Table Of ContentThe Originality and Complexity
of Albert Camus’s Writings
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The Originality and Complexity
of Albert Camus’s Writings
Edited by Emmanuelle Anne Vanborre
the originality and complexity of albert camus’s writings
Copyright © Emmanuelle Anne Vanborre, 2012.
Reprint of the original edition 2012
All rights reserved.
First published in 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—
a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe, and the rest of the world, this
is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered
in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire
RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and
has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the
United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-44669-8 ISBN 978-1-137-30947-1
DOI 10.1057/9781137309471
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available from the Library
of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Scribe Inc.
First edition: October 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Editor’s Introduction 1
Part 1: Literary Considerations
1 Camus, the Nouveau Roman, and the Postmodern 7
Edmund J. Smyth
2 The Complexity and Modernity of The Plague 19
Aurélie Palud
3 Albert Camus’s The Fall: The Vertiginous Fall into Language,
Representation, and Reality 35
Emmanuelle Anne Vanborre
Part 2: Philosophical and Political Reflections
4 Camus’s Unbeknownst Legacy: Or, “I’m Having an
Existential Crisis!” Don’t You Really Mean a Camusian Crisis? 53
Michael Y. Bennett
5 Sisyphean (Out)rage and the Refusal to Mourn 63
Matthew H. Bowker
6 Albert Camus’s Warring Twentieth Century:
From His Ancestral Spain to His Mediterranean Utopias 79
Araceli Hernández- Laroche
Part 3: Evolution and Influences
7 Prison, Plague, and Piety: Medieval Dystopia in
Albert Camus’s The Plague 95
Jennifer Stafford Brown
8 Summer by Albert Camus: The Essay in the Mirror of Fiction 111
Mamadou Abdoulaye Ly
Translated by Emmanuelle Anne Vanborre
vi
9 Affliction, Revolt, and Love: A Conversation between
Camus and Weil 125
Sophie Bourgault
10 Tormented Shade: Camus’s Dostoevsky 143
Thomas Epstein
Bibliography 161
Notes on Contributors 169
Index 173
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Gordon College, the Faculty Development Committee
and the administration for granting me a sabbatical semester that allowed me to
finish working on this volume in a timely manner. I thank my colleagues and
friends at Gordon College and elsewhere for their support and kindness, and I
am grateful to my research assistant Rebecca Wolseley. I thank all the contribu-
tors to this volume for the rich exchanges we had, as well as other colleagues
who could not participate but expressed interest and support for this project.
Finally, I would like to thank my loved ones who encourage me as I pursue my
passion for literature.
Editor’s Introduction
This volume was thought of as a sort of homage to Albert Camus after
chairing a very interesting panel on the topic. Much has been said and
written about Camus. Some criticized his writings, philosophy, or polit-
ical choices, and others admired his works and contributions to literature and
intellectual debates. We find immense value in Camus’s legacy. The beauty and
interest of Camus’s work lies for us in its complexity and originality. It still fas-
cinates some of us today with its richness and the questions it raises. Instead of
giving lessons and expressing pessimism about human existence, Camus always
valued human liberty and justice, and offered us in many of his articles, dis-
courses, and fictions a deep and tolerant way of analyzing issues, making deci-
sions, and reading the world.
Camus’s profile is atypical. He was born and raised in Algeria, was consid-
ered one of France’s most important intellectuals, and although he took part
in Parisian literary circles as well as in the political debates of the time, he
felt excluded and misunderstood. Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria on
November 17, 1913. Albert Camus only lived with his father, an agricultural
worker, for eight months before he died in 1914 during World War I. His
mother was illiterate and poor, and Camus grew up in modest conditions. He
obtained a scholarship and went to the public high school in Algiers. He then
studied philosophy at the University of Algiers. He contracted tuberculosis in
1930 and was forced to stop playing soccer and study less. After he obtained his
degree from the university and held several jobs in Algiers, he moved to France
in 1938. His literary reputation had already started and was growing when
he left Algeria. During World War II, Camus was very active in the resistance
movement. He cofounded and edited the newspaper Combat.1
Camus sometimes felt excluded because of his background: he did not
belong to the social elite and did not go to the famous Parisian schools. He also
felt misunderstood when he took a stance against communism and when he
later expressed his opinions on the issue that was dividing French thinkers: the
independence of Algeria. Camus criticized and left the communist party he had
joined earlier, which lead to a growing disagreement with some intellectuals he
2 ● The Originality and Complexity of Albert Camus’s Writings
had been working with. He felt that he could not accept a party or ideology that
produced the gulags; for him Marxism and totalitarianism were not possible
solutions. His relationship with Jean- Paul Sartre was tainted when he left the
party and the drift became obvious and public when Francis Jeanson’s review
of Camus’s The Rebel came out. Correspondence followed between Camus and
Sartre and their disagreement created a distance between them. Sartre did not
want to compromise and could not envision any other ideology than com-
munism. He criticized anyone who was not in agreement with him. Later, he
defended the drastic actions of the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) in Alge-
ria while Camus was more cautious and did not condone violence and terror-
ism. Camus also felt divided between his homeland, Algeria, and his family
and French origins. After trying to find middle-g round solutions, he decided
to remain silent. Camus belonged to both worlds in a way, which contributed
to his feelings of not entirely belonging to one community. We may agree or
disagree with Camus’s political positions, but we have to admit that he always
showed or at least tried to show respect and tolerance for the opposite side,
unlike other thinkers, extremist or not.
Camus’s career was cut short when he died on January 4, 1960, in a car
accident, but his production was rich. Many tried to label Camus as an exis-
tentialist, philosopher, moralist, and so on, but none of these labels fit. Either
he was not a part of these movements or he was more than what a label could
contain. He was not engaged in the literary Sartrian sense of the word, but he
was definitely engaged in his art and in the world he lived in. His literary legacy
has an immense value today as it offers us reflections on the other, on death,
existence, human respect, justice, freedom, and other values without giving us
any lessons. He is famous for several essays and fictional works, such as The
Two Sides of the Coin (1937), Caligula (1938), Nuptials (1939), The Myth of
Sisyphus (1942), The Misunderstanding (1942), The Rebel (1951), The Stranger
(1942), The Plague (1947), The Fall (1956), and Exile and the Kingdom (1957).
He also left several notebooks, which were published after his death, as well as
an unfinished manuscript that contains biographical information, which was
posthumously published as The First Man in 1994. Camus was called a moral-
ist, a label that he disliked, but was never moralizing; he always transmitted
some of his reflections modestly without pretending to know the absolute truth.
The discourses he pronounced when he received the Nobel Prize are clear testi-
monies to his modest ideas of what his role, the role of art, and the role of the
writer in general is or should be. Camus was in a constant state of search, in
a constant tension between revolt and freedom. This is part of the reason why
we can apply some of his reflections to our analysis of the world today. Camus
seems to guide us without directing us strictly; his fictions do not offer clear-c ut
solutions or doctrines to follow. They offer us coexisting ideas and principles by
