Dictionary of Literary Influences

Malraux, André George

Indochina. He joined the French Resistance during the Second World War. As France’s minister of cultural affairs from 1958 to 1969, he established exhibitions of little-known works of art from India, Persia, and Egypt, and a celebrated exhibit of works from sixteenth-century France.

Malraux had a staggering knowledge of literature, art, and philosophy, due in large part to a lifetime of reading as well as his personal relationships with the writers and artists of his own generation, including Pablo Picasso, André Gide, and Albert Camus. As a child, he read the novels of Alexander Dumas, James Fenimore Cooper, and Sir Walter Scott. Other important books included Gustave Flaubert’s Bouvard et Pécuchet and Salammbô, and the novels of Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac (particularly Les Chouans). Malraux also claimed aesthetic influences that included the French writers Charles Baudelaire, Guillaume Apollinaire, Tristan Corbière, and Paul Claudel, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Perhaps the greatest influence on the youthful Malraux, however, was the cubist poet Max Jacob (Lacouture 1975, 31), to whom Malraux dedicated his first book, Lunes en papier (1921).

As an art director for his own publisher, Gaston Gallimard, Malraux was responsible for introducing the works of D. H. Lawrence, William Faulkner, and Dashell Hammett to the Gallimard catalogue, and he contributed two of his most famous prefaces to editions of Lawrence and Faulkner (Lacouture 1975, 136). In T. E. Lawrence, Malraux found a dim reflection of his own aspirations as a writer and revolutionary as well as a fellow admirer of Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky. Malraux also admired Leon Trotsky for his opposition to Joseph Stalin. However, the man who seemed best to combine Malraux’s political and aesthetic ideals was Charles de Gaulle, with whom Malraux served in the French Resistance and to whom he remained a loyal friend and supporter through de Gaulle’s tumultuous postwar political career.

Archives

Robert Payne Collection, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Subgroup II, Box 9, letters.

Nicola Chiaromonto Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Box 1, Folder 55, letters; Box 5, Folder 146, manuscript.

Roger Caillois Collection, Valery Larbaud Médiathèque, letters.

Printed Sources

Cate, Curtis. André Malraux: A Biography (London: Hutchinson, 1995); André Malraux, Marie-Alyx Revellat (trans.), (Paris: Flammarion, 1994).

Lacouture, Jean. Malraux, une vie dans le siècle (Paris: Seuil, 1973); André Malraux, Alan Sheridan (trans.), (New York: Pantheon, 1975).

Lyotard, Jean-François. Signed, Malraux, Robert Harvey (trans.), (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).

———. Soundproof Room: Malraux’s Anti-Aesthetics, Robert Harvey (trans.), (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).

Malraux, André. Antimémoires, Terence Kilmartin (trans.), (New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1968).

Todd, Olivier. André Malraux: une vie (Paris: Gallimard, 2001).

Philip Bader

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Mandela, Nelson Rolihlahla

MANDELA, NELSON ROLIHLAHLA (1918– )

Nelson Mandela was born at Mveza, in the Umtata district of the Transkei, eight hundred miles east of Cape Town. He received his early education from the Wesleyan Methodist institutions at Mqhekezweni, Clarkebury, and Healdtown. “We were taught and believed,” Mandela recalled of his missionary schooling, “that the best ideas were British ideas, the best government was British government, and the best men were Englishmen” (Mandela 1994, 27). He studied English, anthropology, and politics at Fort Hare University, completing his degree in 1942. Mandela’s introduction to the African protest movement came following his move to Johannesburg in the early 1940s and intensified following the installation of the Nationalist Party government in 1948. He was put on trial for treason in 1957 and again in 1964, when he was sentenced to life in prison. Mandela served 18 of his 27 years in captivity at the infamous prison on Robben Island, and he was released, at last, on February 11, 1990. The overwhelming victor in the first fully democratic election in the Republic of South Africa, Mandela became president in 1994 and served a full term before his retirement from office in 1999.

