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Albert Camus
1913 - 1960
The French novelist, essayist, and playwright Albert Camus was
obsessed with the philosophical problems of the meaning of life
and of man's search for values in a world without God. His work
is distinguished by lucidity, moderation, and tolerance.
Albert
Camus may be grouped with two slightly older French writers,
André Malraux and Jean Paul Sartre, in marking a break with the
traditional bourgeois novel. Like them, he is less interested in
psychological analysis than in philosophical problems in his
books. Camus developed a conception of the "absurd," which
provides the theme for much of his earlier work: the "absurd" is
the gulf between, on the one hand, man's desire for a world of
happiness, governed by reason, justice, and order, a world which
he can understand rationally and, on the other hand, the actual
world, which is chaotic and irrational and inflicts suffering
and a meaningless death on humanity. The second stage in Camus's
thought developed from the first - man should not simply accept
the "absurd" universe, but should "revolt" against it. This
revolt is not political but in the name of the traditional
humane values.
Camus was born on Nov. 7, 1913, at Mondovi in Algeria, then part
of France. His father, who was French, was killed at the front
in 1914; his mother was of Spanish origin. His childhood was one
of poverty, and his education at school and later at the
University of Algiers was completed only with help from
scholarships. He was a brilliant student of philosophy, and his
major outside interests were sports and drama. While still a
student, he founded a theatre and both directed and acted in
plays. Having contracted tuberculosis, which periodically forced
him to spend time in a sanatorium, he was medically unable to
become a teacher and worked at various jobs before becoming a
journalist in 1938. His first published works were L'Envers et
l'endroit (1937; The Wrong Side and the Right Side) and Noces
(1938; Festivities), books of essays dealing with the meaning of
life and its joys, as well as its underlying meaninglessness.
L'Étranger
At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 Camus was
unfit for military service; in the following year he moved to
Paris and completed his first novel, L'Étranger (The Stranger),
published in 1942. The theme of the novel is embodied in the
"stranger" of its title, a young clerk called Meursault, who is
narrator as well as hero. Meursault is a stranger to all
conventional human reactions. The book begins with his lack of
grief on his mother's death. He has no ambition, and he is
prepared to marry a girl simply because he can see no reason why
he should not. The crisis of the novel takes place on a beach
when Meursault, involved in a quarrel not of his causing, shoots
an Arab; the second part of the novel deals with his trial for
murder and his condemnation to death, which he understands as
little as why he killed the Arab. Meursault is absolutely honest
in describing his feelings, and it is this honesty which makes
him a "stranger" in the world and ensures the verdict of guilty.
The total situation symbolizes the "absurd" nature of life, and
this effect is increased by the deliberately flat and colorless
style of the book.
Unable to find work in France during the German occupation,
Camus returned to Algeria in 1941 and finished his next book, Le
Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), also published in 1942.
This is a philosophical essay on the nature of the absurd, which
is embodied in the mythical figure of Sisyphus, condemned
eternally to roll a heavy rock up a mountain, only to have it
roll down again. Sisyphus becomes a symbol of mankind and in his
constant efforts achieves a certain tragic greatness.
In 1942 Camus, back in France, joined a Resistance group and
engaged in underground journalism until the Liberation in 1944,
when he became editor of the former Resistance newspaper Combat
for 3 years. Also during this period his first two plays were
staged: Le Malentendu (Cross-Purpose) in 1944 and Caligula in
1945. Here again the principal theme is the meaninglessness of
life and the finality of death. Two more plays, L'État de siège
(The State of Siege) and Les Justes (The Just Assassins),
followed in 1948 and 1950, and Camus was to adapt seven other
plays for the stage, the sphere of activity where he felt
happiest.
