A Study Of The "Oriental Imagination" In Andrew Malraux’s Fictions

Andrew Malraux,a French writer and politician,is thought to have an intimate connection with Asia that he expressed his feelings and thoughts in writing.As an anti-mainstreamed intellectual from the western world,the outlook of Malraux has been stamped by Asian culture,both for the adventures in Asia during his youthful days,and for the review or imagination of this experience.Malraux arrives in Asia in an extraordinary time when many districts of Asia is under the colonial rule,which leads to make him transfer from an European explorer to a mature thinker about the conflict and the exchange of the eastern and western culture.What’s more,the revolution happened in China sparked him,and he creates his myth archetypes and leads to concerns about the fate of the mankind.In the process of thinking,the Orient which is thought to be the Other gets involved in the Malraux’s novels by the real landscape or the illusory imagination.That is,Malraux images a mythological figure of the Orient.For this reason,he uses the tools of discourse and ideas,and creates his imagination of the Orient by writing 4 novels: The Temptation of The West(1926),The Conqueror(1928),The Avenue of Dynasty(1930)and The Fate of Mankind(1933).However,one’s comprehension of the Other culture is based on his moral position and cultural mindset,and it also reflects the Power and Desire of the local culture.It means that any viewpoint of the Other has to get through special process.And it is also interfered by the historical and cultural tradition or the current system of discourse.For Malraux’s novels,no matter what he writes,such as the jungle and the aborigines of Cambodia,the modern cities and the revolutionary of China,all the elements is illusory.And the Orient is the cultural system which is consisted of the historical,the phronetal,the verbal and the imago.Consequently,in Malraux’s works,the East is the symbol of Power and Desire rather than the East itself,and it is an imaginary product of the Western civilization.