Mandela’s political initiation came through his contact with activists in Johan- nesburg—for example, the African nationalist Anton Lembede, who espoused a philosophy of African self-sufficiency and independence. He nevertheless befriended militants in the Indian protest movement, such as Ismail Meer and Jaydew Sing. He also associated with members of the South African Communist Party, including Bram Fischer and Ruth First. Mandela’s mistrust of whites led him to resist close collaboration with the Communist Party. However, as his political activity intensified, Mandela’s opposition to Marxism began to erode. During the early 1960s Mandela read the complete works of Karl Marx and became increasingly interested in books on liberation movements, including Mao Tse-Tung and Edgar Snow on the Chinese revolution, Menachem Begin on Israel, and Louis Taruc’s account of the Philippine uprising, Born of the People. “Marxism’s call to revolutionary action,” Mandela noted, “was music to the ears of a freedom fighter.” He subscribed to the fundamental tenet of Marxist doctrine, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (Mandela 1994, 104–5). Mandela’s prison experiences, especially regular contact with white guards, eventually softened much of his militancy. As a politician he came to recognize the necessity of cooperation with white society and industry in order to successfully build a new South Africa.

During his prison years on Robben Island, Mandela engaged in intense political debates with fellow prisoners over the future of the protest movement and was instrumental in the creation of lessons to educate young prisoners in the program of the African Nationalist Congress. Known as “Robben Island University,” the curriculum trained an entire generation of African political leaders. Mandela himself also took a correspondence course in law from London University. When prison authorities banned him from continuing his studies, Mandela enthusiastically turned to works of fiction. He read the works of liberal South African authors such as Nadine Gordimer, many of whom he befriended following his release. He greatly admired Lev Tolstoy’s War and Peace and saw parallels between the plight of the migrant workers in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and the difficulties faced by African laborers under apartheid (Mandela 1994, 428). Political biogra-

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phies also helped to prepare Mandela for his later political career. “While the comrades were reading Das Kapital,” recalled a fellow prisoner, “Mandela was reading Churchill’s war memoirs, or biographies of Kennedy or Vorster” (Sampson 1999, 282).

Many of the prisoners on Robben Island also expressed high regard for the works of Shakespeare and frequently recited long passages from the historical plays. Mandela identified the following passage from Julius Caesar as his particular favorite (Sampson 1999, 231–2):

Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seemed to me most strange that men should fear;

Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come when it will come.

Archives

Shell House, Johannesburg: African National Congress Archives.

William Cullen Library, Witwatersrand University, and the Brenthurst Library, Johannesburg: Extensive materials on South African political protest movements.

Printed Works

Benson, Mary. Nelson Mandela: The Man and the Movement (London: Penguin, 1994). Mandela, Nelson Rolihlahla. Long Walk to Freedom (New York: Little, Brown and Company,

1994).

———.No Easy Walk to Freedom, Ruth First (ed.), (London: Heinemann, 1965).

———.The Struggle Is My Life (London: International Defense and Aid Fund for South Africa, 1978).

Meredith, Martin. Nelson Mandela (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). Sampson, Anthony. Mandela: The Authorized Biography (New York: Knopf, 1999).

Michael A. Rutz

MANN, HEINRICH (1871–1950)

Heinrich Mann was born in Lubeck in 1871. He and his brother Thomas attended the private school of Professor Bussenius and then enrolled in the Gymnasium Katharineum but left the school before the final examinations. He began his career as a writer in the 1880s, after failing as a publisher’s apprentice, and audited the philosophy lessons at the University of Berlin. German culture was in this decade strongly dominated by the trans-European movements of naturalism, symbolism, and decadence, introduced in Germany through the work of Hermann Bahr and Georg Brandes. Heinrich grew up in this cultural climate: his education can be considered more European than German, and his novels, though accurately reflecting German culture and society, go beyond the limits of nationalism. As critic and essayist he wrote Eine Freundschaft: Gustave Flaubert und George Sand

(1905), Voltaire—Goethe (1910), and Zola (1915), works which demonstrate a sympathy for the social and democratic ideals of the French left. As a novelist he published Im Schlaraffenland (In the Land of Cockaigne, 1900), Die Göttinnen (1903), and

