Albert Camus: Elements of a Life (review)

In this engaging study Robert Zaretsky sets himself a difficult task, because the narrative of Camus's life has been told so often that some of its predictable milestones have become banal from overuse. One expects a reference to Camus's comment from his Carnets that 'I must bear witness' (p. 19) — a laudable sentiment, but it is surely not this ambition that distinguishes Camus from his peers. The biographical format is vulnerable to the reproduction of received wisdom, but the consistent interest and pleasure of this work lies in Zaretsky's perspective, offering unaccustomed insights into the writer and his work. In response to Camus's wish to place his mother's silence at the centre of his work, Zaretsky turns to Wittgenstein in making the point that 'while certain things cannot be said, particularly in the realm of ethics, this does not make them nonsensical or meaningless' (p. 15). It was a delight to see Camus's experience of the Communist Party compared to Augustine's engagement with Manichaeism, while the Melian dialogue in Thucydides appears not only in relation to La Peste, but in a later comment on Camus's appeal for a civilian truce in 1956. Likewise, the Oresteia accompanies an account of Camus's friendship with Sartre, while their subsequent estrangement leads to an unexpected distinction between Agamemnon and Orestes that illuminates the differing attitudes of Camus and Sartre. Zaretsky moves backwards and forwards in the exploration of a particular topic, and his earlier comments on Augustine and Wittgenstein return with more profound significance in the fourth chapter, which inevitably concerns Camus's famous 'silence' on the Algerian War. I noticed only two minor errors: the Meursault of L'Étranger has no first name (p. 53); Camus joined the Algerian Communist Party (PCA), not the French one (PCF). I suspect Zaretsky is less interested in the politics of 1930s Algeria, as here history occasionally risks appearing as an uncomplicated backdrop to the protagonist's life. One might applaud Camus's condemnation of the ban on the PCA and the Algerian People's Party (PPA) in the months before the war, but this stance cannot be fully evaluated without a reminder of the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland in September 1939; or the fact that a not insignificant number of PPA members supported Nazism despite their leader's rejection of it. Camus did not leave Manichaeism behind when he left the Communist Party — as, of course, Zaretsky makes clear in his later discussion of the épuration and Camus's disagreement with Mauriac. Any initial scepticism on my part was immediately challenged by Zaretsky's preliminary comment that his views on Camus are not those he held thirty years ago. This is the great value of this work, that it encourages readers to look again at the familiar and see it differently, in sometimes unexpected ways. It was a pleasure to read and I highly recommend it.