Abstract
Having had to run the family business for a time, Maurois the writer and intellectual could see different sides of most issues. He recognized the value of practice as well as principle, action as well as reflection, tradition as well as innovation. He was on easy terms with politicians and military men as well as poets. On all topics he adopted a moderate stance and aimed to keep an open mind. A quintessential liberal, he disliked and feared excessive systematizing and dogmatic extremes; he admired the English because he saw in them the embodiment of his own sceptical empiricism and preference for adaptation and tolerance.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See the texts (Propos, dated 1, 3, and 13 November 1911) in Alain et Rouen 1900–1914, ed. Emmanuel Blondel et al. (Rouen: Éditions PTC, 2007), pp. 151–153. In his teaching Alain, in fact, encouraged his students to pay serious attention to alternative points of view. In one of several interviews with the journalist Frédéric Lefèvre, published in the Nouvelles Littéraires (1 May 1926), Maurois recalled that his teacher’s method was Socratic and that he liked to assign essay topics such as “Dialogue entre un sacristain et un capitaine des pompiers sur l’existence de Dieu” [“Dialogue of a sexton and a fire brigade captain concerning the existence of God”], admonishing his students to avoid “hackneyes phrases” and everything “médiocre and trite” (Frédéric Lefèvre, Une Heure avec, ed. Nicole Villeroux [Nantes and Laval: Siloë, 1997], vol. 3, p. 14).
Charles Du Bos, Journal, 8 vols (Paris: Corrêa, 1946–1961)
André Maurois, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 5 (Paris: Bibliothèque Bernard Grasset chez Arthème Fayard 1951), preface, pp. i–ii.
Virginia Woolf, “The New Biography,” New York Herald Tribune, 30 October 1927, reprinted in Granite and Rainbow [London: Hogarth Press, 1958], pp. 149–155.
“Remarques d’André Maurois,” following the chapter “L’Art du biographe” in Jacques Suffel, André Maurois, avec des remarques par André Maurois [as in I, note 15], p. 96. Maurois was adamant about the biographer’s obligation to study all available sources, document himself thoroughly, never, on any account, invent history, and stick to chronological sequence as closely as possible (“The Modern Biographer,” Yale Review, new series, 10, 1 (1927): 227–245
Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994], p. 424
On the salon of Mme Arman-Caillavet, see Le Salon de Madame Arman de Caillavet (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1926
George D. Painter, Marcel Proust: A Biography (New York: Vintage Books, 1978
Choses nues, pp. 134–135. On Blum’s reputation as an elegant man-about-town and refined essayist, see the somewhat malicious pages in Jacques-Émile Blanche, More Portraits of a Lifetime (as in I, note 13), pp. 309–310; on Blum as editor of the Revue blanche, see Paul-Henri Bourrelier, La Revue blanche (Paris: Fayard, 2007), pp. 144–169
“I am delighted by Maurois’ Disraeli,” Churchill wrote to “Clemmy” (his wife Clementine) on 1 October 1927 (Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5 [Companion], part 1 [Documents]: “The Exchequer Years 1922–1929” [London: Heinemann, 1979], p. 1059).
Introduction to the French translation of Mrs. Dalloway, reproduced in Virginia Woolf, L’Oeuvre romanesque, 3 vols (Paris: Stock, 1973), vol. 1, pp. 169–173
Gertrude Stein, see Maurois, Études américaines (New York: Éditions de la Maison Française, 1945), pp. 9–19
André Maurois, The Edwardian Era, trans. Hamish Miles (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1933), pp. 126, 228–229.
Maurois’ emphasis on the expressive aspect of biography was probably his most original contribution to the discussion of the “new biography.” “Biography,” he had declared in Aspects of Biography, “is a means of expression when the biographer has chosen his subject in order to respond to a secret need in his own nature. It will be written with more natural emotion than other kinds of biography, because the feelings and adventures of the hero will be the medium of the biographer’s own feelings; to a certain extent it will be autobiography disguised as biography” (p. 111). At the same time, the expressive function of biography, as of fiction, is accompanied for both the writer and the reader by a therapeutic one. The biographer’s initial empathy, even identification with his subject is complemented, according to Maurois, by the establishment of a necessary distance from his subject and this allows him both to express himself through his subject and to objectivize and gain understanding and control of troubling aspects of his own subjectivity. See also Maurois, “The Modern Biographer,” Yale Review, 17, 1 (1927), pp. 238–239.
Letter from Maurois to Nicolson, 18 April 1934, Princeton University, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Harold Nicolson Papers, series 2, box 2, folder 10. In 1934 Maurois joined the editorial board of Le Figaro, along with Paul Morand and the writer-diplomat Wladimir d’Ormesson (Jacques de Lacretelle, Face à l’événement: Le Figaro 1826–1966 [Paris: Hachette, 1966], p. 159).
Copyright information
© 2014 Lionel Gossman
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gossman, L. (2014). The Middle Road. In: André Maurois (1885–1967): Fortunes and Misfortunes of a Moderate. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137402707_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137402707_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-48678-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-40270-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)