In 1947 Camus brought out his second novel, La Peste (The
Plague). Here, in describing a fictional attack of bubonic
plague in the Algerian city of Oran, he again treats the theme
of the absurd, represented by the meaningless and totally
unmerited suffering and death caused by the plague. But now the
theme of revolt is strongly developed. Man cannot accept this
suffering passively; and the narrator, Dr. Rieux, explains his
ideal of "honesty" - preserving his integrity by struggling as
best he can, even if unsuccessfully, against the epidemic. On
one level the novel can be taken as a fictional representation
of the German occupation of France, but it has a wider appeal as
being symbolical of the total fight against evil and suffering,
the major moral problem of human experience.
Later Works
Camus's next important book was L'Homme révolté (1951; The
Rebel). Another long essay, this work treats the theme of revolt
in political, as well as philosophical, terms. Camus, who had
briefly been a member of the Communist party in the 1930s,
afterward maintained a position of political independence, from
both the left and right-wing parties in France. In this book he
develops the point that man should not tolerate the absurdity of
the world but at the same time makes a careful distinction
between revolt and revolution. Revolution, despite its initial
ideals, he sees as inevitably ending in a tyranny as great or
greater than the one it set out to destroy. Instead, Camus asks
for revolt: a more individual protest, in tune with the humane
values of tolerance and moderation. Above all he denounces the
Marxist belief that "history" will inevitably produce a world
revolution and that any action committed in its name will
therefore be justified. For Camus, the end can never justify the
means. L'Homme révolté was widely discussed in France and led to
a bitter quarrel between Camus and Sartre, who at this time was
maintaining the necessity of an alliance with the Communists.
In the early 1950s Camus turned back to his earlier passion for
the theater and published no major book until 1956, when La
Chute (The Fall) appeared. This novel consists of a monologue by
a former lawyer named Clamence, who mainly sits in a sordid
waterfront bar in Amsterdam and comments ironically on his life.
Successful and worldly, he has undergone a moral crisis - the
"fall" of the title - after failing to help a young woman who
commits suicide by jumping off a bridge in Paris; afterward he
gives up his career and moves to Amsterdam, where he lives as
what he calls a "judge-penitent." The guilt he feels because of
this "fall" makes him see and describe the whole of human life
in terms of satirical pessimism.
In 1957 Camus received the great distinction of the Nobel Prize
for literature for his works, which "with clear-sighted
earnestness illuminate the problems of the human conscience of
our time." In the same year he published a collection of short
stories, L'Exil et le royaume (Exile and the Kingdom). Later he
began to work on a fourth important novel and was also about to
become director of a major Paris theater when, on Jan. 4, 1960,
he was killed in a car crash near Paris, at the age of 46, a
tragic loss to literature since he had yet to write the works of
his full maturity as artist and thinker. Since his death
important volumes of Carnets (Notebooks) have appeared.
~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~
Camus, Albert (1913-60). Novelist, playwright, essayist. Camus
was born and raised in a working-class European milieu in
Algeria. His early intellectual promise was spotted by Jean
Grenier and he went on to pursue studies in philosophy that
might have made of him a distinguished academic. However, the
onset of tuberculosis at the age of 17 ruled out an academic
career, and the disease was to dog him for the rest of his life.
His first published writings were lyrical essays inspired by a
passion for existence and an intense capacity for communion with
nature, coupled with a sharp perception of life's fragility and
bleakness. The title of the 1937 collection, L'Envers et
l'endroit, highlights this dualistic conception of the human
predicament which was to remain a constant throughout his work
(see L'Exil et le royaume, 1957).
In the late 1930s he took a succession of menial jobs while
developing various interests: political, involving brief
membership of the Communist Party; theatrical, through the
foundation of two companies for which he adapted, wrote,
directed, and acted; journalistic, as a campaigning reporter on
the radical newspapers Alger républicain and Soir républicain.