Professor Unrat (Small Town Tyrant, 1905). Adaptations for cinema by Joseph von Sternberg—The Blue Angel, 1930, Die kleine Stadt (The Small Town, 1909), Der

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Untertan (The Patrioteer, 1914)—brought him considerable fame. By reason of his stance on the democratic ideals and against the accession to power of Adolf Hitler, Mann was forced to flee to France (1933) and then to the United States (1940). To the French period belong the two novels Die Jugend des Königs Henri Quatre (Young Henry of Navarre, 1935) and Die Vollendung des Königs Henri Quatre (Henry, King of France, 1938), while his last narrative period saw the publication of Lidice (1943) and Der Atem (The Breath, 1949) and his autobiography Ein Zeitalter wird besichtigt

(An Age is Examined, 1945). Heinrich Mann died in Santa Monica, California, in 1950.

Mann’s participation in the theatrical club Freie Bühne of Berlin induced him to write dramas: Varieté (1910), Schauspielerin (1911), Die grosse Liebe (1912), Madame Legros (1913), and Der Weg zur Macht (1919). He met many intellectuals and artists, which encouraged creativity: in Italy he met the writer Gabriele D’Annunzio and the composer Giacomo Puccini, while, during his French stay, he associated with a group of political exiles who met in Sanary sur Mer: Bertolt Brecht, Franz Werfel, Alfred Döblin, Erwin Piscator, Ludwig Marcuse, Joseph Roth, and Stefan Zweig. He also collaborated with Aldous Huxley and André Gide for the review Die Sammlung. Mann formulated in his works the role of the intellectual as deeply engaged in society, working and operating in the interest and to the advantage of the masses, and fighting the cruelty of capitalism and industrialism. Mann’s cultural influence is more evident in the model of the modern intellectual committed to the defense of social rights than in stylistic–literary aspects. Mann’s exploration of different expressive possibilities (novel, essay, cinema, theater, articles) also made him a complex and a multiform writer.

Archives

Heinrich Mann Collection Inventory in the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library Archives—

University of Southern California.

Heinrich Mann Archiv—Berlin.

Printed Sources

Gross, David. The Writer and Society: Heinrich Mann and Literary Politics in Germany, 1890–1940 (Atlantic Highlands: New Jersey Humanities Press, 1980).

Hamilton, Nigel. The Brothers Mann: The Lives of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, 1871–1950 and 1875–1955 (London: Secker Warburg, 1978).

Roberts, David. Artistic Consciousness and Political Conscience: The Novels of Heinrich Mann 1900–1938 (Berne: Lang, 1971).

Maria Tabaglio

MANN, PAUL THOMAS (1875–1955)

Thomas Mann was born in Lübeck, Germany, and there attended the Katharineum (1889–94). Earning his diploma in 1894, he joined his mother in the intellectual and artistic milieu of Munich. Mann enrolled for several courses at the Teschnische Universität in Munich before achieving critical acclaim for his novel Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie (1901; translated 1924 as Buddenbrooks). As embodied in this tale of the generational decline of a family, Mann established himself as a novelist of ideas. His works served as forums to examine philosophical issues, including the upheavals of his own time, the more transcendent issues under-

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lying Western civilization, and the ever-recurring leitmotif of the artist as differ- ent—often above—society. The craftsmanship and complexity of his fictional and political works embodying humor, poignant irony, and parody established him as one of the foremost thinkers and novelists of the twentieth century and earned him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929. Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 only quickened Mann’s progression from his support of authoritarianism as expressed in

Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (1918; translated 1983 as Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man) to a more humane and democratic understanding. Having sought exile first in Switzerland, he moved to the United States in 1938 and became a citizen in 1940. Mann spoke fervently against European fascism, although his political views still embodied an ambiguous tension between a romanticized, apolitical German burgher and a universalized humanity increasingly associated with social democracy. He returned to Europe in 1953 in light of the hysteria of McCarthyism.

