|
Albert Camus
(1913 - 1960)
French novelist, essayist, and playwright, best known for such novels
as L'Etranger (1942; The Stranger), La Peste (1947; The Plague), and
La Chute (1956; The Fall) and for his work in leftist causes. He received
the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Early years.
Less than a year after Camus was born, his father, an impoverished worker
of Alsatian origin, was killed in World War I during the First Battle
of the Marne. His mother, of Spanish descent, worked as a charwoman
to support her family. Camus and his elder brother Lucien moved with
their mother to a working-class district of Algiers, where all three
lived, together with the maternal grandmother and a paralyzed uncle,
in a two-room apartment. Camus's first published collection of essays,
L'Envers et l'endroit (1937; "The Wrong Side and the Right Side"),
describes the physical setting of these early years and includes portraits
of his mother, grandmother, and uncle. A second collection of essays,
Noces (1938; "Nuptials"), contains intensely lyrical meditations
on the Algerian countryside and presents natural beauty as a form of
wealth that even the very poor can enjoy. Both collections contrast
the fragile mortality of human beings with the enduring nature of the
physical world.
In 1918 Camus entered primary school and was fortunate enough to be
taught by an outstanding teacher, Louis Germain, who helped him to win
a scholarship to the Algiers lycee (high school) in 1923. (It was typical
of Camus's sense of loyalty that 34 years later his speech accepting
the Nobel Prize for Literature was dedicated to Germain.) A period of
intellectual awakening followed, accompanied by great enthusiasm for
sport, especially football (soccer), swimming, and boxing. In 1930,
however, the first of several severe attacks of tuberculosis put an
end to his sporting career and interrupted his studies. Camus had to
leave the unhealthy apartment that had been his home for 15 years, and
after a short period spent with an uncle--a butcher by trade and a Voltairean
by conviction--Camus decided to live on his own, supporting himself
by a variety of jobs while registered as a philosophy student at the
University of Algiers.
At the university, Camus was particularly influenced by one of his
teachers, Jean Grenier, who helped him to develop his literary and philosophical
ideas and shared his enthusiasm for football. He obtained a diplome
d'etudes superieures in 1936 for a thesis on the relationship between
Greek and Christian thought in the philosophical writings of Plotinus
and St. Augustine. His candidature for the agregation (a qualification
that would have enabled him to take up a university career) was cut
short by another attack of tuberculosis. To regain his health he went
to a resort in the French Alps--his first visit to Europe--and eventually
returned to Algiers via Florence, Pisa, and Genoa.
Camus's literary career.
Throughout the 1930s, Camus broadened his interests. He read the French
classics as well as the writers of the day--among them Andre Gide, Henry
de Montherlant, Andre Malraux--and was a prominent figure among the
young left-wing intellectuals of Algiers. For a short period in 1934-35
he was also a member of the Algerian Communist Party. In addition, he
wrote, produced, adapted, and acted for the Theatre du Travail (Workers'
Theatre, later named the Theatre de l'Equipe), which aimed to bring
outstanding plays to working-class audiences. He maintained a deep love
of the theatre until his death. Ironically, his plays are the least-admired
part of his literary output, although Le Malentendu (Cross Purpose)
and Caligula, first produced in 1944 and 1945, respectively, remain
landmarks in the Theatre of the Absurd. Two of his most enduring contributions
to the theatre may well turn out to be his stage adaptations of William
Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun (Requiem pour une nonne; 1956) and Fyodor
Dostoyevsky's The Possessed (Les Possedes; 1959).
In the two years before the outbreak of World War II, Camus served his
apprenticeship as a journalist with Alger-Republicain in many capacities,
including those of leader- (editorial-) writer, subeditor, political
reporter, and book reviewer. He reviewed some of Jean-Paul Sartre's
early literary works and wrote an important series of articles analyzing
social conditions among the Muslims of the Kabylie region. These articles,
reprinted in abridged form in Actuelles III (1958), drew attention (15
years in advance) to many of the injustices that led to the outbreak
of the Algerian War in 1954. Camus took his stand on humanitarian rather
than ideological grounds and continued to see a future role for France
in Algeria while not ignoring colonialist injustices.
