I am convinced that abolition of the death penalty would help us progress toward that society. After taking such an initiative, France could offer to extend it to the non-abolitionist countries on both sides of the iron curtain. But, in any case, she should set the example. Capital punishment would then be replaced by hard labor—for life in the case of criminals considered irremediable and for a fixed period in the case of the others. To any who feel that such a penalty is harsher than capital punishment we can only express our amazement that they did not suggest, in this case, reserving it for such as Landru and applying capital punishment to minor criminals. We might remind them, too, that hard labor leaves the con-
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demned man the possibility of choosing death, whereas the guillotine offers no alternative. To any who feel, on the other hand, that hard labor is too mild a penalty, we can answer first that they lack imagination and secondly that privation of freedom seems to them a slight punishment only insofar as contemporary society has taught us to despise freedom.3
The fact that Cain is not killed but bears a mark of reprobation in the eyes of men is the lesson we must draw from the Old Testament, to say nothing of the Gospels, instead of looking back to the cruel examples of the Mosaic law. In any case, nothing keeps us from trying out an experiment, limited in duration (ten years, for instance), if our Parliament is still incapable of making up for its votes in favor of alcohol by such a great civilizing step as complete abolition of the penalty. And if, really, public opinion and its representatives cannot give up the law of laziness which simply eliminates what it cannot reform, let us at least—while hoping for a new day of truth—not make of it the "solemn
3 See the report on the death penalty by Representative Dupont in the National Assembly on 31 May 1791: "A sharp and burning mood consumes the assassin; the thing he fears most is inactivity; it leaves him to himself, and to get away from it he continually braves death and tries to cause death in others; solitude and his own conscience are his real torture. Does this not suggest to you what kind of punishment should be inflicted on him, what is the kind to which he will be most sensitive? Is it not in the nature of the malady that the remedy is to he found?" I have italicized the last sentence, for it makes of that little-known Representative a true precursor of our modern psychology.
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slaughterhouse" 4 that befouls our society. The death penalty as it is now applied, and however rarely it may be, is a revolting butchery, an outrage inflicted on the person and body of man. That truncation, that living and yet uprooted head, those spurts of blood date from a barbarous period that aimed to impress the masses with degrading sights. Today when such vile death is administered on the sly, what is the meaning of this torture? The truth is that in the nuclear age we kill as we did in the age of the spring balance. And there is not a man of normal sensitivity who, at the mere thought of such crude surgery, does not feel nauseated. If the French State is incapable of overcoming habit and giving Europe one of the remedies it needs, let France begin by reforming the manner of administering capital punishment. The science that serves to kill so many could at least serve to kill decently. An anesthetic that would allow the condemned man to slip from sleep to death (which would be left within his reach for at least a day so that he could use it freely and would be administered to him in another form if he were unwilling or weak of will) would assure his elimination, if you insist, but would put a little decency into what is at present but a sordid and obscene exhibition.
I suggest such compromises only insofar as one must occasionally despair of seeing wisdom and true civilization influence those responsible for our future. For certain men, more numerous than we think, it is physically unbearable to know what the death penalty really is and not to be able to prevent its application. In their way, 4 Tarde.
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they suffer that penalty themselves, and without any justice. If only the weight of filthy images weighing upon them were reduced, society would lose nothing. But even that, in the long run, will be inadequate. There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.
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THE ARTIST AND HIS TIME
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THE WAGER OF OUR GENERATION
(Interview in Demain, issue of 24-30 October 1957)
The notion of art for art's sake is obviously alien to your thinking. That of "commitment" as it has been made fashionable of late is equally so. Taken in its present meaning, commitment consists in making one's art subservient to a policy. It seems to me that there is something more important, which is characteristic of your work, that might be called inserting that work into its time. Is this correct? And, if it is, how would you describe that insertion?
I can accept your expression: inserting a work into its time. But, after all, this describes all literary art. Every writer tries to give a form to the passions of his time. Yesterday it was love. Today the great passions of unity and liberty disrupt the world. Yesterday love led to individual death. Today collective passions make us
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run the risk of universal destruction. Today, just as yesterday, art wants to save from death a living image of our passions and our sufferings.
Perhaps it is harder today. It is possible to fall in love every once in a while. Once is enough, after all. But it is not possible to be a militant in one's spare time. And so the artist of today becomes unreal if he remains in his ivory tower or sterilized if he spends his time galloping around the political arena. Yet between the two lies the arduous way of true art. It seems to me that the writer must be fully aware of the dramas of his time and that he must take sides every time he can or knows how to do so. But he must also maintain or resume from time to time a certain distance in relation to our history. Every work presupposes a content of reality and a creator who shapes the container. Consequently, the artist, if he must share the misfortune of his time, must also tear himself away in order to consider that misfortune and give it form. This continual shuttling, this tension that gradually becomes increasingly dangerous, is the task of the artist of today. Perhaps this means that in a short time there will be no more artists. And perhaps not. It is a question of time, of strength, of mastery, and also of chance.
In any case, this is what ought to be. There remains what is; there remains the truth of our days, which is less magnificent. And the truth, as I see it at least, is that the artist is groping his way in the dark, just like the man in the street—incapable of separating himself from the world's misfortune and passionately longing for solitude and silence; dreaming of justice, yet being
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himself a source of injustice; dragged—even though he thinks he is driving it—behind a chariot that is bigger than he. In this exhausting adventure the artist can only draw help from others, and, like anyone else, he will get help from pleasure, from forgetting, and also from friendship and admiration. And, like anyone else, he will get help from hope. In my case, I have always drawn my hope from the idea of fecundity. Like many men today, I am tired of criticism, ol disparagement, of spitefulness—of nihilism, in short. It is essential to condemn what must be condemned, but swiftly and firmly. On the other hand, one should praise at length what still deserves to be praised. After all, that is why I am an artist, because even the work that negates still affirms something and does homage to the wretched and magnificent life that is ours.
When a man speaks as you do, he is not speaking solely for himself. He is inevitably speaking for others. And he is speaking for something. In other words, he is speaking in the name of and in favor of men for whom those values count. Who are those men and what are those values?
To begin with, I feel a solidarity with the common man. Tomorrow the world may burst into fragments. In that threat hanging over our heads there is
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a lesson of truth. As we face such a future, hierarchies, titles, honors are reduced to what they are in reality: a passing pu
ff of smoke. And the only certainty left to us is that of naked suffering, common to all, intermingling its roots with those of a stubborn hope.
In the battles of our time I have always been on the side of the obstinate, on the side of those who have never despaired of a certain honor. I have shared and I still share many of the contemporary frenzies. But I have never been able to get myself to spit, as so many others do, on the word "honor." Doubtless because I was and am aware of my human weaknesses and of my injustices, because I instinctively knew and still know that honor (like pity) is an unreasonable virtue that takes the place of justice and reason, which have become powerless. The man whose blood, and extravagances, and frail heart lead him to the commonest weaknesses must rely on something in order to get to the point of respecting himself and hence of respecting others. This is why I loathe a certain self-satisfied virtue, I loathe society's dreadful morality because it results, exactly like absolute cynicism, in making men despair and in keeping them from taking responsibility for their own life with all its weight of errors and greatness.
The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. There are works of art that tend to make man conform and to convert him to some external rule. Others tend to subject him to whatever is worst in
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him, to terror or hatred. Such works are valueless to me. No great work has ever been based on hatred or contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it. Yes, that is the freedom I am extolling, and it is what helps me through life. An artist may make a success or a failure of his work. He may make a success or a failure of his life. But if he can tell himself that, finally, as a result of his long effort, he has eased or decreased the various forms of bondage weighing upon men, then in a sense he is justified and, to some extent, he can forgive himself.
At the source of every work there is an experience. It may be a brief and brutal experience, a trauma. It may also be a protracted experience, generally the experience of childhood and adolescence. For you, to begin with, there was the Mediterranean and poverty. But with maturity come other experiences to influence and color one's early impressions. For you they took the form of war and Resistance. Have not the last few years likewise been the source of a new experience? In what way, and what have they brought you?
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Yes, there was the sun and poverty. Then sports, from which I learned all I know about ethics. Next the war and the Resistance. And, as a result, the temptation of hatred. Seeing beloved friends and relatives killed is not a schooling in generosity. The temptation of hatred had to be overcome. And I did so. This is an experience that counts.
Then the years since the Liberation were largely marked, in my case, by the experience of a solitary struggle. I had friends, to be sure, good, generous, and loyal friends, the mere thought of whom warms my heart today. But the decisions I had to make, which counted the most for me—the decision to write The Rebel, for instance—were solitary and difficult decisions. And also what followed. But at the same time history progressed. East Berlin, Poznan, Budapest ... A gigantic myth collapsed. A certain truth, which had long been disguised, burst upon the world. And if the present is still spattered with blood and the future still dark, at least we know that the era of ideologies is over, and the force of resistance, together with the value of freedom, gives us new reasons for living.
That's it. And of course one must add purely personal experiences.
We spoke of inserting a work into its time. But it also belongs to a current of thought that is, in a way, geographical. It strikes me that your work, like that of several contemporary writers
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—I am thinking particularly of Silone and Ortega y Gas-set—can be said to belong to Europe. Are you aware of this and does that intellectual Europe seem to you a reality?
Yes, I am aware of such a Europe and I believe it foreshadows our political future. The more French I feel, the more I believe this. No one is more closely attached to his Algerian province than I, and yet I have no trouble feeling a part of French tradition. Consequently, I learned, as naturally as we learn to breathe, that love of one's native land can broaden without dying. And, finally, it is because I love my country that I feel European. Just take for example Ortega y Gasset, whom you were right to mention. He is perhaps the greatest of European writers after Nietzsche, and yet it would be hard to be more Spanish. Silone speaks to all of Europe, and the reason I feel so close to him is that he is also so unbelievably rooted in his national and even provincial tradition.
Unity and diversity, and never one without the other —isn't this the very secret of our Europe? Europe has lived on its contradictions, flourished on its differences, and, constantly transcending itself thereby, has created a civilization on which the whole world depends even when rejecting it. This is why I do not believe in a Europe unified under the weight of an ideology or of a technocracy that would overlook these differences. Any more than I believe in a Europe left to its differences
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alone—in other words, left to an anarchy of enemy nationalisms.
If Europe is not destroyed by fire, it will come into being. And Russia will in time be added to it, with its individual differences. It will take more than Mr. Khrushchev to make me forget what links us to Tolstoy, to Dostoevsky, and to their people. But that future is threatened by war. Let me repeat, this is our wager. But it is one of the few wagers worth accepting.
You are an Algerian French writer. This is indeed what you made a point of emphasizing when you were awarded the Nobel Prize. But when you are aware of being an Algerian Frenchman, certainly you are not defining yourself by opposition to Algerians not of French origin. Albert Camus, a Frenchman from Algeria—doesn't this mean that you feel a solidarity with all Algerians? How can this be and how does that Algeria fit into the spiritual Europe to which you are also aware of belonging?
My role in Algeria never has been and never will be to divide, but rather to use whatever means I have to unite. I feel a solidarity with everyone, French or Arab, who is
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suffering today in the misfortune of my country. But I cannot all alone rebuild what so many men persist in destroying. I have done what I could. I shall begin again when there is again a chance of helping to rebuild an Algeria freed from all hatreds and all forms of racism. But, to limit ourselves to the domain we have chosen, I merely want to remind you that, simply by virtue of a generous interchange and a real solidarity, we have built up a community of Algerian writers, both French and Arab writers. That community is cut in two, for the time being. But men like Feraoun, Mammeri, Chraibi, Dib, and so many others have taken their place among European writers. Whatever the future may be, and however dark it looks to me, I am sure that this cannot be forgotten.
Frequently when speaking of French culture you have used the word "rebirth." Not only do you wish for it, but it also seems that at times you perceive its first promise. What may be the form of that rebirth? What are the signs of it?
The change in generations taking place on all levels is one of the first signs. The quality of the new generation is another, as well as the increasing unwillingness to adopt slogans or ideologies and the return to less pretentious and more tangible values.
Europe (and France) has not yet emerged from fifty
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years of nihilism. But the moment people begin rejecting the mystifications on which that nihilism is based, then hope is possible. The whole question is to know whether or not we shall develop faster than the rocket with a nuclear warhead. And, unfortunately, the fruits of the spirit are slower to ripen than intercontinental missiles. But, after all, since atomic war would divest any future of its meaning, it gives us complete freedom of action. We
have nothing to lose except everything. So let's go ahead. This is the wager of our generation. If we are to fail, it is better, in any case, to have stood on the side of those who choose life than on the side of those who are destroying.
In all your work there coexist philosophical pessimism and, nonetheless, not optimism but a sort of confidence. Confidence in the spirit rather than in man, in nature rather than in the universe, in action rather than in its results. Do you think this attitude—which is that of the rebel, for the value of the revolt makes up for the world's absurdity—can be adopted by the majority or is it condemned to remain the privilege of a few wise men?
Is that position really so special? And do not the men of today, threatened and yet resisting, live in this
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manner? We stifle and yet survive, we think we are dying of grief and yet life wins out. The men of our time, whom we encounter in the streets, show in their faces that they know. The only difference is that some of them show more courage. Besides, we have no choice. It is either that or nihilism. If our societies must plunge into nihilism, whether totalitarian or bourgeois, then those individuals who refuse to give in will sland apart, and they must accept this. But in their place and within their means, they must do what is necessary so that all can live together again.