Albert
Camus, (Nov.
7th 1913, Jan. 4th 1960)
Albert Camus was
born in Mondovi, Algeria on November 7, 1913. He would learn early
the sometimes senseless nature of life. Within a year of Camus'
birth, his father, an impoverished agricultural worker of Alsatian
origin, was killed in Europe fighting at the first battle of the
Marne. His mother moved the family to the Belcourt district of
Algiers where they lived with her mother who had also been
widowed.
In primary
school, Camus was fortunate enough to cross paths with a teacher,
Louis Germain, who recognized the young boy's intellectual
potential and encouraged him in his studies. By the time Camus
received his baccalaurˇat in 1930, he was reading the
likes of Gide, Montherlant and Malraux.
After taking a
short break necessitated by a bout with tuberculosis, Camus
continued his education at the University of Algiers. During this
period, he supported himself by a wide variety of jobs which
included giving private lessons, working for the Meteorological
Institute, and selling spare parts for cars. It was also during
this period that he, along with a number of other young left-wing
intellectuals, founded the Thˇ‰tre du Travail in Algiers. Camus'
first experience as a playwright came when this group created a
"collective play" entitled Rˇvolte dans les Asturies.
After earning a
degree in philosophy, Camus relocated to Metropolitan France and
took up journalism. In 1938, he accepted a post with the left-wing
newspaper Alger-Rˇpublicain where he served alternately as
sub-editor, social and political reporter, leader-writer, and
book-reviewer. After World War II broke out, Camus used his
literary talents to support the French Resistance, taking on the
editorship of Combat, an important underground paper. After
the war, however, he gave up politics and journalism and devoted
himself to writing. He soon established an international
reputation with such works as The Stranger (1946), The
Plague (1948), The Rebel (1954) and The Myth of
Sisyphus (1955).
Although known
primarily for his novels and philosophical works, Camus was also a
man of the theatre. He served at various times as actor, director,
playwright and translator for the stage. The themes of Camus'
dramatic works hinge around man's realization of the
"absurd" nature of the universe, and the inevitable
clash of this realization with his desire for understanding.
However, Camus' dramatizations of the "absurd" are very
different from the "theatre of the absurd" of such
playwrights as Ionesco
or Beckett.
Like Sartre,
Camus prefers characters who are capable not only of perceiving
their plight, but of articulating it clearly.
The two most
important of Camus' plays are Caligula (performed 1945,
written 1938) and Cross Purpose (1944). In Caligula,
a young Roman emperor comes face to face with the terrible lack of
meaning in the universe after the senseless death of his beloved
sister Drusilla. In order to teach the world the true nature of
life, Caligula goes on a murderous spree, killing his subjects
indiscriminately. After this act of rebellion fails, he chooses to
court his own assassination.
In Cross
Purpose, Camus' second play, a man returns home after
travelling the world for 20 years. His mother and sister keep an
inn where, unbeknownst to him, they murder and rob rich travellers
so that they will one day be able to move to the sea-shore. Unable
to find the right words to reveal his identity, the prodigal son
decides to spend the night in his family's inn posing as a
stranger, thus becoming the next victim. When his identity is
discovered, a string of suicides is set into motion--a theme which
Camus would later explore in his philosophical work, The Myth
of Sisyphus.
Camus wrote two
other original plays, State of Siege (1948) and The Just
Assassins (1949). After this, his work for the stage consisted
solely of translations and adaptations. The most brilliant of
these were adaptations of Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun
(1956) and Dostoevsky's The Possessed (1959). In 1957, he
was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He responded with
characteristic humility, insisting that he would have voted for
Malraux.
On January 4,
1960, Camus was killed in an automobile accident while returning
to Paris with his friend and publisher Michel Gallimard. He was
only forty-six years old and had written as recently as 1958,
"I continue to be convinced that my work hasn't even been
begun." Adding to the tragedy was the fact that Camus
disliked cars and had intended to return to Paris by train until
Gallimard convinced him to change his mind. The return half of a
rail ticket was found unused in his pocket.
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