He enjoyed the most influence as a journalist during the final years
of the occupation of France and the immediate post-Liberation period.
As editor of the Parisian daily Combat, the successor of a Resistance
newssheet run largely by Camus, he held an independent left-wing position
based on the ideals of justice and truth and the belief that all political
action must have a solid moral basis. Later, the old-style expediency
of both Left and Right brought increasing disillusion, and in 1947 he
severed his connection with Combat.
By now Camus had become a leading literary figure. L'Etranger (U.S.
title, The Stranger; British title, The Outsider), a brilliant first
novel begun before the war and published in 1942, is a study of 20th-century
alienation with a portrait of an "outsider" condemned to death
less for shooting an Arab than for the fact that he never says more
than he genuinely feels and refuses to conform to society's demands.
The same year saw the publication of an influential philosophical essay,
Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), in which Camus, with considerable
sympathy, analyzed contemporary nihilism and a sense of the "absurd."
He was already seeking a way of overcoming nihilism, and his second
novel, La Peste (1947; The Plague), is a symbolical account of the fight
against an epidemic in Oran by characters whose importance lies less
in the (doubtful) success with which they oppose the epidemic than in
their determined assertion of human dignity and fraternity. Camus had
now moved from his first main concept of the absurd to his other major
idea of moral and metaphysical "rebellion." He contrasted
this latter ideal with politico-historical revolution in a second long
essay, L'Homme revolte (1951; The Rebel), which provoked bitter antagonism
among Marxist critics and such near-Marxist theoreticians as Jean-Paul
Sartre. His other major literary works are the technically brilliant
novel La Chute (1956) and a collection of short stories, L'Exil et le
royaume (1957; Exile and the Kingdom). La Chute reveals a preoccupation
with Christian symbolism and contains an ironical and witty exposure
of the more complacent forms of secular humanist morality.
In 1957, at the early age of 44, Camus received the Nobel Prize for
Literature. With characteristic modesty he declared that had he been
a member of the awarding committee his vote would certainly have gone
to Andre Malraux. Less than three years later he was killed in an automobile
accident.
Assessment.
As novelist and playwright, moralist and political theorist, Albert
Camus after World War II became the spokesman of his own generation
and the mentor of the next, not only in France but also in Europe and
eventually the world. His writings, which addressed themselves mainly
to the isolation of man in an alien universe, the estrangement of the
individual from himself, the problem of evil, and the pressing finality
of death, accurately reflected the alienation and disillusionment of
the postwar intellectual. Though he understood the nihilism of many
of his contemporaries, Camus also argued the necessity of defending
such values as truth, moderation, and justice. In his last works he
sketched the outlines of a liberal humanism that rejected the dogmatic
aspects of both Christianity and Marxism.
MAJOR WORKS.
Novels and short stories.
L'Etranger (1942; English title, The Outsider, 1946; U.S. title, The
Stranger, 1946); La Peste (1947; The Plague, 1948); La Chute (1956;
The Fall, trans. by Justin O'Brien, 1957). Short stories collected in
L'Exil et le royaume (1957; Exile and the Kingdom, trans. by J. O'Brien,
1958); La mort heureuse (1970; A Happy Death, 1972).
Plays.
Le Malentendu (performed 1944; pub. with Caligula, performed 1945, in
Le Malentendu, suivi de Caligula, 1944; Caligula and Cross Purpose,
1947); L'Etat de siege (performed and pub. in 1948; State of Siege,
trans. in Caligula and Three Other Plays, 1958); Les Justes (performed
1949, pub. 1950; The Just Assassins, trans. in Caligula and Three Other
Plays, 1958). Adaptations: La Devotion a la Croix (1953, from Calderon);
Un Cas interessant (1955, from Dino Buzatti); Requiem pour une nonne
(1956, from William Faulkner); Les Possedes (1959, from Dostoyevsky).