Mann credited the roots of his leitmotif to his parental influences: “From my father the ‘serious approach to life,’” and from his mother “artistic-sensual direction and—in the widest sense of the word—the ‘urge to story-telling’” (quoted in Prater 1995, 4). During his time at the Teschnische Universität, the lectures on Nordic mythology and the literature of the Middle Ages provided important material for Mann’s works. However, the majority of his learning took place outside of academia. A vivid imagination coupled with his avid reading of Friedrich von Schiller, Heinrich Heine, and Theodor Storm led to his first expressions of verse in Lübeck. In the 1890s, following in the footsteps of his literate brother, Heinrich Mann, the influence of Hermann Bahr becomes evident. Also noticeable during this period is Mann’s transition from naturalism to neo-romanticism. Mann read extensively French, Scandinavian, and Russian literature marking the influences of Guy de Maupassant, Jonas Lie, Alexander Kielland, Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Ivan Turgenev. Ideas and details from his readings, travels to the Baltic coast as a child, and his time in Italy in the 1890s filled notebooks with ideas and details that would be incorporated in later works. However, greater influences on his work were already observable during his Lübeck years, where Mann was deeply drawn to Richard Wagner’s operatic music renowned for its intensity, complexity, and epic grandeur. Parallels between Mann’s literary leitmotifs and Wagner’s musical ones are found throughout Mann’s works. Interest in Wagner soon led Mann to explore the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, specifically Schopenhauer’s Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1818; translated 1966 as The World as Will and Representation) and Nietzsche’s Jenseits von Gut und Bose (1886; translated 1967 as Beyond Good and Evil ) and Der Fall Wagner (1888; translated 1967 as The Case of Wagner). In the artistic suburb of Schwabing, Munich, his mother’s elite circle of friends exposed Mann to poet Stefan George’s decadent movement of l’art pour l’art and a culture of nihilism and pessimism. These themes conflicted with the influence Johann Wolfgang von Goethe exerted on Mann, specifically his view of the burgher as a human being and romantic individualist. The juxtaposition of these various facets is reflected in most of Mann’s works.

Archives

Thoman-Mann-Archiv, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Switzerland: majority of Thomas Mann’s original works, including manuscripts, diaries, notebooks, and letters and a wide array of recorded and secondary material.

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Thomas Mann Collection, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.: manuscript items, correspondence and special files, and a large collection of printed materials by and about Mann.

Printed Works

Prater, Donald. Thomas Mann: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Winston, Richard. Thomas Mann: The Making of an Artist, 1875–1911 (New York: Knopf,

1979; London: Constable, 1982).

Rouven J. Steeves

MARCUSE, HERBERT (1898–1979)

Herbert Marcuse was born in Berlin on July 19, 1898, to Carl and Gertrud Marcuse. He briefly attended the Humboldt University in Berlin but eventually transferred to the Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg-im-Breisgau, studying German literature and philosophy with figures such as Edmund Husserl. In 1922 Marcuse completed his dissertation on the figure of the artist-hero in the German novel. He then studied at Freiburg University as a postdoctoral student, working in particular with the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Just prior to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, Marcuse accepted a position at the Institute for Social Research, commonly known as the Frankfurt School, working with figures such as Max Horkheimer, Leo Lowenthal, and Freidrich Pollock. Marcuse eventually fled to America in 1934 when the threat of fascism became too great. In the United States Marcuse taught at many schools, including Columbia University, Brandeis University, and the University of California at San Diego. His scholarship included an influential reading of G.W.F. Hegel entitled Reason and Revolution (1941), a critique of neo-Freudianism entitled Eros and Civilization (1955), and a scathing critique of modern industrial society called One-Dimensional Man (1964). Marcuse’s writings covered a wide range of topics from traditional philosophical concerns and aesthetic theory to overtly political tracts. Outside of his scholarship, Marcuse’s major impact stemmed from the inspiration and encouragement he gave to the New Left and the student movement during the 1960s. Marcuse died on July 29, 1979, in Starnberg, Germany.

