CAMUS, Albert

Nationality: French. Born Mondovi, Algeria, 7 November 1913. Education: University of Algiers, graduated 1936. Family: Married 1) Simone Hié in 1933 (divorced); 2) Francine Faure in 1940, twin son and daughter. Career: Worked as a meteorologist, ship-broker's clerk, automobile parts salesman, clerk in the automobile registry division of the prefecture, actor and amateur theatre producer, Algiers, 1935-39; member of the Communist party, 1935-39; staff member, Alger-Républicain, Algiers, 1938-39; editor, Soir-Républicain, Algiers, 1939-40; sub-editor for layout, Paris-Soir, 1940; teacher, Oran, Algeria, 1940-42; convalescent in central France, 1942-43; joined resistance in Lyons region, 1943; journalist, Paris, 1943-45. Reader and editor of Espoir series, Gallimard Publishers, Paris, 1943-60. Co-founding editor, Combat, 1945-47. Awards: Critics prize (France), 1947; Nobel prize for literature, 1957. Died: 4 January 1960.

Publications

Collections

Complete Fiction. 1960.

Théâtre, récits, nouvelles; Essais, edited by Roger Quilliot (2 vols.). 1962-65.

Collected Plays. 1965.

Oeuvres complétes (5 vols.). 1983.

Novels

L'Étranger. 1942; as The Stranger, 1946; as The Outsider, 1946.

La Peste. 1947; as The Plague, 1948.

La Chute. 1956; as The Fall, 1957.

La Mort heureuse. 1971; as A Happy Death, 1972.

Short Stories

L'Exil et le royaume. 1957; as Exile and the Kingdom, 1958.

Plays

Le Malentendu (produced 1944). Published with Caligula, 1944; translated as Cross Purpose and published with Caligula, 1948.

Caligula (produced 1945). Published with Le Malentendu, 1944; translated as Caligula and published with Cross Purpose, 1948.

L'État de siége (produced 1948). 1948; as State of Siege, in Caligula and Three Other Plays, 1958.

Les Justes (produced 1949). 1950; as The Just Assassins, in Caligula and Three Other Plays, 1958; as The Just, 1965.

La Dévotion á la croix, adaptation of a play by Calderón (produced 1953). 1953.

Les Esprits, adaptation of a work by Pierre de Larivey (produced 1953). 1953.

Un Cas intéressant, adaptation of a work by Dino Buzzati (produced 1955). 1955.

Requiem pour une nonne, adaptation of a work by William Faulkner (produced 1956). 1956.

Le Chevalier d'Olmedo, adaptation of the play by Lope de Vega (produced 1957). 1957.

Caligula and Three Other Plays (includes Caligula; Cross Purpose; State of Seige; The Just Assassins ). 1958.

Les Possédés, adaptation of a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky (produced 1959). 1959; as The Possessed, 1960.

Other

L'Envers et L'endroit. 1937.

Noces. 1939.

Le Mythe de Sisyphe. 1942; as The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, 1955.

Lettres á un ami allemand. 1945.

L'Existence. 1945.

Le Minotaure; ou La Halte d'Oran. 1950.

Actuelles 1-3: Chroniques 1944-1948, Chroniques 1948-1953, Chronique algérienne 1939-1958 (3 vols.). 1950-58.

L'Homme révolté. 1951; as The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, 1953.

L'Été. 1954.

Réflexions sur la guillotine, in Réflexions sur la peine capitale, with Arthur Koestler. 1957; as Reflections on the Guillotine, 1960.

Discours de Suéde. 1958; as Speech of Acceptance upon the Award of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1958.

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (selection). 1960.

Méditation sur le théâtre et la vie. 1961.

Carnets: Mai 1935-fevrier 1942. 1962; translated as Carnets 1935-1942, 1963; as Notebooks 1935-1942, 1963.

Lettre á Bernanos. 1963.

Carnets Janvier 1942-mars 1951. 1964; as Notebooks 1942-1951, 1965.

Lyrical and Critical (essays), edited by Philip Thody. 1967.

Le Combat d'Albert Camus, edited by Norman Stokle. 1970.

Selected Essays and Notebooks, edited by Philip Thody. 1970.

Le premier Camus. 1973; as Youthful Writings, 1977.

Journaux de voyage, edited by Roger Quilliot. 1978; as American Journals, 1987.

Fragments d'un combat 1938-1940: Alger-Républicain, Le Soir-Républicain, edited by Jacqueline Lévi-Valensi and André Abbou. 1978.

Correspondance 1932-1960, with Jean Grenier, edited by Marguerite Dobrenn. 1981.

Selected Political Writings, edited by Jonathan King. 1981.

Oeuvre fermée, oeuvrete, edited by Raymond Gay-Croisier and Jacqueline Lévi-Valensi. 1985.

Carnets: Mars 1951-décembre 1959. 1989.

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Bibliography:

Camus: A Bibliography by Robert F. Roeming, 1968; and subsequent editions by Raymond Gay-Croisier, in A Critical Bibliography of French Literature 6, 1980; Camus in English: An Annotated Bibliography of Camus's Contributions to English and American Periodicals and Newspapers by Peter C. Hoy, second edition, 1971; Camus, A Bibliography by Robert F. Roeming, 1993.

