Camus by Germaine Brée
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This work edited by Germaine Bree is a collection of twenty essays on Albert Camus by different writers and critics. A 1962 edition, it was published two years after Camus’ untimely death. When I chanced upon this collection in the University Library, I felt ecstatic for I hadn’t even heard of this before. I may also mention that it was an entirely new section I had discovered, with a wealth of literary essays and criticisms so my joy was double fold. Also the collection was last issued in September, 1989 (sadly just once before I got it issued) and whoever it was who had read it last, had marked the same lines that I did too find worthy of marking and noting down. So despite of 25 years of reading distance, I kind of felt an affinity with the unknown reader. Hence inevitably, I had a very memorable experience reading this work.

As expected, the essays focus upon the Nobel Laureate’s works including his essays and stories, opinionating upon the style as well as the relevance of his works. While some essays were written posthumously, a few were also penned during his life time. And given that 52 years have elapsed since the first publication of these essays, which focused upon his writing in association with the times he belonged to and on that which influenced his writing, it can be said that at present, when Camus’ writing has been explored in greater depth and for the changed, if not better times, we may look upon these essays in wider light than their original intent. Camus’ works were considered as relevant to his times for they expressed a great mind’s response to a World which appeared alien and indifferent to a conscious man. In my view, his ideas are relevant even today since the world is undeniably as chaotic as it was then.These essays, most of them, which seem to empathize with Camus’ ideas, are their authors’ perspective on his ideas and writing style, which are equally important in understanding the Nobel Laureate’s oeuvre comprehensively. There are also a few essays which criticize his style and intentions, but I consider them important too because they give a voice to the disagreements with a mind often misunderstood and hence thereby widening the scope of a reader’s own understanding of his works.

The introduction by Bree in itself is an essay commenting upon author’s works, his inspirations, symbols frequently used in his writing and also upon the relevance of his stand as a writer and thinker. At one place, comparing Camus with Sartre, on their respective stands on Communism, he says:

“He was never hampered by the grinding and obsessive sense of limitation and guilt that Sartre seems to feel as a ‘petit-bourgeois’ in the era of ‘the Masses’. That is perhaps why Sartre, who speaks so often of ‘commitment’, has never been able to make the practical choices involved in action - forever postponing that crucial moment where action limits thoughts and challenge its conclusion.”

“In Memoriam” by Nicola Chiaoromonte starts so beautifully that it seizes your attention and leaves you mesmerized. He speaks of the inability to completely understand a man who was also a writer or the writer through the man that he was. Praising Camus for his earlier works i.e. The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus, he says:

“He had succeeded in saying, in his fevered way and in an argument as taut as a bow, why, despite the fury and horror of history, man is an absolute; and he had indicated precisely where, according to him, this absolute lay: in the conscience, even if mute and stilled; in remaining true to one’s self even when condemned by the gods to repeat over and over the same vain task.”

Also included in the same essay is Camus’ 1964 speech to students of Columbia University. He was speaking about the World which was left to humans after the world wars and Hitler. At one place he said:

“Another thing we have learned is that we cannot accept any optimistic conception of existence, any happy ending whatsoever. But if we believe that optimism is silly, we also know that pessimism about the action of man among his fellows is cowardly.”

In my view it very clearly expresses the thought behind his “absurd” when he says that optimism is silly but in the same line when he deems pessimism in action as cowardly, he is speaking of the solidarity necessary on the part of humans to carry on. Here it is necessary to add that though Camus was not optimistic about human existence but he was very optimistic about humans and humanity.

Nicola’s other essay in the collection – “Sartre versus Camus” is quite spirited too. Here he presents his views on Camus’ skepticism towards the modern ideologies and says:

“But progressive optimism is precisely the notion that Camus vigorously questions. His arguments cannot be easily dismissed by a philosophy like existentialism, which stresses so resolutely the discontinuity between human consciousness and any “process” whatsoever, and which in any case makes it very difficult to go back to the notion that man’s ethical task is to “change the world” through historical action. This not only because the idea of “changing the world” is a radically optimistic one in that it presupposes precisely that fundamental harmony between man and the world which existentialism denies, but because only if man is “historical” through and through (as Hegel and Marx assumed) is the definition of a “historical task” possible at all.”

The collection includes other brilliant essays which are worthy of attention. Since I cannot do justice to each of them in this review, I’ll urge Camus fans to go through them and cherish the experience of reading them as I did with absolute delight.


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