"The problems of the human conscience . . ."
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"Louis", Par Excellence






Albert Camus, Age 11, at Communion

A long time ago, I summed up The Outsider.... I simply mean that the hero of the book is condemned because he doesn't play the game. In this sense, he is an outsider to the society in which he lives, wandering on the fringe, on the outskirts of life, solitary and sensual.

And for that reason, some readers have been tempted to regard him as a reject. But to get a more accurate picture of his character, or rather one which conforms more closely to his author's intentions, you must ask yourself in what way he doesn't play the game.

The answer is simple: he refuses to lie. He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings and society immediately feels threatened.

For me he is not a reject, but a poor and naked man, in love with a sun which leaves no shadows.


-- Albert Camus,
January 8, 1955





Albert Camus--French philosopher and one of the most important authors of the Twentieth Century.

Born: November 7, 1913 in Mondovi, Algeria
Died: January 4, 1960 in an automobile accident

After winning a degree in philosophy, he worked at various jobs, ending up in journalism. In the 1930s, he ran a theatrical company, and during WWII was active in the French Resistance, editing an important underground paper, Combat. In occupied France of 1942 he published The Myth of Sisyphus and The Stranger, a philosophical essay and a novel that first brought him to the attention of the intellectual circles.

Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times".

The death of Albert Camus cut short the career of the most important literary figure of the Western world when he was at the very summit of his powers.




A Conversation with Katherine:

"I have the impression that Camus was all for theory combined with experience, and an acceptance of all contradictions, or else you are living a 'lie'. That if you reject anything, you are also rejecting a pathway to truth."

~~~

"The irony is that this is an existential truth in itself. In fact, Sartre was the ONLY existentialist who embraced the label--even glorified it. Camus did not want to be identified with S's philosophy and wrote The Fall in rejection of it. Existentialism is not a school of thought; it's a loose collection of themes, and Camus most certainly does address those themes--deeply.

That he refuses the label only makes him more of an existentialist. He was very close in spirit to Nietzsche. Had a dog named Kierkegaard."

~~~

Albert Camus' daughter:

Camus was NOT an existentialist! He REFUSED to be.


"RATS! When did you eat rats, Louis?"


THE PLAGUE

by Albert Camus

"The trouble in Oran began with the rats. First by ones and twos, days later by fifties and hundreds, they came out of the sewers and cellars to die in the streets."

---

"So you haven't understood yet?" Rambert shrugged his shoulders almost scornfully.
"Understood what?"
"The plague."
"Ah!" Rieux exclaimed.
"No, you haven't understood that it means exactly that -- the same thing over and over and over again."
He went to a corner of the room and started a small phonograph.
"What's that record?" Tarrou asked. "I've heard it before."
"It's St. James Infirmary."
When, a moment later, the record ended, an ambulance bell could be heard clanging past under the window and receding into silence.
"Rather a boring record," Rambert remarked. "And this must be the tenth time I've put it on today."
"Are you really so fond of it?"
"No, but it's the only one I have." And after a moment he added: "That's what I said 'it' was -- the same thing over and over again."

..."I've done a bit of thinking."
"About what?"
"Courage. I know now that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of a great emotion, well, he leaves me cold. What interests me is living and dying for what one loves."
Rieux had been watching the journalist attentively. With his eyes still on him he said quietly:
"Man isn't an idea, Rambert."

Rambert sprang off the bed, his face ablaze with passion.
"Man is an idea, and a precious small idea, once he turns his back on love. And that's my point; we -- mankind -- have lost the capacity for love."

Rieux rose. He suddenly appeared very tired.

"You're right, Rambert, quite right, and for nothing in the world would I try to dissuade you from what you're going to do; it seems to me absolutely right and proper. However, there's one thing I must tell you: there's no question of heroism in all this. It's a matter of common decency. That's an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting plague is -- common decency."

"What do you mean by 'common decency'?" Rambert's tone was grave.
"I don't know what it means for other people. But in my case I know that it consists in doing my job."
"Your job! I only wish I were sure what my job is!"
There was a mordant edge to Rambert's voice. "Maybe I'm all wrong in putting love first."

Rieux looked him in the eyes.
"No," he said vehemently, "you are not wrong."

Rambert gazed thoughtfully at them.
"You two," he said, "I suppose you've nothing to lose in all this. It's easier, that way, to be on the side of the angels."

---

BOOK REVIEW

A parable of the highest order, The Plague tells the story of a terrible disease that descends upon Oran, Algiers, in a year unknown. After rats crawl from the sewer to die in the streets, people soon begin perishing from terrible afflictions. How the main characters in the book--a journalist, a doctor and a priest--face humanity in the wake of the plague presents one of the book's many lessons. The book deserves to be read on several levels, because the pandemic in The Plague represents any of a number of worldwide catastrophes--both past and future--and the difficult choices everyone must make to survive them.

Albert Camus, in writing The Plague, was not out to write a nice story... if it is even possible to write such a story using the Bubonic Plague as a vehicle. Camus' goal in writing The Plague was the conversion of Catholics, disenchanted with traditional belief systems after the horror of Hitler's rise in WWII, to existentialism. While I certainly can't describe all the ins and outs of existentialism here, I can say that one astute observation the reviewer made was that there was no hope. Existentialism is (in part) the erradication of hope in onesself, thereby reaching "inner peace" and so happiness.

