Albert Camus: The Legacy of a Literary Icon
Every generation seeks to claim him as their own because his essence resonates deeply with people. The Rebel, The Plague, The Fall, The Stranger, A Happy Death… He remains one of the most widely read French authors of all time. He opposed all forms of totalitarianism, making him a lasting symbol of resistance and rebellion. His tragically short life was devoted to the pursuit of truth and freedom. Albert Camus is admired not because he was a saint, but because he was a profoundly “living being”.
The text, translated from Chinese, roughly says:
“People have the right to happiness; only by resisting can they obtain it. Resistance is a necessity, not a duty; only through resistance can you free yourself from slavery and become yourself!
suffering is individual But once resistance is born, suffering becomes collective and shared by everyone. Resistance enables people to escape from a state of slavery, affirming the shared value of human beings.
I rebel, therefore we exist.”
— Albert Camus, French novelist and philosopher
Early years
Birth
All began at the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. Back then, Algeria was colonized by France. On the night of November 7, 1913 the storm rumbles above a farm in Mondovi (now Dréan) where, without a mid-wife nor a doctor, little Albert is born. His mother Catherine Hélène Sintès have a Spanish ancestry; his father Lucien is an agricultural worker. The earth is poor and Malaria reings…
Eight months after Albert‘s birth, World War 1 breaks out. Lucien is killed in action while serving, during the First Battle of the Marne in October 1914. Without resources, Catherine moves in with Albert and his brother to her mother’s place in Algiers.
Belcourt
They live, poorly on Rue de Lyon in the working-class district Belcourt. The grandmother manages the household with an iron fist: every penny counts. No books are at home and we don’t talk about God. The daily life is hard but there is never in Albert neither resentment nor miserabilism for the greatest pleasures cost nothing: the delights of sea bathing, the sensations of the sand on the naked body… Albert enjoys the present moment and he will continue doing so all his life. His fond of football, another example of his free pleasures, where he is goalkeeper shapes, in a sense, his protective traits: Albert becomes a guardian of values, a guardian of a certain vision of the world, a guardian of humanity…
Monsieur Germain
In 1918, Albert entered primary school where he meets an exceptional teacher, Louis Germain, to whom he owes everything. He opened Albert to literature and quickly noticed that the little guy is unique with an intelligence, a finesse of mind and a special sensitivity. Under the influence of Monsieur Germain, Albert is at the top of his class, nevertheless, his grandmother refuses that he pursues secondary studies, for she had a destiny in store for him: he will be a manual worker so that he can immediatly contribute to the maintenance of the family. Despite that, Monsieur Germain is giving him free lessons to prepare him for the scholarship competition. The teacher ends up convincing the grandmother, Albert obtains the scholarship and enters the Lycée Bugeaud …
Secondary school
At the Lycée, he quickly realized his poverty among his classmates: None of them is the son of a housemaid. He says: « I felt ashamed, and I felt ashamed of being ashamed ».
Camus is influenced by Jean Grenier, his philosophy professor with whom he will maintain a long friendship. Being a writer himself, he introduces him to great thinkers: Nietzsche who learned to live without God, Kafka who illustrated the absurdity and alienation of modern life, Shakespeare who delved into the depths of the human condition, Dostoevsky who explored the complexities of the human soul, The Greek Stoics who taught resilience through reason and virtue… Despite his youth, Camus feels that he carry a literary work in him.
Tuberculosis
Camus devours life, but he collapses one day in the middle of a football match. He spits blood, it’s tuberculosis which at the time represents a death sentence. The first of several severe attacks of tuberculosis puts an end to his sporting career and interruptes his studies. He leaves Algiers for a stay at his uncle’s place.
In 1933, he enrolles at the University of Algiers and obtains a diplôme des études supérieures after completing his licence de philosophie(BA). However, his candidature for the agrégation is cut short by another attack of tuberculosis…
Formative years
Engaged
In The mid-thirties, the boiling of history is intense as in Russia, the communists promise hapiness for all, a classless society. In these circumstances, Camus, revolted by inqualities, wants to act. Hence, on the advice of Jean Grenier, he joines The Algerian Communist Party with a motivation to support the oppressed Algerians. With his comrades, he foundes a theater troupe Théatre du Travail and wrote a play on a workers’ revolt in Spain to support the Republicans against the dictatorship of Franco.