Early in his academic career Marcuse was influenced by his studies of German phenomenology with Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. But his interest in German literature, in particular German romanticism, introduced him to the aesthetic theories of Friedrich Schiller, which influenced his understanding of the emancipatory potential of the aesthetic form. He was also drawn to surrealism as an art form, in particular the program of André Breton. Marcuse also made continual reference to the work of literary figures such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Samuel Beckett, Arthur Rimbaud, and Charles Baudelaire, which spoke to his interest in modern literature. Marcuse’s relationship with the Frankfurt school introduced him to the work of Theodor Adorno and Erich Fromm, which influenced his understanding of psychoanalysis, social science, and critical theory. Like many other German intellectuals, Marcuse was deeply indebted to the work of Hegel, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud and spent much of his academic career attempting to reconcile the work of these three towering figures. The publication in 1932 of the recently discovered early manuscripts of Karl Marx entitled Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 influenced Marcuse’s understanding of Marx-

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ism and helped him to ground his phenomenological claims. Marcuse’s two studies of Hegel reflected his continued interest in dialectical materialism. His work on Sigmund Freud also spoke to his continual preoccupation with psychoanalysis as a form of critical analysis. Marcuse’s understanding of industrial development and economic change was also influenced by his reading of the work of Rudolf Bahro and Franz Neumann.

Archives

Herbert Marcuse Archive, City and University Library, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Printed Sources

Bokina, John, and Timothy J. Lukes (eds.). Marcuse: From the New Left to the Next Left (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1994).

Katz, Barry. Herbert Marcuse and the Art of Liberation (London: Verso, 1982).

Kellner, Douglas. Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).

Lipshires, Sidney. Herbert Marcuse: From Marx to Freud and Beyond (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1974).

Schoolman, Morton. Imaginary Witness: The Critical Theory of Herbert Marcuse (New York: Free Press, 1980).

Robert Genter

MARLEY, NESTA ROBERT (1945–1981)

Bob Marley was born in Nine Mile, Jamaica. He completed his formal education at the age of 16 from Model Private School in Kingston, Jamaica. Before the age of six, one of Bob Marley’s first musical influences occurred through his attendance at a Christian church with his mother in Nine Mile. Here he was exposed to gospel songs, such as Let the Lord Be Seen in You and Take My Hand Precious Lord (Talamon et al. 1994, 16). In 1966, Bob Marley became Rastafarian, which is a messianic cult religion. His religious beliefs, combined with the current social issues of his time, would be the focal point for the messages in his songs. Due to his music’s prevailing themes against political oppression, he eventually became an international symbol of freedom. After Marley signed a contract with Island Records in 1972, he brought Reggae music to the foreground of the Western culture’s musical scene. He is also accredited with educating white Europeans and Americans to pay “rapt attention to his songs of black retribution,” while, at the same time, exposing them to Jamaican Creole culture (White 1983, 4).

When Marley was an adolescent attending Model Private School, he held a special regard for history and quickly became interested in the torment and oppression inflicted upon the Maroons (White 1983, 129). His history lessons gave him insight into the contemporary (1950s) oppressive forces that plagued his people. These insights would later develop into themes for his music. In 1959, Joe Higgs, a Reggae performer, started tutoring Marley in singing. Marley’s first band was formed with Higgs’s encouragement and help. Higgs taught Marley that songs should hold messages about faith and resistance. Another influential figure in Marley’s life was Mortimo Planno, his Rastafarian guru. The Rastafarian bible is the Holy Piby, which was compiled by Robert Athlyi Rogers from 1913 to 1917. This religion’s ideological premises come from some of the teachings of back-to-Africa advocate

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Marcus Mosiah Garvey. In addition to the religious teachings, the songs and chants from the Holy Piby also influenced Marley. He turned one of the chants into the song Rasta Man Chant. The song War, from the album Rastaman Vibration, took its lyrics from a speech made by the former Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie I, to the United Nations. The Rastas believed that Selassie was the true messiah. Bob Marley’s songs Jah Live and Crazy BaldHeads were written in protest against the purported murder of Selassie. Marley brought his spiritual messages to the Western world through his unique interplay of Jamaican idioms, folklore, and metaphors. Marley had a unique way of connecting with his audience, especially his listeners in his homeland of Jamaica. He used his music as a means to educate the world about the political injustices that occurred in Jamaica.