Essays, journalism, and notebooks.
Collections: L'Envers et l'endroit (1937), recollections of childhood
and travel sketches; Noces (1938), four Algerian essays; Actuelles,
3 vol. (1950, 1953, 1958), editorials and articles written for Combat,
1944-45; L'Ete (1954). Other essays: Le Mythe de Sisyphe, essai sur
l'absurde (1942, enlarged and rev. ed. reprinted 1945; The Myth of Sisyphus,
trans. by J. O'Brien, 1955), a long philosophical essay; Lettres a un
ami allemand (1945; trans. by J. O'Brien in Resistance, Rebellion, and
Death, 1960), four linked essays, with preface, in the form of letters
written during the Occupation, the first and second previously published
in the "underground" reviews, Le Revue Libre (1943) and Cahiers
de la Liberation (1944); Le Minotaure ou la halte d'Oran (written 1939,
pub. 1950), poetic and satirical description of Oran, the background
for La Peste; L'Homme revolte (1951; The Rebel, 1953), a long metaphysical,
historical, and political essay. Notebooks published posthumously: Carnets:
Mai 1935-Fevrier 1942 (1962; Notebooks, 1935-42, trans. by Philip Thody,
1963); Carnets: Janvier 1942-Mars 1951 (1964; Notebooks, 1942-51, trans.
by P. Thody, 1965); Carnets: Avril 1951-Decembre 1959 (1966; Notebooks,
1951-59, trans. by P. Thody, 1969).
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Bibliographies of works by and about Camus include Robert F. Roeming
(ed. and compiler), Camus: A Bibliography (1968); and Brian T. Fitch
and Peter C. Hoy, Essai de bibliographie des etudes en langue francaise
consacrees a Albert Camus, 1937-1967, 2nd ed. (1969). Camus's main works
are published with excellent editorial material in Theatre, recits,
nouvelles, ed. by Roger Quilliot (1962, reissued 1991); and Essais,
ed. by Roger Quilliot and L. Faucon (1965, reissued 1993). Collections
of Camus's writings in English translation are The Collected Fiction
of Albert Camus (1960); Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, trans. by
Justin O'Brien (1960, reissued 1995); and Lyrical and Critical, ed.
by Philip Thody (1967; also published as Lyrical and Critical Essays,
1968).
Biographies include Morvan Lebesque, Portrait of Camus: An Illustrated
Biography (1971; originally published in French, 1963); Herbert R. Lottman,
Albert Camus: A Biography (1979, reissued 1997); and Patrick McCarthy,
Camus (1982).
Bettina L. Knapp (ed.), Critical Essays on Albert Camus (1988), presents
a collection of 15 essays, including one by Jean-Paul Sartre. Critical
studies of his works and ideas include Jean-Claude Brisville, Camus
(1959, reissued 1969); John Cruickshank, Albert Camus and the Literature
of Revolt (1959, reprinted 1978); Philip Thody, Albert Camus, 1913-1960
(1961), and Albert Camus (1989); Germaine Bree, Camus, rev. ed. (1964,
reissued 1972); Adele King, Camus (1964, reissued 1971); Emmett Parker,
Albert Camus: The Artist in the Arena (1965); Roger Quilliot, The Sea
and Prisons: A Commentary on the Life and Thought of Albert Camus (1970;
originally published in French, rev. ed., 1970); Brian T. Fitch, The
Narcissistic Text: A Reading of Camus' Fiction (1982); Susan Tarrow,
Exile from the Kingdom: A Political Rereading of Albert Camus (1985);
David Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination (1988); Philip H. Rhein,
Albert Camus, rev. ed. (1989); and Joseph McBride, Albert Camus: Philosopher
and Litterateur (1992). Among numerous studies of individual works are
Patrick McCarthy, Albert Camus, The Stranger (1988); Adele King (ed.),
Camus's L'Etranger: Fifty Years On (1992), a collection of original
essays by leading Camus scholars; and Steven G. Kellman, The Plague:
Fiction and Resistance (1993).
|