First writings
His political conscience sharpens, his pen as well. In 1937, Camus publishes L’Envers et l’Endroit (Betwixt and Between) where he explores the duality of life between suffering and beauty through memories of his own chidlhood. He writes also some short stories such as Noces (Nuptials) and L’Été (Summer).
A beautiful passage from Summer:
I wait a long time. Sometimes I stumble, I lose my hand, success eludes me. No matter, I am alone then. I wake up like this, in the night, and, half asleep, I think I hear the sound of waves, the breathing of the waters. Fully awake, I recognize the wind in the foliage and the unhappy murmur of the deserted city. Afterward, I have to use all my art to hide my distress or dress it in style.
Alger républicain
His friend Pascal Pia who runs the daily Alger rébulicain engages him as a journalist where he writes a series of articles that marked the history of the press: Camus depises authoritarian colonialism as he witnesses the harsh treatment of the Arabs and Berbers by French authorities. In june 1939, he immerses himself for several weeks in the region of Kabylie in Algeria and ends up denoucing the colonial exploitation and demanding the right to vote for all. Shortly after that, Alger républicain is banned in 1940, therefore, on the eve of war, Camus no longer has either work or future in Algeria…
Resistance and combat
WWII
1939, the sound of boots resonates all over the world… In Italy, the Duce heats up the men, Japan envades China and Hitler launches his suprise offensive on Poland. In this tragic uproar, begins an uncertain period for Camus…
He leaves for France to join his friend Pascal Pia at the newspaper Paris Soir, but when the Germans are marching towards Paris he flies to Oran with his freshly married partner Francine Faure, a pianist and mathematician. While teaching in primary schools, without a fixed salary, Camus lives with his parents in law: he’s 27 years old and he sees himself as a failure…
The Stranger
A book suddenly projects him into the light: L’étranger (The Stranger, in English) which relates the story of a simple man, Meursaults, who works, makes love, bathes but speaks little… A man who doesn’t comply with social codes: he doesn’t shed a tear on the day of his mother’s funeral. Gallimard publishes it in 1942.
As The Stranger becomes one the most read novels in France and abroad, Camus is associated with a truth-loving figure vowed to rebellion: he is displayed on the walls, we tag him, we draw him, we engrave his face on the skin…
Combat
In Paris, he starts working as a journalist and editor of the newspaper Combat which calls for resistance against the Nazis. During that period he composed, among almost daily articles, four Lettres à un Ami Allemand (Letters to a German Friend), explaining to him that the Germans will lose the war because they are blinded by hatred.
August 6, 1945, the Americans drop an atomic bomb on the japanese city of Hiroshima which kills 240 000 people. At the time when the vast majority only see in Hiroshima an end point to the world conflict, Camus is concerned about the threat of nuclear apocalypse…
Albert Camus says in his Nobel Prize speech:
“These men, who were born at the beginning of the First World War, who were twenty when Hitler came to power and the first revolutionary trials were beginning, who were then confronted as a completion of their education with the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the world of concentration camps, a Europe of torture and prisons – these men must today rear their sons and create their works in a world threatened by nuclear destruction.”
Post War
After the liberation, Albert and Francine decide to stay at Paris and in 1945, two twins are born: Jean and Catherine.
Saint-Germain-des-Prés
At the time, this neighbourhood is the place where intelectuals, artists, youth are remaking the world: we drink, we dance, we listen to jazz, in short, we relive…
In the Latin quarter, Camus befriends Sartre who has just published L’être et le néant (Being and Nothingness) in 1943. The two writers admire eachother so much that they launches a series of praising articles: Camus publishes a laudatory article on La nausée (nausea) while Sartre writes more than 20 pages on The Stranger…
María Casares
Albert is naturally attractive and he takes care of his look. No one can deny that he is very successful with ladies, nevertheless, his heart wants one woman he met in the theater during the war: the Spanish actress María Casares with whom he had extensive correspondence and who he considers as his soulmate. Francine took the affair very seriously, experiencing a mental breakdown that required hospitalization in the early 1950s. Feeling guilty, Camus withdrew from public life and went through a period of mild depression.
