Albert Camus: Toward a Definition of Tragedy

ALBERT CAMUS: TOWARD A DEFINITION OF TRAGEDY HASKELL M. BLOCK Dans l'experience absurde la tragedie est individuelle. A partir du mouvement de revolteJ elle a conscience d'etre collective. Elle est l'aventure de tous. ·... Le mal qu'eprouvait jusque-la un seul ho1mme devient peste collective. R.EMARQUE suR LA REVOLTE. LET us admit that violence and suffering do not in themselves constitute tragedy. Camus' description of the treatment of innocent Frenchmen, including a youth of sixteen, on the way to execution by the Germans, may evoke pathos and indignation, but tragedy calls for a larger canvas. The reader or spectator cannot feel himself to be outside the action; he must be caught up in the tensions and pressures that impel struggling man toward destruction, a consummation wherein he finds his defini~ tion and his stature. I do not mean that we identify ourselves with the tragic hero in any simple way. We do not become Oedipus or Lear, but we must feel imp1icated in their destiny. The action, then, must be significant: it must in some way express or reveal man's essential condition, and must artistically involve the emotions and attitudes of the spectator. Suffering is not enough; there must be complicity. · It is in this direction of tragic art that Camus has moved in his recent work. Insisting on the contingency of human life, the futility of human knowledge, and the irrationality of the external world, Camus has evolved from a hedonism approaching private acquiescence to a position of collective revolt. The absurdity of life that results from the confrontation of human aspiration and world chaos is no final resting place. We cannot exclaim resignedly with Meursault, HThere is no way out," nor can we make the leap into the realm of the absolute that denies the very existence of the absurd. Beyond reason lies nothing, and reason is a deceptive gu-ide. Our sole response, Camus contends, is not to scorn reason but to accept the world's irrationality; our sole problem is how to live ·in a chaotic universe. For the lucid man there is no escape; either he succumbs to anguish and despair out of his proper weakness, or he struggles against the injustice of the 354 ALBERT CAMUS: TOWARD A DEFINITION OF TRAGEDY 355 universal order in ,an attempt to shape his own destiny. Realization of his desperate predicament comes not in an acceptance of his state, but ·iri active revolt that goes beyond the individual to iink him with other men. II Much of the foregoing discussion is based on Le Mythe de Sisyphe~ and anyone acquainted with Camus' writings will recognize the persistence of his philosophical attitudes in his artistic compositions. But let USI make no mistake about it-Camus is an artist as well as a philosopher, and it would not do to adopt the viewpoint of the critic in Horizon who considered L'Etranger merely an illustration of Camus' essays any more than it would to agree with Edmund Wilson that the novel is unphilosophical since it contains only occasional reflections. A novel may spring from philosophical experience just as readily as from man's awareness of biological or economic realities. Camus, like many of his French contemporaries, has affianced metaphysics and art. For the hero of L,Etranger) morality is an essentially private domain; objective values are non-existent. Meursault is completely indifferent to those about him. He had lost communication with his mother long before he placed her in a home for the aged, and he does not know her age when she dies. He agrees to be the comrade of a pimp because friendship, like other human emotions, is a matter of no importance. He will even marry his mistress Marie if she so desires, though he admits he does not love her. IV!eursault's actions need not be supported by rational motivation; tout .Zui est egal. He is willing to do anything, but desires to do nothing. · Meursault is an insignificant shipping clerk in Algiers, retiring and unambitious. His most striking characteristic is his insensibility to all but physical sensations. He is unmoved at his mother's funeral, and those about him...