He is a man of excess: women, etc.
So the [hyper] in him is punished. Then he knows.
1. Probably Lucien Camus, his father.
The dread in Africa when the sudden twilight falls on the sea or on the high plateaus or on the rough mountains. It is the dread of the sacred, fear of eternity. The same as at Delphi, where nightfall produces the same effect, it makes the temples come forth. But on the soil of Africa the temples have been destroyed, all that remains is this immense weight on the heart. Then how they die! In silence, away from everything.
What they did not like in him was the Algerian.
His dealings with money. Owing in part to poverty (he never bought anything for himself), and on the other hand to his arrogance: he never bargained.
Confession to his mother to conclude.
"You do not understand me, and yet you are the only one who can forgive me. Plenty of people offer to do it. Many also shout in all sorts of ways that I am guilty, and I am not guilty when they tell me I am. Others have the right to say it to me, and I know they are right and that I should seek their forgiveness. But one asks forgiveness of those one knows can forgive. Just that, to forgive, and not to ask you to deserve forgiveness, to wait. [But] just to talk to them, to tell them everything and receive their forgiveness. The men and women of whom I could ask it, I know that somewhere in their hearts, despite their good intentions, they neither can nor do they know how to forgive. One person alone could have forgiven me, but I was never guilty toward him and I gave him my heart entire, and yet I could have gone to him, I often did so in silence, but he is dead and I am alone. You alone can do it, but you do not understand me and cannot read me. And I am speaking to you, I
am writing, to you, to you alone, and when it is finished, I will ask forgiveness without further explanation and you will smile on me . . ."
Jacques, at the time of the escape from the clandestine editorial office, kills a pursuer (he grimaced, staggered, a bit bent forward. Then Jacques felt a terrible fury rising in him: he hit him once more from below in the [throat], and a huge hole burst open immediately at the base of the neck; then, crazed with disgust and anger, he hit him again [ ]1 right in the eyes without looking where he was striking ...)... then he goes to Wanda's.
The poor and ignorant Berber peasant. The settler. The soldier. The White with no land. (He loves them, those people, not those half-breeds with pointed yellow shoes and scarves who have only adopted the worst from the West.)
The end.
Return the land, the land that belongs to no one. Return the land that is neither to be sold nor to be bought (yes and Christ never set foot in Algeria, since even the monks owned property and land grants there).
And he cried out, looking at his mother, then the others: "Return the land. Give all the land to the poor, to those who have nothing and who are so poor that they never wanted to have and to possess, to those in the country who are like her, the immense herd of the wretched, mostly Arab and a few French, and who live and survive here through stubbornness and endurance, with the only pride that is worth anything in the world, that of the poor, give them the
1. Four illegible words.
land as one gives what is sacred to those who are sacred, and then I, poor once more and forever, cast into the worst of exiles at the end of the earth, I will smile and I will die happy, knowing that those I revered, she whom I revered, are at last joined to the land I so loved under the sun where I was born."
(Then shall the great anonymity become fruitful and envelop me also—I shall return to this land.)
Revolt. Cf. Demain in Algeria, p. 48, Servier.
Young political commissars in the F.L.N, who took Tar-zan as their pseudonym.
Yes, I command, I kill, I live in the mountains, under the sun and the rain. What do you offer me that's better: laborer in Bethune.
And Saddok's mother, cf. p. 115.
Confronting ... in the oldest story in the world we are the first men—not men on the wane as they shout in the [ ]1 newspaper but men of a different and undefined dawn.
Children without God or father, the masters they offered us horrified us. We lived without legitimacy— Pride.
What they call the skepticism of the new generations—a lie. Since when is an honest man who refuses to believe the liar a skeptic?
The nobility of the writer's occupation lies in resisting oppression, thus in accepting isolation.
1. An illegible word.
What has helped me bear an adverse fate will perhaps help me accept an overly favorable outcome—and what has most sustained me was the great vision, the very great vision I have of art.
Except in [antiquity]
Writers started out in slavery.
They won their freedom—no question [ ]1
K.H.: Everything exaggerated is trivial. But Monsieur K.H. was trivial before becoming exaggerated. He wanted to be both.
1. Four illegible words.
Two Letters
19 November 1957
Dear Monsieur Germain,
I let the commotion around me these days subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. I have just been given far too great an honor, one I neither sought nor solicited. But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching, and your example, none of all this would have happened. I don't make too much of this sort of honor. But at least it gives me an opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are 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. I embrace you with all my heart.
Albert Camus
Algiers, this 30th of April 1959
My dear child,
I have received, addressed in your handwriting, the book Camus that its author Monsieur J.-Cl. Brisville was kind enough to inscribe to me.
I do not know how to express the delight you gave me with your gracious act nor how to thank you for it. If it were possible, I would give a great hug to the big boy you have become who for me will always be "my little Camus."