Revolt
communism
The communist party enjoys immense prestige as the Stalinian system extends its influence to Eastern Europe. Many intellectuals support it and Sartre is in the lead. On the other hand, Camus remains lucid and devotes numerous texts to the dangers of blind violence in the service of an uncertain ideal. He stages a play called Les Justes (The Just Assassins) in 1949 which relates the story of revolutionaries who are torn apart. Must they throw a bomb to kill a tyrant at the risk of sacrificing his children who accompany him? The play explores through moral lens the themes of murder and terrorism.
Camus says yes to revolt when it denounces an injustice, an oppression without seeking to destroy like the peaceful resistance of Gandhi in India…
L’Homme révolté
In 1951, Camus continues his reflection by publishing L’Homme Révolté (The Rebel). In this essay, he aims the Marxist left who idealize the revolution and declares his departure from communist circles. This is viewed as unforgivable by many, including Sartre who hesitates to publicly confront his friend. The success of Camus’s essay addes to Sartre’s dilemma; it sold over 70,000 copies and received glowing reviews from various publications. Six month pass, Sartre makes its first move…
But not under his signature that this is done, he asks his collaborator Francis Jeanson to go to war. ” The Rebel, writes Jeanson, it is first a great book missed”…
All punches are allowed
Triggerd by the message, Camus responds but directely to Sartre: ” Mr. Director, we do not decide the truth of a thought depending on whether it is on the right or on the left, if the truth seemed to me on the right I’ll be there”. Sartre replies: ” Tell me Camus, what if your book simply testifies to your philosophical incompetence. I do not dare to recommend you to read L’être et le néant (Being and Nothingness), reading it will be unnecesserily arduous”.
The two friends will not speak again…
While being isolated in France, Camus is recognized abroad by the greatest democratic figures such as Soljenitsyne, Pasternak and Miłosz, all three of whom were Nobel Prize winners in Literature.
The algerian drama
An infernal cycle is set in place between the French and Algerian nationalists where fierce repressions respond to the blind attacks of the seperatists of the FLN (National Liberation Front).
A part of the left with Sartre actively campaigns for decolonization, whereas the right wants Algeria to remain French. On the other hand, there is Camus, the pied-noir (literally black-foot, people of French descent who were born in Algeria during the period of French rule) who fights for a reconciliation between the two communities: explaining to his mother that she must leave because she’s not at home, is inconceivable for him. Hence, by defending a nuanced approach, he is seen as a traitor on the right as on the left.
Isolated and threatened, Camus sees that his message is not considered. From this moment, he will remain silent, and it is in this period of suffering that the writer achieves unexpected glory…
Nobel
In 1957, at the age of just 44, Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Despite this honor, he displayed his characteristic modesty by stating that if he had been a member of the awarding committee, he would have voted for André Malraux instead. Besides, few days after the announcement, he writes a note for Monsieur Germain, his teacher from Algiers:
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 honour, 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 example, none of all this would have happened.
I don’t make too much of this sort of honour. But at least it gives me the 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
Soljenitsyne (russian writer) will say later that Camus gave the most beautiful speech at the Nobel in Stockholm, a speech which has not aged a bit.
“Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.”
In the following days, a scandal breaks out: Camus is accused of not having said a word about the algerian people. He responds that at the moment bombs are being thrown into the trams of Algiers, that his mother can be in one of these trams and that if this is what you call justice, he prefers his mother…
An absurd death
Final letter
Camus writes a letter to his beloved Maria Casarès where he mentions his plans to return to Paris from Lourmarin. He expresses his excitement about seeing her again, writing, “I am so happy at the idea of seeing you again that I laugh just writing it… I kiss you and I hold you to me until Tuesday when we will start again”.
le premier homme
Camus takes the road with his friend Michel Gallimard who drives fast. January 4, 1960, at 1:55 pm, on a straight line, the car crashes against a tree. Albert Camus is killed instantly. In the debris, we find his bag, inside of which are the pages of an unfinished novel: Le Premier Homme (The First Man). This manuscript is dedicated to his mother: ” To you who will never be able to read this book”…