|
 French
novelist, essayist and playwright, who received the 1957 Nobel
Prize for literature. Camus was closely linked to his fellow
existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre in the 1940s, but he broke with
him over Sartre's support of Stalinist politics. Camus died in a
car accident near Sens, France, on January 4, 1960. Among his best-known
novels are The Stranger and The Plague.
"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know. I had
a telegram from the home: 'Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow.
Yours sincerely.' That doesn't mean anything. It may have happened
yesterday."
(from The Stranger)
Albert Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria, into a working-class
family. His mother was an illiterate charwoman and father an itinerant
agricultural labourer, who was killed in WW I in the Battle of the
Marne. Camus mother' shocked by the news of her husband's death,
suffered a stroke that permanently impaired her speech. In 1923
Camus won a scholarship to the lycée in Algiers, where he studied
from 1924 to 1932. Incipient tuberculosis put an end to his athletic
activities, and the disease was to trouble Camus for the rest of
his life. Between the years 1935 and 1939 Camus held various jobs
in Algiers, and he also joined the Communist Party.
In 1936 Camus received his diplôme d'étudies supérieures
from the University of Algiers in philosophy, and to recover his
health he made his first visit to Europe. Camus' first book, L'ENVERS
ET L'ENDROIT, a collection of essays, appeared in 1937.
 By
this time Camus's reputation in Algeria as a leading writer was
growing. He was also active in theatre. In 1938 Camus moved to France,
and divorced next year his first wife, Simone Hié, who was a morphine
addict. From 1938 to 1940 Camus worked for the Alger-Républicain
and in 1940 for Paris-Soir. He married Francine Faure in
1940 and taught in Oran, Algeria, in 1942.
During WW II Camus was a member of the French resistance. He was
a reader and editor of Espoir series at Gallimard publisher from
1943 and founded with Sartre the left-wing newspaper Combat,
serving as its editor. His second novel, L'ÉTRANGER (The Stranger),
which he had begun in Algeria before the war, appeared in 1942.
Its central character Mersault commits an murder without explicit
reason and motivation. Indifferent to bourgeois morality Mersault
is condemned to die as much for his refusal to accept the standards
of social behavior as for the crime itself. In the same year appeared
Camus' philosophical essay LE MYTHE DE SISYPHE. It starts with the
famous statement: "There is only one really serious philosophical
question, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth
living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All
other questions follow from that." Camus compares the absurdity
of the existence of humanity to the labours of the mythical character
Sisyphus, who was condemned for all eternity to push a boulder to
the top of a hill and watch helplessly as it rolled down again.
Camus takes the non-existence of God for granted and finds meaning
in the struggle itself.
"A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images,"
Camus wrote. He admired Sartre's gift's as a novelist, but did not
find his two sides, philosophy and storytelling, both equally convincing.
In an essay written in 1952 he praises Melville's Billy Budd.
Melville, according to Camus, "never cut himself off from flesh
or nature, which are barely perceptive in Kafka's work." Camus also
admired William Faulkner and made a dramatic adaptation of Faulkner's
Requiem for a Nun.
 In
1947 Camus resigned from Combat and published in the same
year his third novel, LA PESTE, an allegory of the Nazi occupation
of France. After his break with Sartre Camus wrote L'HOMME RÉVOLTÉ,
which appeared in 1951 and which explores the theories and forms
of humanity's revolt against authority. From 1955 to 1956 Camus
worked as a journalist for L'Express. Among his major works
in the late-1950s are LA CHUTE (1956), an ironic novel in which
the penitent judge Jean-Baptiste Clamence confesses his own moral
crimes. At the time of his death, Camus was planning to direct a
theatre company of his own and to write a major novel about growing
up in Algeria.
"The absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live,
without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future,
without hope, without illusions, and without resignation either.
He stares at death with passionate attention and this fascination
liberates him. He experiences the "divine irresponsibility" of
the condemned man."
(from Sartre analysis of Mersault, the protagonist of The Stranger,
in Literary and Philosophical Essays, 1943)
"It is not rebellion itself which is noble but the demands
it makes upon us."
(from The Plague, 1947)
For further reading: Albert Camus: Une Vie by O.Todd (1996);
Albert Camus by P.H. Rhein (1989); Camus: A Critical Study of
His Life and Work by P. McCarthy (1982); The Theatre of Albert
Camus by E. Freeman (1971); The Sea and the Prison by R. Quillot
(1970); Albert Camus: The Artist in the Arena by E. Parker (1965);
Albert Camus, 1913-1969: A Biographical Study by P. Thody (1961)
- SEE ALSO: André Gide.
|
