French Hero’s Ashes Enshrined

Twenty years after his death, the ashes of Andre Malraux--one of France’s most celebrated thinkers--were enshrined Saturday in the Pantheon, the nation’s resting place of honor.

Amid blaring trumpets and speeches of tribute, Malraux’s ashes were moved from a family tomb outside Paris to the crypt containing the remains of such luminaries as Voltaire, Victor Hugo, and Marie and Pierre Curie.

“No one with more eloquence defended the ideal of justice and sang of brotherhood,” President Jacques Chirac declared.

Malraux, who died Nov. 23, 1976, at 75, was hailed as the century’s most influential French intellectual. A best-selling novelist in his day, Malraux was also a militant, statesman and philosopher of art who believed that “ideas should be acted upon, not just conceived.”

In the French capital, he is remembered as the man who brought art to the people and had Paris monuments--blackened by age and air pollution--restored to their original luster.