The Characters of Albert Camus

vit OF s. in his career: "On trois. Au hasard des traltlsiClnne. n Cmmnrl'0I1plac4::, UTI"\T'''V1nfT UlernSe~lv(~s out T\YV\U1r,p the worke~d out in characters and SltlJatloI1S VaJ:'1OllSneSS that the reader is conCamus ' characters do not leave between the COI1VentllDns of selves upon the lIna;2;:maXlOln not in the same way, it is because as the mere creator's mt::SScLge,-IOr a moral "",,,,,•.-or.-.-I1'-'YTI 1Albert Camus, "Le Vent a 1950), 35. " in NoctJs (nouvelle edition~ Paris, 362 THE CHARACTERS OF ALBERT CAMUS 363 are the vehicles and Camus' plays and novels the impassioned theorems of that philosophy of the absurd with which he. has become associated . This philosophy, imaginatively coherent but logically brittle, is at once the child of nihilism and its intended destroyer. Its origins are to be found in the early experiences of a poor and talented yOWlg Algerian, born into the brilliant light and punishing heat of a Mediterranean landscape. It begins in the explosion of the senses, in a vivid pantheism, the dazzling notations of which fill every page of Camus' early essays: L'EnveTS et /'Endroit (1937) and Noces (1938). The lessons which Camus draws from this pantheism are obvious enough. There is the rejection of God and the dismissal of the notion of eternal life as a pious fiction intended to reconcile men to death and to resign them to a life corroded by that foreknowledge of death which man alone of the earth's creatures possesses. Death is the only certainty and the paramount evil, while the one certain good is the joy of the physical senses. The early Camus preaches a gospel of immediac.y of feeling which, in the light of his own intellectual sophistication at the period, is not always free from an arch and studied primitivism. When he exalts the random and hearty physical appetites of his friend Vincent, "qui est tonnelier et champion de brasse junior," one is made painfully aware of the narrow distance that separates simplicity from sheer simple-mindedness. Often, the repeated sensual delight which Camus conveys so powerfully seems a little lacking in spontaneity, as if it were the deliberate and desperate tactic of a philosophical mind bent on countering death. As they emerge from these essays, the moral virtues to which Camus gives adherence include: manly courage, concern for the weak (especially women and the aged), love of personal liberty, and, finally, the spirit of revolt. These virtues imply a supreme virtue in whose service they may be conscripted-the conquest of human happiness. In admitting the possibility of human happiness, Camus reveals an optimistic bias· which modifies, without fundamentally changing, his tragic vision of life. The precariousness of this happiness and the struggle needed to attain it are made more explicit in Camus' first formal essay in philosophy , Le M'),tthe de Sisyphe (1942). This begins with an irreducible question: is life worth living? Camus proceeds to answer it by admitting that the position of man in the world is absurd. The world of elements, trees, beasts, acceptable enough when considered without reference to man, appears quite incompatible with his existence. The sense of the absurd is, therefore, generated in the encounter between 364 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY order and reason, and the chaos and ir- "'-"GI.,,lu.u,.,, the reC:OgJlliUlon is a state of grace, rather like the of Sartre's characters. In the of wisdom and nalDPlncsiS, revolt U.his whole being is flooded with the indignant awareness of his doom. In spite of this'difference in intensity, Camus' grotesques belong natu~ 370 UN1VERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY of creatures. and even, as in Grand's case, with COJmpia5!;IQll. characters examined so inthe t:x~)l::;n.t:rH;t: ness cannot be unrel:ated and so, the the ,,".....,"",n·'31',,",.'1Y"·u .... ·"''" ( Rieux has less exorbitant a..IIJ,U.t~~V.lJ'''. He that in the very act strikes a ".lrl·yi'hr"'ll1""" and ex- THE CHARACTERS OF ALBERT CAMUS 371 poses man to humiliation and death. He is too clear-sighted to harbour illusions, recognizing that his victories are precarious and temporary. In combating...