The moral passion of Albert Camus

[Part 1]

The reputation of writers fluctuate, their popularity rises and falls periodically as a result of a multiplicity of factors. This is indeed a universal phenomenon. Albert Camus’ reputation was soaring in the 1960s and early 1970s; it began to dip in the 1970s and 1980s. It gathered momentum in the 1980s only to decline in the in the early 1990s and the beginning of the twenty-first century.

During the past few years his reputation has again moved on to an upward trajectory as reflected not only in scholarly books and papers but also in popular works. For example, his daughter Catherine published a book titled, Albert Camus: Solitude and Solidarity, which is basically a photographic album and Elizabeth Hawe’s book Camus: a Romance is the narrative of her own college-girl crush on his image.

New book

A new book by the French writer Michael Confrey, which is essentially a biography of Camus, challenges the conventional wisdom to advance his argument that Albert Camus was both a better writer and, perhaps surprisingly, a more interesting systematic thinker than Jean-Paul Sartre, his friend and rival. The latest issue of New Yorker carries a fascinating essay by the popular writer Adam Gopnik titled Facing History: Why we Love Camus’ that testifies this newer resurgence of the fortunes of Camus as a writer and thinker. Therefore, I thought this might be a propitious occasion to re-visit Camus.

Albert Camus (1913-1961) was a novelist, short story writer, playwright journalist, editorialist and activist and he distinguished himself in all these intersecting branches of activity. His novel The Stranger (which has also being translated as The Outsider) gained for him universal recognition and catapulted him into the exalted heights reserved for the literary pantheon.

Reputation

He followed this with novels such as The Plague and The Fall which served to cement his reputation and burnish it as a supremely important writer with a deep moral passion.

As a result of his writings Albert Camus was identified as a proponent of existentialism along with writers and thinkers such as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, although he himself vehemently denied that he was an existentialist; he was closer to, for want a better term, Absurdism. I shall explain this division later.

Albert Camus has had a deep influence on the growth of the modern sensibility in Sinhala literature.

Many of his novels and short stories as well as some of his plays have been translated into Sinhala and performed. Gong beyond the importance of individual works, the general tenor of thinking which is often mis-characterised as existentialism has had a profound impact on Sinhala writers, In the 1960s and 1979s, I recall there were animated debates about the strengths and weaknesses of ‘bhava sattha vadaya’ (existentialism).

I remember vividly during our undergraduate days at Peradeniya, our partial (in both senses of the term) understanding about The Rebel and The Myth of Sisyphus and other exegetical writings of Camus did not prevent us from launching into lengthy debates about the existentialist notions of freedom, justice and responsibility as espoused by Camus.

Unlike many other eminent French writers, Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, Camus came from a working-class background in Algeria. His parents belonged to an impoverished working class family; his father was barely literate and mother was illiterate. His father died before his first birthday, and he w received his education thanks to the scholarships he was able to win through his superior intelligence. The poverty in which Albert Camus led his early life was both material and emotional.

There were no books in his house that he could read and the relationship between these in the house – the mother, uncle, grandmother- was never cordial. The hardships and privations of his childhood left a deep and enduring mark on his vision of the world.

He was always for the dispossessed and fought against social injustice with all the moral and intellectual power he could muster.

Anecdote

One anecdote illustrates Camus’ childhood full of deprivations and his sense of gratitude to the opportunities made available to him. In school, a teacher by the name of Louis Germain spotted Camus’ talents and encouraged him in his studies and set him on the path of academic growth.

On hearing that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize, he immediately thought of his former teacher Germain and wrote to him a letter expressing his gratitude.

‘When I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all his would have happened. But at least t gives me an opportunity to tell you what you have been and still for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil.’ There is almost a traditional Indian ‘guru-shishya’ bond in this statement. How true this sentiments is in terms of our own experiences – we have been affectionately guided by our primary schoolteachers.

Complex unity

Albert Cams stated on a number of occasions that his writing, literary, journalistic, philosophical, all constitute a complex unity. This is to say that no one aspect of it can be profitably understood with reference to the others. Hence when we discuss his novels and plays and journalistic writings we need to constantly bear in mind the fact that they are vitally interconnected each illuminating the others.

With that caveat in mind, let us start with his novels. Although the stranger was the first novel that Camus published and generated worldwide interest, the first novel he wrote was A Happy Death – written in 1936 and published after his death in 1971. Some commentators were critical of the publication of this novel which was unfinished and never published during the author’s lifetime. However, it sheds valuable light on the authors reoccupation and characteristic literary strategies.

A Happy Death deals with some of the themes that were to appear regularly in his work such as the idea of the absurd, the nature of violence, commitment and detachment, self-fulfillment of writers. The novel is constructed around the character of Patrice Meursault. He is a poorly paid office worker; he happens to meet a crippled man names Roland Zagreus, who tells him of the fortune he made that he can never really enjoy because of an accident that resulted in the loss of both his legs.

