CAMUS, Albert

Nationality: French. Born: Mondovi, Algeria, 7 November 1913. Education: The University of Algiers, graduated 1936. Family: Married 1) Simone Hié in 1933 (divorced); 2) Francine Faure in 1940 (died 1979), twin son and daughter. Career: Worked as 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,1938-39, and editor, Soir-Républicain, 1939-40, both Algiers; sub-editor for lay-out, 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 complètes. 5 vols., 1983.

Short Stories

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

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.

Plays

Le Malentendu (produced 1944). With Caligula, 1944; as Cross Purpose, with Caligula, 1948.

Caligula (produced 1945). With Le Malentendu, 1944; 1941 version (produced 1983), 1984; translated as Caligula, with Cross Purpose, 1948.

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

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

La Dévotion à la croix, from a play by Calderón (produced1953). 1953.

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

Un Cas intéressant, from a work by Dino Buzzati (produced1955). 1955.

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

Le Chevalier d'Olmedo, from the play by Lope de Vega (produced1957). 1957.

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

Les Possédés, from a novel by Dostoevskii (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 à 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 Suède. 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 à Bernanos. 1963.

Carnets: Janvier 1942-mars 1951. 1964; as Notebooks 1942-1951, edited by Justin O'Brien, 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.

American Journals. 1995.

Translator, La dernière fleur, by James Thurber. 1952.

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Bibliography:

Camus: A Bibliography by Robert F. Roeming, 1968; and subsequent editions by R. Gay-Crosier, 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, 2nd 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, and 1964, revised edition, 1972, and Camus: A Collection of Critical Essays edited by Brée, 1962; Camus: The Artist in the Arena by Emmett Parker, 1965; Camus by Phillip 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 ofCamus's Exile and the Kingdom by Elaine Showalter, Jr., 1984; Exile and 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 Olivier Todd and Benjamin Ivry, 1997.

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Albert Camus was deeply attached to both his French and his Algerian origins. Generally left-wing, although he had been a member of the Communist party only from 1935 to 1937, he had run a magazine, Combat, for the Resistance towards the end of World War II. By 1957, the year he received the Nobel prize, Camus had become virtually apolitical, and there had been a long-running public and private quarrel with Sartre, who was slowly jettisoning his existentialist philosophical reflections for hard-line Stalinist Marxism. When the Franco-Algerian war broke out in 1954 Camus felt drawn to mediate. The conflict escalated into a confrontation between terrorist insurrection and military repression, and Camus found it impossible to avoid expressing his left-wing views. The stories in L'Exil et le royaume (Exile and the Kingdom) were written while Camus was trying to mediate. Four of the six stories have Algerian backgrounds.

Camus's early journalism leaned towards a style that was sparse and factual, almost dry. His later work, including Exile and the Kingdom, sometimes uses a style that is almost florid. The first story, "The Adulterous Woman," is held together by the psychology of the central character, Janine. Trivial incidents are described in ordinary third-person narrative and realistic detail, with snippets of conversation. But much of the story is related from inside Janine, and the central episode, almost grippingly narrated, is totally ambiguous. Janine is on a journey with her husband, Marcel, an exlaw student who had taken over his parents' dry-goods business and was now trying to sell to Arab merchants.

An uncomfortable bus journey through the desert is narrated partly as Janine is experiencing it, as her thoughts pass through her mind with a touch of humor, her own and the narrator's. In a desert town they stay in a hotel with dirty windows. Janine insists on climbing up the stairs of the fort to lean over a parapet and look at the desert. Looking out, Janine thinks of the nomads in an encampment she could see, "possessing nothing but serving no one, poverty-stricken but free lords of a strange kingdom." That kingdom is almost allegorized. It is what had been promised to her but would never be hers. In the middle of the cold night she wonders what is missing: "she simply followed Marcel, pleased to know that someone needed her. The only joy he gave her was the knowledge that she was necessary. Probably he didn't love her." She feels suffocated and runs out to the parapet.

The loveless, childless marriage had left Janine unsatisfied. We know from the title that she is unfaithful, but with what or whom does she engage in unfaithfulness? With the night? the desert? the yearned-for fulfilment? The descriptive prose approaches lushness. The reader does not know whether or not the narrator is vouching for what Janine feels, but it does not matter. The ambiguity is quite deliberately created. All that happens is that a woman does something slightly bizarre, but the narrative, quite short, moves from a point of no emotional intensity to a point at which it quivers with poignancy. The reader's interest is teased along by the title. Adultery? The parable could not be simpler. The longing for innocent fulfilment, for emotional satisfaction, and for the harmony of life turns out to be treachery, a guilty betrayal of the best that life has to offer.

"The Renegade" contains the semi-demented ravings of a tortured and broken missionary, once so ardent to convert the infidels, but now broken by pain. This is a powerful piece of writing, but its power derives largely from its ambiguity. As in "The Adulterous Woman" it makes no difference whether the exmissionary's ravings narrate events that occurred or not. The story, the fascination, and the power lie entirely in what is going on in the speaker's mind, through which cascade brilliant successions of images, symbols, and metaphors, giving the text resonances on every sort of political and personal level.

The collection's unity is in an attitude to life that is never more than sardonic when it ought to be violent. The satire on artistic success in "The Artist at Work" is cynically comic as Louise Poulin takes over Gilbert Jonas's life. The collection itself is undoubtedly virtuosic. Read in isolation, the six stories might not seem related. Read together, they brilliantly focus quite different lights on the nostalgia for innocence and the sordid, repulsive inevitability of guilt.

—A. H. T. Levi

See the essay on "The Guest."