictures. He said that, in spite of publicity given this new novel, he was confident of its future because it had come at a time when the novel had to be renewed.
the French scholar, author and critic,
the humanities lecturer said.
"We can only succeed in saving ourselves by bringing to bear all forces of the past ...the very best in our past and not just our race ...and find there the means to leap forward.
"A GREAT MAN is he who leans far back into the past to spring far ahead into the future."
Prof. Peyre said the absolute which was the Christian civilization has now disappeared, for better or for worse. In the 18th and early 19th century, man began to doubt the absolutes. The product was the Age of Relativism.
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Age of Remembrance The second absolute which has been demolished as a myth is that of progress, Prof. Peyre said.
"YOU MAY BE a partisan of progress. You may pay lip service to it...so do they in France. But it is no longer in our art, our literature, our science. The people, after two world wars, no longer believe in it."
But Malraux is not a pessimist.
There is more than death. Mal-
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raux's conclusion is, according to Prof. Peyre: Art is no longer religion, it is man.
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