Meursault having listened to Zagreus’ story is persuaded that money ensures freedom and that all human beings are entitled to achieve this freedom through whatever means at hand. Driven by this conviction, Meursault kills Zagreus, makes the killing appear to be a suicide, and steals Zagreus money; this emancipates him from the need to work. He travels to Europe.

He returns to Algeria and lives with three young women and marries another However, before long he gets tired of that style of life and decides to a remote place on the north African coast; there he is able to secure contentment in solitude and with the sun and sea to cheer him up; He dies a happy death; he eventually succumbs to tuberculosis.

The latter half of the narrative contains exuberant descriptions of the beauty of the earth and nature. The novel also critiques the harmful effects of poverty on human lives.

The first novel that Camus published was the Stranger in 1943. It gained wide popularity and critical acclaim for the author and has been translated into numerous languages including Sinhala. This novel examines the life of a man who has lived by emphasising the life of the senses; it is a life marked by innocence and simplicity. However, society chooses to castigate him.

His perceived indifference to others to social norms his visible alienation from the flow f social life does not help matters. Like all great works of literature, Camus’ The Strange can be read in diverse ways. For example, one critic wrote – and this echoes a widely held sentiment – that the protagonist of the novel, ‘ is a man ‘without humanity, without human values, and even, in spite of the ambition to be realistic which provides the sole framework to the book, without any kind of truth.’ I feel this is a misreading of this novel.

The Stranger deals with a character named Meursault who woks in an office in Algiers as a clerk; he displays scant evidence of interest in self-advancement. He seems very happy with the life that he leads.. As the narrative begins to unfold, we learn that his mother had died; he is not sure whether she died that day or the day before, immediately giving us vital pointers to his character. He attends the funeral but does not weep. He following day he goes out swimming, encounters a girl whom he was acquainted with,; he takes her to the movie-theatre and then to her bedroom.hus neighbor is Raymond and has got into an adversarial situation with her mistress, an Arab girl, and two Arab men. On Sunday, Meursault, Marie and Raymond happen to bump into two Arabs on the beach’ a fight ensues and Raymond is wounded.

Subsequently, Meursault meets the Arabs again on the beach. He has Raymond’s revolver with him. Blinded by the sun, and without any provocation, he fires four bullets at one of them. Meursault is arrested and is put on trial. The lawyers for the prosecution present as evidence for his criminal nature, his behaviour at his mother’s funeral and the activities that followed with Marie.

He is found guilty by the jury and is sentenced to death. He accepts the verdict without rancour, protest or emotion. In the prison cell, he angrily repudiates the advice and words of solace offered by the priest; he does so because he is not convinced that God exists and he is only concerned with the earth-bound life that is ending for him. As he faces imminent death, he begins to appreciate life and how much he is attracted to it, despite its total meaninglessness and absurdity. It is this clarity of understanding that enables him to countenance his destiny with equanimity.

Story

This, in essence, is the story of The Stranger, and it is evident that Meursault comes across as a memorably unique character that represents the sensibility of a large number of people in contemporary society; that is why this novel struck such a deep chord of response in readers in many parts of the world. Apart from the unique disposition of the protagonist which served to focus on the absurdity of life, this novel also deals with a favorite theme of Camus – that of death.

The narrative discourse of the stranger is animated by three forms of death which are realistic but also weighted with symbolic meaning. The first death is that of Meursault’s mother which is due to natural causes, the second death is that of the nameless Arab who is shot to death by Meursault. The third death is that of Meursault who is basically an honest and redeemable man. Anyone who seeks to get at the deeper layers of meaning inscribed in this novel will have to explore in depth the author’s handling of and glosses on the three deaths.

What this novel, ultimately demonstrates is the mutually constitutive nature of internal fissures and fault lines in society and the characteristic existential topics that Camus vigorously pursued such as the meaninglessness of life, the absurdity that is endemic to it and the emptiness that marks the universe.

The lonely and alienated Meursault, at the end, achieves a kind of lucidity of understanding about life that serves to prod the reader into re-thinking and re-imagining the nature of life. I shall discuss the importance of these themes for Camus approach to life and the world later.

Significance

A literary critic commenting on the significance of this novel makes the following useful observation. ‘Like Meursault, Camus appears to be saying, contemporary man feels himself to be in an absurd situation because, even while he seeks value and justification for his existence, he discovers that society and events defeat his purpose.’ He then goes onto assert that his subjective will seeks a rational universe and a life that centers on human beings, but objective realities force him to go in the reverse direction. Unwilling to consent to a reality that so defies human wishes, modern man becomes trapped in an absurdity that is deep and pervasive; indifferent and becoming an outsider to society and to himself, in the way Meursault was, he permits his death sentence through sheer indifference and refusing any opportunity for clemency.