I have not yet read this work, other than the first few pages. Who is Camus? I have the impression that those who try to penetrate your nature do not quite succeed. You have always shown an instinctive reticence about revealing your nature, your feelings. You succeed all the more for being unaffected, direct. And good on top of that! I got these impressions of you in class. The pedagogue who does his job conscientiously overlooks no opportunity to know his pupils, his children, and these occur all the time. An answer, a gesture, a stance are amply revealing. So I think I well know the nice little fellow you were, and very often the child contains
the seed of the man he will become. Your pleasure at being in school burst out all over. Your face showed optimism. And I never suspected the actual situation of your family from studying you. I only had a glimpse when your mother came to see me about your being listed among the candidates for the scholarship. Anyway, that happened when you were about to leave me. But until then you seemed to me to be in the same position as your classmates. You always had what you needed. Like your brother, you were nicely dressed. I don't think I can find a greater compliment to your mother.
To return to Monsieur Brisville's book, it is amply illustrated. It was very moving to know, from his photograph, your poor papa whom I have always considered "my comrade." Monsieur Brisville was kind enough to quote me: I will thank him for it.
I saw the ever-lengthening list of works that are about you or speak of you. And it gives me very great satisfaction to see that your fame (this is the exact truth) has not gone to your head. You have remained Camus: bravo.
I have followed with interest the many vicissitudes of the play you adapted and also staged: The Possessed. I love you too much not to wish you the greatest succes
s: it is what you deserve. What's more, Malraux wants to provide you with a theatre. But. . . can you manage all these various activities? I fear that you misuse your talents. And, permit your old friend to point out, you have a nice wife and two children who need their husband and papa. On this subject, I am going to tell you what the head of our normal school used to tell us now and then. He was very hard on us, which kept us from seeing, from feeling, that he really loved us. "Nature keeps a great book in which she scrupulously records every one of the excesses we commit." I must say that this wise advice has often restrained me when I was about to disregard it.
So listen, try to leave a blank on the page reserved for you in nature's Great Book.
Andree reminds me that we saw and heard you on a literary program on television, a program about The Possessed. It was moving to see you answer the questions that were asked. And I could not keep myself from making the malicious observation that you well knew I would, after all, see and hear you. That makes up a bit for your absence from Algiers. We haven't seen you for quite a while ...
Before closing, I want to tell you how troubled I am, as a secular teacher, by the menacing plots aimed at our schools. I believe that throughout my career I have respected what is most sacred in a child: the right to seek out his own truth. I loved you all and I believe I did my best not to show my opinions and thus to influence your young minds. When it was a matter of God (it was in the curriculum), I said some believed, others did not. And in the fullness of his rights, each did as he pleased. Similarly, on the subject of religion, I limited myself to listing the ones that existed, to which those who so desired belonged. To be accurate, I added that there were people who practiced no religion. I am well aware this does not please those who would like to make teachers fellow travelers for religion and, more precisely, for the Catholic religion. At the normal school of Algiers (it was then at the parc de Galland) my father, like his classmates, was required to go to Mass and take Communion every Sunday. One day, exasperated by this requirement, he put the "consecrated" host in a prayerbook and closed it! The head of the school was informed of this and did not hesitate to expel my father. That is what the promoters of the "Free school"1 (free ... to
1. "Free" meaning private, usually Catholic, as opposed to the secular state school—Trans.
think as they do) want. With the current membership of the Chamber of Deputies, I fear this plot may succeed. Le Canard Enchâine1 reported that in one department a hundred secular schools function with a crucifix hanging on the wall. I see in that an abominable attack on the children's minds. What may it come to in time? These thoughts make me very sad.
My dear child, I am coming to the end of my 4th page: I'm taking advantage of your time and I beg you to forgive me. All goes well here. Christian, my son-in-law, starts his 27th month in service tomorrow!
Know that, even when I do not write, I often think of all of you.
Madame Germain and I warmly embrace all four of you. Affectionately.
Louis Germain
I remember the time you came to visit our class with your fellow communicants. You were obviously proud of the suit you were wearing and the feast day you were observing. Honestly, I was happy for your pleasure, believing that if you were making your Communion it was because you wanted to. So ...
1. The satirical weekly—Trans.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Albert Camus was born in Algeria in 1913. The son of a working-class family, he spent the early years of his life in North Africa, where he worked at various jobs to help pay for his courses at the University of Algiers. In occupied France in 1942 he published The Myth of Sisyphus and The Stranger, a philosophical essay and a novel that first brought him to the attention of intellectual circles. The Stranger has sinced gained an international reputation and is one of the most widely read novels of this century.
Among his other writings are the essay The Rebel and three highly praised works of fiction, The Plague, The Fall, and Exile and the Kingdom. He also published the volume Caligula and Three Other Plays, as well as various dramatic adaptations. In 1957 Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. On January 4, 1960, he was killed in a car accident.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
David Hapgood grew up in New York, and was graduated from Swarth-more College. He is the author or coauthor of several books including The Murder of Napoleon and Monte Cassino. Mr. Hapgood has translated several works from the French including My Father's House by Henri Troyat and The Totalitarian Temptation by Jean-Francois Revel, for which he won the Scott-Moncrieff translation prize.
Albert Camus, The First Man
(Series: # )
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends