The two most curious, awe-inspiring, and prophetic people of last century: Charles De Gaulle and André Malraux –the two were collaborators. Both saw through the noise; both acted with a sense of grandeur, never engaged in small talk –Malraux talked about “transcendance” in literary salons when other writers gossiped or discussed royalty rates. Now both impersonated first, later became truly what they impersonated: Malraux took the public persona of a writer before he ever wrote anything, then he became one of the best prose writers France ever had. De Gaulle was given a token role by the British as head of “free France” in exile and suddenly rose up to become the noble and heroic character he thought he had to be. Both acted with huge courage, with De Gaulle giving back Algeria, singlehandedly, and facing assassination attempts with the kind of composure his role commanded.
Both were uncannily prophetic, in the small and the large. De Gaulle predicted in 1967 the Israeli-Palestinians problems, & that Jackie Kennedy “would end up on an arms dealer’s boat”. Malraux predicted the 21st century “would be religious or would not be”. Malraux 50 years ago predicted the television set would merge with the computer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy_uZF4WbyI

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