Jean-Paul Sartre, who was once a friend of Camus and who later fell out with him, made the following revealing remark about the stranger. ‘the turn of his reasoning, the clarity of his ideas, the cut of his expository style, and a certain kind of solar, ceremonious and sad somberness, all indicate a classic temperament, a man of the Mediterranean’. Camus novel can, as indeed it should, be read from different angles and vantage points to comprehend its richness and classical beauty and weight of meaning.

The next novel of Albert Camus that I wish briefly to comment on is The Plague which was completed in 1947. It is also a remarkable work of fiction that invites diverse interpretations. There is an interesting interconnection between The Stranger and The Plague. While the former novel focuses on the nature of fate of an individual forced live in an absurd world the latter calls attention to the significance of collective action as a way of facing an absurd world. The Stranger centers around a unique individual, Meursault, while The Plague on a group of people fighting a common adversity, the devastating plague. Camus statement, I rebel, therefore we are’ sums up this collective endeavor.

The Plague deals with a situation than a narrative. Oran is a city on the coast of North Africa. An outbreak of bubonic plague has begun to decimate the city. To contain the further spread of the disease, the city is isolated from the rest of the country. Dr. Rieux along with his friends and acquaintances set up an organization to fight the spread of the plague.

They establish quarantine centres and come up with plans to get rid of the corpses. At the end, the disease is eliminated and the city returns to normality. Camus calls his novel a chronicle underscoring its objectivity and sense of detachment. We do not know who the narrator of this experience is until at the end when we learn that it is Dr. Rieux..

Absurd words

The Plague underlines the fact that we live in an absurd world. Here that absurdity is manifested in a devastating disease that sweeps through the city of Oran, harming young and old alike with deadly force- it is capricious and unpredictable. How a group of people decide to confront this situation constitutes the intellectual center of the novel. What the author seems to be saying is that it is important to recognise the absurdity of life without taking refuge in illusions and not surrendering to them. .

Although it as a group that they are fighting the plague, each character had his distinctiveness. Dr.Rieux is in many ways emblematic of the ordinary person who unassumingly does what his conscience dictates him to d., as he says, ’there is no question of heroism in all this. It is a matter of common decency.’ Tarrou is visiting Oran when the tragedy takes place. Seeing the magnitude of the calamity, he resolves to organise the emergency services and in the process becomes one of Dr.Rieux’s closest colleagues. Rambert is a journalist who has come from Paris. He is caught in the tragedy. He is very much in love with a woman in Paris and would like to go back, but cannot. However, an opportunity to escape to Paris presents itself, but he ops to say with Rieux and Tarrou and fight the plague devastate the city.

Joseph Grand is an insignificant civil servant, unprepossessing and inept in interpersonal relationships. He is sincere and is responsible for maintaining the statistical record of the sanitary operations. He contracts the plague but does not succumb to it; it is evident that the sense of collective effort and solidarity has affected his imagination profoundly.

Father Paneloux is a learned and articulate Jesuit priest. He represents the religious aspect of this calamity. He is deeply troubled by what he sees and his ideas begin to evolve. He catches the disease, offers no resistance, convinced that it has been sent by god and dies. It is through the interplay of these diverse characters that are united by the hostile power of a common foe that the narrative moves forward.

The Plague, like Camus’ earlier novel The Stranger, carries a heavy freight of symbolic meaning. This novel can be examined at three levels of artistic apprehension – as a simple narrative, as an allegory of the occupation of France during world war II and as a symbolic novel that focuses on the deep and inescapable presence of evil in the world. At the most obvious level this is story about a bother African coast a city devastated by a plague.

The novel certainly can be read as such. However, we all know that Albert Camus is a writer who likes to charge his narratives with symbolic and allegorical meaning. At the allegorical level, this novel can be read as a comment on the Nazi occupation of France; given Camus’ concerns over the occupation and his active role in the resistance this reading is totally justifies. Indeed, many literary critics, both inside and outside, seem to endorse this reading.

Evil

Third, The Plague deserves to be read as an allegorical novel which underscores the rampant evil in the world and the absurdity that marks life. The Plague becomes a symbol of the absurd, pointing to the vital interplay of life and death. It is interesting that Camus in his notebooks cites with approval a statement by Leo Tolstoy that asserts, ‘the existence of death obliges us either to give up life voluntarily, or to transform our life in such a way as to give it a meaning that death cannot take away.’ This statement illuminates in an interesting way the literary ambition of Camus in writing this novel.

