Caligula: Camus's Anti-Shaman

Caligula: Camus's Anti-Shaman Patricia Hopkins Texas Tech University Caligula's revolt has been interpreted by various Camus scholars as historical, philosophical, or aesthetic in nature, and a convincing case can be made for each of these approaches.1 A careful study of the text, however, suggests another possibility that I would like to explore, that is, the notion of Caligula as an ironic shaman who, having experienced a ritual initiation through a mythic descent into hell, seeks to re-create the primordial chaos of pre-history and a lost paradise through a systematic destruction of the foundations of Western rationality and morality. Let us recall the principal stages ofCaligula's evolution. The most significant event takes place before the play begins: following the death of his sister Drusilla, Caligula disappears for three days and returns disturbingly transformed. Camus's source, Suetonius, does not elaborate upon the length of this disappearance, stating only that: following her death, he proclaimed a general cessation of law in all courts. During which time, a capital crime it was for any man to have laughed, bathed, or supped together with his parents, wife or children. And being impatient of this sorrow, when he was fled suddenly and by night out of the city, and had passed all over Campania, to Syracuse he went; and so from thence returned speedily again with his beard and hair overgrown. (231-32) Camus, however, in specifying an absence of three days (the length of Christ's sojourn in hell), opens the door to the possibility of a descent followed by a profound transformation. The death of his mistress -sister is a pretext for Caligula's realization that "Ce monde, tel qu'il est fait, n'est pas supportable" (TRN 15). The spectator can only surmise the depth of this transformation, but there are several allusions in the first scenes to the fact that Caligula up to this point in no way resembled the monster who will henceforth embark upon an exuberant reign of terror. The young poet Scipio declares: "Il était bon pour moi. Il m'encourageait et je sais par coeur certaines de ses paroles. Il me disait que la vie n'est pas facile, mais qu'il y avait la religion, l'art, l'amour qu'on nous porte. Il répétait souvent 33 34Rocky Mountain Review que faire souffrir était la seule façon de se tromper. Il voulait être un homme juste" (TRN 19). It will become apparent that Caligula has become the exact antithesis of the role model described by Scipio. His fanatical mission will now be to illustrate in all its horror the simple realization that "les hommes meurent et ils ne sont pas heureux" (TRN 16). He thus sets out to subvert and undermine the essential values that the Western world holds most dear: the family, work, patriotism, religion , literature, and art. And he does this through theatre, staging a series of spectacles to enlighten and mystify his unfortunate audience . When confronted with rational and conventionally moral resistance , he explains that he is merely imitating and intensifying the incomprehensible capriciousness of the gods. In short, he is the most pedagogical of tyrants, constantly reinforcing the lesson that men are mortal and that any notion of transcendence is rendered absurd by the inevitability of death. The dynamics of Caligula's transformation bear a certain resemblance to the initiatic rites of shamanism elaborated by Mircea Eliade. What characterizes the shaman, Eliade believes, is not so much the possession by "spirits," but the ecstasy produced by his ascent to heaven or descent to hell. Every initiation includes a period of isolation and a certain number of trials and ordeals forcing the novice to undergo an "initiatory illness," an illness revolving about an experience of mystical death or resurrection (Myths 79-80). The initiation itself often follows a profound crisis bordering on madness . Madness, in fact, may appear as a form of initiation, le mal sacré being a means of attaining revelation. Although this is essentially a religious phenomenon, it enters into literature under a symbolic configuration and can be traced, as Léon Cellier has done in Parcours initiatiques, from the romantic...