Archives

Bob Marley Museum, Kingston, Jamaica: Two international rooms with newspaper clippings from 1973 to 1980, artifacts, memorabilia, numerous writings, and photographs.

The National Library of Jamaica in Kingston: Bibliographical information including books, articles, a selection of articles published in Daily Gleaner 1976–March 1977, and audiovisual materials.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland: Marley musical memorabilia.

Roger Steffens Reggae ARCHIVES, Los Angeles, California: Last videotape ever made of Marley (in hospital bed), an audiotape from his bedroom “musical diary,” and Marley artifacts and memorabilia.

Printed Sources

Salewicz, Chris, Adrian Boot, and Chris Blackwell. Reggae Explosion: The Story of Jamaican Music (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001).

Talamon, W. Bruce, Roger Steffens, and Timothy White. Bob Marley: Spirit Dancer (New York and London: Norton & Company, 1994).

White, Timothy. Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley [1983] (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998).

White, Timothy. “The Importance of Being Bob Marley.” May 17, 2002. Web site of Bob Marley Inc., http://www.bobmarley.com/life/legacy/interview/, accessed October 23, 2003.

Rose Giltzow

MARSHALL, GEORGE CATLETT (1880–1959)

George Marshall was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, the second son and last child of George Catlett Marshall Sr., a prominent businessman, and Laura Bradford. Both his parents came from established Virginia and Kentucky families. Marshall accepted nearly unquestioningly his family’s Episcopalian Christian faith and regarded the local minister as a boyhood mentor. Educated at local private and public schools, at 16 Marshall entered the Virginia Military Institute, graduating in 1901 as first captain and near the top of his class in engineering and military studies. The following year he married Elizabeth “Lily” Carter Coles of Lexington, Virginia, and was commissioned a second lieutenant of infantry. When the United States entered the First World War, in June 1917 Marshall went to France; he became the First Army’s chief of operations and then aide to the chief of staff, General John J. Pershing. During three years in China, Marshall acquired proficiency in Mandarin Chinese; in five as assistant commandant of the Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia, he introduced curriculum reforms and trained numerous future

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American generals. In 1930 Marshall, a widower since 1927, married Katherine Tupper Brown, a widow with three children who had also been a successful actress.

In 1938 Marshall, already a general, transferred to the general staff in Washington and in September 1939 became chief of staff of the United States Army. As World War II began, Marshall energetically rebuilt the United States military, supervising an increase in United States armed forces from two hundred thousand in December 1941 to a wartime peak of eight million. Marshall retired in November 1945 and for fourteen months unsuccessfully sought to mediate the continuing Chinese civil war between the Nationalist Government and Communist rebels. In January 1947 Marshall became secretary of state as the developing cold war presented new challenges to his country. His most visible accomplishments were the Marshall Plan, a coordinated $10 billion five-year scheme to rehabilitate the Western European economies, and American membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the first permanent security pact the United States had ever entered. Marshall left office in January 1949, but when the Korean War began in June 1950, President Harry S. Truman persuaded him to become secretary of defense, and for 15 months Marshall again built up manpower and war production. In December 1953 a Nobel Peace Prize recognized his efforts for European recovery.

Evening family readings from classic histories, novels, and adventure stories, often with an earlier American historical background, enthralled Marshall. He particularly enjoyed historical novels by G. A. Henty and Arthur Conan Doyle, especially the latter’s The Refugees and Sir Nigel, Eugene Sue’s The Wandering Jew, the novels of Charles Dickens, and stirring western stories. An erratically mediocre high school student, Marshall nonetheless excelled in history, later regretting that the Virginia Military Institute college curriculum omitted history and international affairs and provided inadequate language teaching, deficiencies he considered detrimental to his country’s international interests. Although Marshall readily passed various undemanding army examinations, he only acquired rigorous study habits in his four years from 1906—two as student, two as instructor—at the reformed Infantry and Cavalry School, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He passed the demanding initial year first in his class, reading intensively in military history, strategy, and tactics. Throughout his life he voraciously consumed volumes of history; in 1943, for instance, to sidetrack his fellow history enthusiast, Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill, from more sensitive subjects, Marshall discussed with him Lord Macaulay’s account of Warren Hastings’s impeachment, which he had recently read. Marshall’s imaginative historical empathy and his professional training both facilitated his ultimate emergence as a leading architect of the “American century” of United States international dominance.