[shudder]

If one doesn't hope, one has no Wants to be unfulfilled; he who never knows disappointment and who just lives his life as he sees best will be truly happy.

To Camus hope was the quickest way to death of the soul and the body. If one observes while reading, the characters who hope die of the plague. The characters who are able to push aside hope and just live, doing what one must do, are the ones who survive and, in the end, are happiest.

Lestat:

"I don't want to hear any more!" I said. "You'll sing the song of limitations all your long dreary years on this earth, won't you?"

Louis:

"And you'll sing the song of victory eternally though there is none to be had."

Lestat:

"Ah, but there is, there must be."

Louis:

"No. The more we learn, the more we know there are no victories. Can't we fall back on nature, do what we must to endure and nothing more?"

Lestat:

"That is the most paltry definition of nature I have ever heard."

It would take pages to explain the whole novel and the whole message therein and to answer all of the "what about"s, but it is worth educating onesself just to be able to appreciate what Camus has accomplished. Armed with some knowledge of the true subject matter one can finally see that not a single sentence is out of place, not a single word does not contribute to Camus' purpose-- the gentle welcoming of readers into the arms of existential philosophy.


Whether you agree with it, or not.


Two opposing views of Camus' perspective:


~~~

Construction without soul, without passion.

Actually, this is the kind of book that confirms my prejudices against Nobel prize winning literature, it is a mere construction, the characters are not human they are robots. This is a book about one city's struggle against the plague, where we get to meet a variety of characters of which none are lovable or even believable.

Why does Camus write a book when he obviously has no interest in the subject, and no passion for what he is doing? There is no humour in this book, only a few obscure details carefully planned out within the book. For example the guy who is trying to write the perfect novel, who is still working on the perfection of the first sentence, Camus does not seem interested in this character, instead you get the feeling heīs just been sitting at home making up these characteristics.

This book is indeed what intellectual bullshiters like to call "classic literature", the language is perfect and of course without any nerve or anything else indicating that the author is putting down a part of himself in the writing, and of course there is no change of tone in the book indicating any emotional commitment by the author, the book just struggles on in the same silent tone, on and on. For Camus literature doesnīt seem to be an artform, itīs just work, and the only part of him that goes in to it are his opinions.

Did Camus commit suicide or was it really a car accident that ended his life, one might ask, and it surely wouldnīt surprise me if it actually was a suicide, because there are no hope in his books, just mere depression, he canīt even see how pathetic he seems painting the whole world black, convincing himself that he is the only one suffering.

No, grant the nobel prize to authors like Boris Vian, Raymond Queneau, Georges Darien, Alfred Jarry and Paul Bowles instead, because boring pessimists as Albert Camus are not good representatives for 20th century literature. My conclusion therefore is that I can recommend noone to read this book, because reading it doesnīt give you anything back, itīs so boring you have to struggle your way through it, and it has a tone that makes you depressed, because thereīs no hope, the world is black and nothing you can do will make anything better.

~~~

Illuminates the darkling plain we live on

Camus' "The Plague" touched me in a way I like to be touched. Wanting to feel the slight warmth of human breath infusing cold darkness, a clutching of fingers across a chasm of hopelessness, I responded gratefully to the vision Camus creates in his metaphorical plague.

I was particularly gratified by the swimming scene, a place in the book where two careworn men lay aside their baggage of horror and futility and tear joy from a macabre landscape, making it their own, ever so briefly, as we all do from time to time.

This is the best we can do, he seems to be saying, and so we shall carry on.

~~~



Voilā, Camus' works available online


"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of.
You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life."

-- Camus

Camus on the Absurd

Camus claims that the feeling of the absurd is something of which we find evidence not only in literature but in daily conversation and ordinary contacts with other people. The absurd may be experienced quite spontaneously without preparation of the mind or senses. Its revelation of itself to certain individuals is as arbitrary as the operation of divine grace for a believer in predestination. Generally, however, a sense of the absurd is most likely to arise in one or more of four different ways.

Firstly, the mechanical nature of many individuals' lives, the deadening routine that marks them, may one day cause some of these individuals to question the value and purpose of their existence.

Awareness of the absurd finds its second possible source in an acute sense of time passing--a sense of time as the destructive element.

Thirdly, the absurd arises from that sense of dereliction in an alien world which people feel in varying degrees.

Lastly, we may possibly experience the absurd through an acute sense of our fundamental isolation from other human beings.

-- John Cruickshank


I was at ease in everything, to be sure, but at the same time satisfied with nothing.
Each joy made me desire another. I went from festivity to festivity. On occasion I danced for nights on end, ever madder about people and life. At times, late on those nights when the dancing, the slight intoxication, my wild enthusiasm, everyone's violent unrestraint would fill me with a tired and overwhelmed rapture, it would seem to me -- at the breaking point of fatigue and for a second's flash -- that at last I understood the secret of creatures and of the world.

I ran on like that, never satiated, without knowing where to stop until the day -- until the evening rather when the music stopped and the lights went out.


-- from The Fall,by Albert Camus