He also completed his first novel, La Mort heureuse (published
posthumously), and began work on his play Caligula, as well as
the novel L'Étranger and the philosophical essay Le Mythe de
Sisyphe. When published in 1942, the latter two works
established his reputation as the spokesman for a philosophy of
the absurd. The essay begins by asking whether suicide is not a
legitimate reaction to life's futility and analyses the
components of the human condition, concluding that the absurd
results from the incompatibility between, on the one hand, the
indifferent natural universe and the incomprehensible
circumstances of existence, and, on the other hand, man's desire
for order and sense. Thus, an authentic response to the human
lot requires that the individual maintain the tension between
his or her needs and aspirations and the world's refusal to
satisfy them. We are like Sisyphus condemned perpetually to push
a boulder up a mountain, whence it will inevitably roll back
down again: in the endless and ever-defeated effort to surmount
this fate, we must, argues Camus, imagine Sisyphus happy and
emulate his resilience. Meursault, the anti-hero of L'Étranger,
leads a life which can be seen as a manifestation of this
vision, and through his terse narrative became an icon for his
alienated era.
As these works appeared, Camus had actually moved beyond what to
him was only an initial premiss for the individual, and was more
concerned with collective attitudes. Trapped in occupied France
where he had gone for medical treatment in 1942 just before the
Allied landings in North Africa, he worked for the Resistance
newspaper Combat while writing La Peste, his allegorical
depiction of life under oppression. This novel demonstrates how
the tension characterizing the absurd develops into resistance
and revolt against a common lot in a movement of solidarity
which has implications on the political as well as the
metaphysical plane. The clandestine publication of the first of
the Lettres à un ami allemand (1943) expressed something of the
practical relevance of this theory of revolt which was the next
stage in Camus's thought.
At the Liberation of France, Camus, as editor-in-chief of
Combat, now a national newspaper, was a major figure in French
intellectual life. Through his editorials he informed public
opinion on the crucial issues of the day: the post-war purges of
collaborators, the establishment of a new constitution and a new
political regime in France, the beginnings of the Cold War (see
Ni victimes ni bourreaux, 1946). He was linked with Sartre as a
leader of radical opinion, but took pains to distance himself
from the latter's Existentialism, as his own notion of revolt
presupposed moral values Sartre was bound to deny. The
publication of La Peste in 1947 was a prelude to a cooling in
their hitherto close relations; when L'Homme révolté (1951) was
analysed in Sartre's review Les Temps modernes it precipitated a
bitter controversy which severed links definitively. In this
essay tracing the origins and development of revolt, Camus had
been concerned to show that Hegelian historical determinism
constituted a perversion of the rebel's true aim and had
inevitably opened the way to totalitarianism, both fascist and
Marxist.
Moving towards a third stage in his philosophical evolution,
Camus was beginning to direct his efforts towards defining an
ideal of balance or measure: but in practice this brought him
further wounding isolation and estrangement, as he was driven
equally to denounce the abuses of Communism and to protest
against Western hypocrisy, both in the workings of capitalism
and in the failure to support the freedom being snuffed out in
Eastern Europe. The mid- and late 1950s were particularly soured
for Camus by the Algerian War. Throughout his career he had
castigated the injustice inherent in Algeria's political status
within France; but his position exposed him to criticism from
all sides as, unable to contemplate the transformation of his
homeland into a country which was not French, he determined to
refrain from public comment for fear of inflaming partisan
passions. In 1958 a volume of his journalism, Actuelles III
(following previous collections of 1950 and 1953), presented
over 20 years' writings on the subject: it was met with virtual
silence. His demoralization was exacerbated by personal
difficulties and by doubts about his creative powers; but his
artistic gifts were triumphantly vindicated in La Chute (1956),
which converted his own perceived shortcomings into a mirror
sardonically turned on his contemporaries. Though his output as
a playwright—Le Malentendu (1944), Caligula (1945), L'État de
siège (1948), Les Justes (1949)—failed to match the impact of
his other works, in the 1950s he was a much-respected theatre
director and produced successful adaptations of other authors.
Following the publication in 1957 of his short stories L'Exil et
le royaume, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He
was working on a substantial new novel, Le Premier Homme
(published 1994), when killed in a car accident.
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This web page was last updated on:
23 December, 2008
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