Archives

George C. Marshall Library, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Va.: repository for the personal papers of Marshall and many of his associates, and copies of materials on Marshall collected from other sources.

National Archives II, College Park, Md.: holds numerous Department of State and Modern Military records from Marshall’s official career.

Printed Sources

Cray, Ed. General of the Army: George C. Marshall, Soldier and Statesman (New York: Norton, 1990).

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Marshall, George C. The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, Larry I. Bland (ed.), 4 vols. to date (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1981– ).

———. Interviews and Reminiscences for Forrest C. Pogue, Larry I. Bland (ed.), (Lexington, Va.: Marshall Foundation, 1991).

Pogue, Forrest C. George C. Marshall, 4 vols. (New York: Viking Press, 1963–1987).

Stoler, Mark A. George C. Marshall: Soldier–Statesman of the American Century (Boston: Twayne, 1989).

Priscilla Roberts

MASARYK, TOMÁSˇ GARRIGUE (1850–1937)

Masaryk was born in Hodonín, Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic), the son of a Slovak father and a German-speaking Czech mother. He studied at gymnasia in Brno (1865–69) and Vienna (1869–72) before enrolling in 1872 at the University of Vienna, where he completed degrees in philosophy (1875 PhDr., 1878 doc.). During a one-year sabbatical at the University of Leipzig, Masaryk met Charlotte Garrigue, daughter of a wealthy Brooklynite. They married in 1877, and Masaryk adopted his wife’s maiden name as his own middle name. Raised a Roman Catholic, Masaryk left the church in 1870 following the declaration of papal infallibility. He remained, however, an advocate of religious belief and expressed a Protestant faith that borrowed from Unitarian theology (his wife belonged to the Unitarian Church) and the intellectual traditions of the fifteenth-century Hussite movement and the seventeenth-century Church of the Czech Brethren. After teaching as a docent at the University of Vienna (1878–82), Masaryk was appointed in 1883 as professor of sociology at the newly created Czech University in Prague, a position he held until 1914. He was a prolific and iconoclastic writer, and he sparked controversy with his books and articles on philosophy, Czech history and culture, and the political and social situation in the Habsburg Empire. In 1890 he was elected to the Austrian Parliament. After the start of World War I he went abroad and worked with his former student Edvard Benesˇ (1884–1948) to lobby the governments of France, England, the United States, and Russia for the dismantling of Austria-Hungary. He returned to independent Czechoslovakia in December 1918 as the republic’s first president. During the 1920s and 1930s, Masaryk was revered by Czechs as “Papa Masaryk” and hailed in western Europe and the United States as the model of the “philosopherpresident.” He was a vocal spokesman of democracy, national self-determination, and a republican state built upon a humanitarian, responsible citizenry. In 1935 he was succeeded as president by Benesˇ, his foreign minister.

Masaryk was an insatiable reader. In addition to Czech, Slovak, and German, Masaryk also read in the classical languages, French, English, Italian, Russian, and Polish. An entire chapter of Talks with T. G. Masaryk, the biography by Czech

writer ˇ recounts Masaryk’s lifetime of reading and the authors who

Karel Capek,

had influenced him. The most important works in the development of his social and political philosophy were Plato’s dialogues and the Bible. Of the former, Masaryk maintained that he was a lifelong Platonist, and he appreciated in particular the philosopher’s striving for a unity of knowledge and a harmony of theory and practice. His idealism was further shaped by his reading of Johann Gottfried Herder. Masaryk was attracted to Herder’s notions of humanity as an ideal, the providential causation of history, the role of the nation in history’s progress, and the important role of the Slavs. His view of Herder was shaped by leading Czech

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