Critical Studies:

Camus: A Study of His Work, 1957, Camus, 1913-1960: A Biographical Study, 1962, and Camus, 1989, all by Philip Thody; Camus by Germaine Brée, 1959, revised edition, 1972; Camus: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Germaine Brée, 1962; Camus: The Artist in the Arena by Emmett Parker, 1965; Camus by Philip H. Rhein, 1969; revised edition, 1989; Camus by Conor Cruise O'Brien, 1970;The Theatre of Camus by Edward Freeman, 1971; Camus: The Invincible Summer by Albert Maquet, 1972; The Unique Creation of Camus by Donald Lazere, 1973; Camus: A Biography by Herbert R. Lottman, 1979; Camus's Imperial Vision by Anthony Rizzuto, 1981; Camus: A Critical Study of His Life and Work, 1982, and Camus: The Stranger, 1988, both by Patrick McCarthy; Exiles and Strangers: A Reading of Camus's Exile and the Kingdom by Elaine Showalter, 1984; Exile and the Kingdom: A Political Rereading of Camus by Susan Tarrow, 1985; The Ethical Pragmatism of Camus: Two Studies in the History of Ideas by Dean Vasil, 1985; Beyond Absurdity: The Philosophy of Camus by Robert C. Trundle, 1987; Camus: A Critical Examination by David Sprintzen, 1988; Camus and Indian Thought by Sharad Chaedra, 1989; Understanding Camus by David R. Ellison, 1990; Camus's L'Estranger: Fifty Years On, edited by Adele King, 1992; Tragic Lucidity: Discourse of Recuperation in Unamuno and Camus by Keith W. Hansen, 1993; Arendt, Camus, and Modern Rebellion by Jeffrey C. Isaac, 1994; Albert Camus: The Thinker, the Artist, the Man by Eric S. Bonner, 1996; Albert Camus: A Life by Oliver Todd and Benjamin Ivry, 1997; Albert Camus, Marguerite Duras, and the Legacy of Mourning by Michelle Beauclair, 1998.

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Born in Algeria of a French father and a Spanish mother, Albert Camus grew up in a working-class suburb of Algiers, in relative poverty and without his father, killed in World War I when Albert was a year old. The tuberculosis Camus contracted at 17 affected his health permanently yet also heightened his pleasure in nature—the sun, sand, and sea—and strengthened his will to live. The scholarship that enabled him to study at the University of Algiers literally changed his life by inspiring his passion for moral philosophy. That passion issued in a didactic impulse to include a humane moral wisdom in everything he ever wrote, whether fiction, drama, essay, or political journalism.

In his early twenties Camus the polemical journalist espoused radical politics, demanding justice for the poor and politically oppressed. Camus the budding author and moralist, on the other hand, emphasized an existential dilemma: the tragic paradox that humans have the capacity to imagine an ideal life but are thwarted in achieving their ideal by their inherently limited powers and their mortality. This dilemma constituted the most bleakly pessimistic moral philosophy Camus ever adopted, since it expressed resignation both to human frailty and to the chilling indifference of the universe to human concerns. Not surprisingly, the novel Camus worked on in those years, but never published, depicted the hero's search for a happy death rather than a happy life.

The outbreak of World War II in September 1939 had the unexpected effect of turning Camus's attention from death to life. In 1940 he left Algeria to work for a Paris newspaper, and a year later, back in Algeria, he totally recast that early novel about death, turning it instead into a morality tale confronting conventional and unconventional life views. Suggestively renamed The Stranger, it appeared in 1942 and quickly became Camus's first literary success.

Late in 1942 Camus decided that, with his worsening tuberculosis, he would fare better in the healthy mountain air of central France, which was then unoccupied territory. He worked there in quiet isolation, undisturbed by the war, except for one anxious period when he was cut off from all communication with his family because North Africa had been successfully invaded by the Allies. Before long he began to make trips to Paris to maintain contact with his publisher and with friends, especially those involved in the resistance. Out of sympathy with their cause, he joined the resistance himself and began to contribute inspirational articles to the resistance newspaper, Combat. As the war wound down, he decided he must take his place in the Paris literary world, and he arranged for his wife and children in Algeria to join him in Paris.

His new life in the capital began auspiciously, with the acclaimed publication, in 1947, of what is still regarded as his finest novel, The Plague. Its success, however, left him totally unprepared for the hard times ahead. When two of his plays, staged in 1948 and 1949, and a political tract called The Rebel, published in 1951, were all poorly received by the critics, the vulnerably sensitive Camus became depressed and spent the next three years trying to break a severe case of writer's block. During those three bleak years he made an ill-advised journalistic attempt to intervene in the violent civil war in Algeria, which had begun in 1952. Adopting the moral high ground, he urged calm, reason, and conciliation, but his words fell on deaf ears. Both sides had already hardened their positions and become hopelessly polarized.

Valiantly struggling for self-renewal and vindication, Camus first vented his anger against his critics in 1956 with a witty, but ambiguous, satirical novel called The Fall. He then restored his dignity, with respect to the Algerian tragedy, in 1957, with a volume of six exemplary short stories under the title Exile and the Kingdom. He was rewarded with the Nobel Prize for Literature later that same year. No one could have suspected at the time, however, that the honor would mark the end of his literary career. On 4 January 1960 the mortality Camus had long decried caught up with him in the absurd form of a fatal automobile accident, of which he was an innocent victim.

Camus was perhaps the most impressive French literary talent of his generation, widely admired in the 1940s and 1950s as a hero of the resistance, a model for the younger generation, an outspoken defender of the oppressed, and a guardian of the moral conscience of Europe.

—Murray Sachs

See the essays on The Fall and The Plague.