The Plague, like Camus all other works of fiction, presents us with a complex verbal fabric that needs to be de-coded if we are to get at the deeper meaning. For example, in his works the sea stands as a symbol of life and happiness. In the Plague he says that the town of Oran is built in such a way that it ‘turns its back on the bay with the result that its impossible to see the sea, you always have to go to look for it.’ This statement is suggestive of the denial of life that the plague will bring to the citizens of Oran. This is just one example, and such instances are plentiful in the novel.

Monologue

The next novel by Albert Camus that I wish to comment on briefly is The Fall. The story is narrated by Jean-Baptiste Clamence. He is in Amsterdam; in a waterfront bar, he is talking to another man. The novel is in the form of a monologue by Clamence. It is in turn expressive, witty and cynical. Basically, it can be construed as a guilty confession. We learn, as the narrative unfolds, that he was once a happy defence attorney who was well-regarded and held in high esteem. He was, as a rule, sympathetic to the plight of the poor and dispossessed. He led a decent life enjoying the simple pleasures that life had to offer.

One day, as he was crossing a bridge over the Seine in the evening, he encountered something horrible. A young woman took her life by plunging into the river. He heard the splash as well as her yells for help; he did not look back, offered no assistance, and went about his business as nothing had happened. He let the woman die. That painful memory, his abdication of common human decency, lingered with him since that day and eventually brought about his destruction.

He constantly blames himself now accusing him of being deceitful. He begins to re-assess his entire life in light of this inexcusable event. It is as this broken man who is pleading for sympathetic understanding that we meet him in the waterfront bar in Amsterdam.

It has been his chosen practice to pigeon-hole a listener, and confess to them his egotism and hypocrisy; the way he tells the story the listeners are made to realise that he is speaking not just about himself, but all of humanity including the given listener. It is as if Clamence is holding up a mirror to their life as well. He is a skillful user of language and is able to persuade the listener to believe that he too is worthy of such critical re-assessments. Interestingly, Clamence’s confessions have the effect not of offering solace and comfort to others but to make them guilty as well.

Ingenuity

This, basically, is the story of The Fall. Some critics have suggested that it is probably Camus’ finest novel. It does not require too much ingenuity on the part of the reader to recognize Clamence as a critical self-portrait of Camus himself. This story was originally designed to be the opening piece in his collection of short stories; later he decided to expand it into a novel. This novel, in many ways, offers us a sardonic picture of French intellectuals. Some critics have suggested that this work represents the guilt experienced by Camus in his inability to act decisively during the Algerian conflict.

The Plague, more so than most of his other works, carries Christian symbolism. The title of the novel as well as the name of the protagonist is reminiscent of the Bible. It is evident that this novel is a public confession of the deficiencies and moral irresponsibility of the protagonist. It is couched in Christian terminology that adds greater power to it .

There is imagery in abundance in the text that arises from a religious imagination. For examples the canals in Amsterdam are likened to the concentric circles of Dante’s hell there are references to decidedly Christian understandings of the natural world and the trans-natural world. The idea of sin pervades the fictional text. When we compare the plague with his other writings such as The Stranger, The Plague and The Myth of Sisyphus we begin to realise that this embrace of a Christian imagination is a new departure for Albert Camus.

The next novel that I wish to allude to is The First Man which was published in 1994 some thirty years after Camus’ death; the manuscript was discovered amid the wreckage of the car accident that killed Camus. The novel recounts the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy whose life in many ways parallels that of Camus and his love for Algeria. The author recreates with remarkable sensitivity and empathy the landscapes and sounds and textures of a childhood that was constrained by numerous hardships and crushing poverty .

Lyricism

The pages of the novel glow with a controlled lyricism and sensuousness that are truly memorable. The death of the father of Jacques Cormery adds to the misery. This is contrasted with the boy’s enjoyment of the natural beauty of Algeria and his fondness for his deaf-mute mother. The strength of the novel lies in the deftness with which a vision of youth with all its beauties and miseries is projected through the novel.

The novel displays the author’s capacity for empathy, affection, candour, tenderness amidst the pervasive hardships. The New Yorker called this novel a work of genius and said that. ‘The first man is perhaps the most honest book Camus ever wrote, and the most sensual.’ Indeed, it is a more personal and personable Camus that we encounter in this novel.

Catherine Camus, the daughter of Albert Camus, in her editor’s note to The First Man she made the following interesting comment. ‘It is obvious that my father would never have published this manuscript as it is, first for the simple reason that he had not completed it, but also because he was a very reserved man and would no doubt have masked his own feelings, far more in the final version.’

However, she felt compelled to publish it because, ‘it seems to me – and I say this with hesitation, for I can claim no objectivity – it seems to me that one can most clearly hear my father’s voice in the text because of its very rawness. This is why I hope readers will come to it in a spirit of brotherhood.’

(To be continued)