Dostoïevski, le regard­pilote de Malraux

« As the sharks are preceded by their pilot­fishes, our look is preceded by a pilot­look , which suggests a meaning for what it is looking at .... » (André Malraux, L’intemporel) Different readings of Dostoievsky’s novels enable Malraux to weave a dialogue with his « pilot­fish ». At the Writers’ Congress in Moscow (1934), his antifascist commitment allows Malraux to praise, in opposition to socialist realism, Dostoievsky’s romantic composition. By meeting the techniques of Dostoievsky and Eisenstein, Malraux opens the way to modernity for Soviet literature. In spite of Stalinist censorship, Malraux pays tribute to the one who inspired his esthetic and philosophical ideas.