Albert Camus (1913—1960) - Richard Curtis

Camus’ play is less the murderous lunatic, slave to incest, narcissist and megalomaniac of
Roman history than a theatrical martyr-hero of the Absurd, a man who carries his
philosophical quarrel with the meaninglessness of human existence to a kind of fanatical
but logical extreme. Camus himself described his hero as a man “obsessed with the
impossible” and willing to pervert all values and if necessary destroy himself and all
those around him in the pursuit of absolute liberty. Caligula was Camus’ first attempt at
portraying a figure in absolute defiance of the Absurd, and through three revisions of the
play over a period of several years he eventually achieved a remarkable composite by
adding touches of Sade, of revolutionary nihilism, of the Nietzschean Superman, of his
own version of Sisyphus, and even of Mussolini and Hitler, to his original portrait.
c. Essays, Letters, Prose Collections, Articles, and Reviews
Betwixt and Between (1937) – This short collection of semi-autobiographical, semifictional,
philosophical pieces might be dismissed as juvenilia and largely ignored if it
were not for the fact that it represents Camus’ first attempt to formulate a coherent lifeoutlook
and world-view. The collection, which in a way serves as a germ or starting point
for the author’s later philosophy, consists of five lyrical essays. In “L’Ironie” (“Irony”), a
reflection on youth and age, Camus asserts, in the manner of a young disciple of Pascal,
our essential solitariness in life and death. In “Entre Oui et Non” (“Between yes and no”)
he suggests that to hope is as empty and as pointless as to despair. Yet he goes beyond
nihilism by positing a fundamental value to existence-in-the-world. In “La Mort dans
l’ame” (Death in the soul”) he supplies a sort of existential travel review, contrasting his
impressions of central and eastern Europe (which he views as purgatorial and morguelike)
with the more spontaneous life of Italy and Mediterranean culture. The piece thus
affirms the author’s lifelong preference for the color and vitality of the Mediterranean
world, and especially North Africa, as opposed to what he perceives as the soulless coldheartedness
of modern Europe. In “Amour de vivre” (“Love of life”) he claims there can
be no love of life without despair of life and thus largely re-asserts the essentially tragic,
ancient Greek view that the very beauty of human existence is largely contingent upon its
brevity and fragility. The concluding essay, “L’Envers et l’endroit” (“Betwixt and
between”), summarizes and re-emphasizes the basically Romantic themes of the
collection as a whole: our fundamental “aloneness,” the importance of imagination and
openness to experience, the imperative to “live as if . . . .”
Noces (Nuptials) (1938) – This collection of four rhapsodic narratives supplements and
amplifies the youthful philosophy expressed in Betwixt and Between. That joy is
necessarily intertwined with despair, that the shortness of life confers a premium on
intense experience, and that the world is both beautiful and violent – these are once again
Camus’ principal themes. “Summer in Algiers,” which is probably the best (and bestknown)
of the essays in the collection, is a lyrical, at times almost ecstatic, celebration of
sea, sun, and the North African landscape. Affirming a defiantly atheistic creed, Camus
concludes with one of the core ideas of his philosophy: “if there is a sin against life, it
consists not so much in despairing as in hoping for another life and in eluding the
implacable grandeur of this one.”
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