THE PAINTING AND THE BLOOD Hospitals in L’Espoir

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show how in L’Espoir by André Malraux, the hospital is much more than a place of intrigue in the context of the Spanish civil war. The numerous scenes taking place in hospitals not only indicate the different stages of the fight between republicans and Franco supporters (battles of Barcelona, Madrid, Toledo and Linarés) but also the indispensable, even if it is arguable, political evolution leading from what Malraux calls the failure of the lyric and anarchist illusion to the organization of a more effective resistance around communists. More profoundly, the hospital appears to be the crucial place of the revelation of absurdity and of the oppression of man’s brutality when confronted with death and with an unbearable suffering. In this place all the metaphysical questions are asked; these questions incessantly obsess the writer and progressively, from scene to scene, answers also begin to appear. Facing the blind fate which alienates men and facing the dreadful pain of the torn bodies, the fragile fraternity of men and the strength of the shared action stand out. In this way, through the complicated and subtle effects of the transposition of art which reflects Malraux’s lyricism, L’Espoir, a political and metaphysical novel augurs his masterly future works of art