Caligula and Three Other Plays, Albert Camus
Contents
Author’s Preface
Caligula
Characters in the Play
Act I
Act II
Act III
Act IV
The Misunderstanding
Characters in the Play
Act I
Act II
Act III
State of Siege
Characters in the Play
First Part Prologue
Second Part
Third Part
The Just Assassins
Characters in the Play
Act I
Act II
Act III
Act IV
Act V
Author’s Preface (December 1957)
THE PLAYS making up this collection were written between 1938 and 1950. The first, Caligula, was composed in 1938 after a reading of Suetonius’ Twelve Cæsars. I intended the play for the little theater I had organized in Algiers, and my artless intention was to play the part of Caligula myself. Inexperienced actors often show such guilelessness. Besides, I was only twenty-five, the age when one doubts everything except oneself. The war forced me to modesty, and Caligula was first played in 1945 at the Théâtre-Hébertot in Paris.
Hence Caligula is an actor’s and director’s play. But of course it takes its inspiration from the concerns that were mine at that moment. French criticism, although it greeted the play very cordially, often astonished me by speaking of it as a philosophical play. Is there any truth in this?
Caligula, a relatively attractive prince up to then, becomes aware, on the death of Drusilla, his sister and mistress, that this world is not satisfactory. Thenceforth, obsessed with the impossible and poisoned with scorn and horror, he tries, through murder and the systematic perversion of all values, to practice a liberty that he will eventually discover not to be the right one. He challenges friendship and love, common human solidarity, good and evil. He takes those about him at their word and forces them to be logical; he levels everything around him by the strength of his rejection and the destructive fury to which his passion for life leads him.
But, if his truth is to rebel against fate, his error lies in negating what binds him to mankind. One cannot destroy everything without destroying oneself. This is why Caligula depopulates the world around him and, faithful to his logic, does what is necessary to arm against him those who will eventually kill him. Caligula is the story of a superior suicide. It is the story of the most human and most tragic of errors. Unfaithful to mankind through fidelity to himself, Caligula accepts death because he has understood that no one can save himself all alone and that one cannot be free at the expense of others.
Consequently it is a tragedy of the intelligence. Whence the natural conclusion that the drama was intellectual. Personally, I think I am well aware of this work’s shortcomings. But I look in vain for philosophy in these four acts. Or, if it exists, it stands on the level of this assertion by the hero: “Men die; and they are not happy.” A very modest ideology, as you see, which I have the impression of sharing with Everyman. No, my ambition lay elsewhere. For the dramatist the passion for the impossible is just as valid a subject for study as avarice or adultery. Showing it in all its frenzy, illustrating the havoc it wreaks, bringing out its failure—such was my intention. And the work must be judged thereon.
One word more. Some found my play provocative who nevertheless consider it natural for Œdipus to kill his father and marry his mother and who accept the adulterous triangle if it is placed, to be sure, in the best society. Yet I have little regard for an art that deliberately aims to shock because it is unable to convince. And if I happened, by ill luck, to be scandalous, this would result solely from that immoderate devotion to truth which an artist cannot renounce without giving up his art itself.
THE MISUNDERSTANDING was written in 1943 in occupied France. I was then living, quite reluctantly, in the mountains of central France. That historical and geographical situation would be enough to explain the sort of claustrophobia from which I suffered then and which is reflected in that play. It is true that its atmosphere is suffocating. But we were all short of breath at that time. Nonetheless, the play’s gloominess bothers me as much as it bothered the public. To encourage the reader to approach the play, I shall suggest: (1) granting that the play’s morality is not altogether negative, and (2) looking upon The Misunderstanding as an attempt to create a modern tragedy.
A son who expects to be recognized without having to declare his name and who is killed by his mother and his sister as the result of the misunderstanding—this is the subject of the play. Doubtless, it is a very dismal image of human fate. But it can be reconciled with a relative optimism as to man. For, after all, it amounts to saying that everything would have been different if the son had said: “It is I; here is my name.” It amounts to saying that in an unjust or indifferent world man can save himself, and save others, by practicing the most basic sincerity and pronouncing the most appropriate word.
The language shocked too. I knew this. But if I had dressed my characters in peplums, everyone might have applauded. Putting the language of tragedy into the mouths of contemporary characters was, however, my intention. Nothing, indeed, is more difficult, since a language must be found that is natural enough to be spoken by contemporaries and yet sufficiently unusual to suggest the tragic tone. In an effort to approach that ideal I tried to give aloofness to the characters and ambiguity to the dialogues. Thus a member of the audience was to feel simultaneously at home and out of his element. A member of the audience, and the reader. But I am not sure of having achieved the proper dosage.
As for the character of the old manservant, he does not necessarily symbolize fate. When the widow calls upon God at the end, he is the one who replies. But this is perhaps one more misunderstanding. If he answers “No” when she asks him to help her, this is because, in fact, he has no intention of helping her and because at a certain level of suffering or injustice no one can do anything for anyone. Pain is solitary.
Furthermore, I don’t really feel that such explanations are very useful. I still am of the opinion that The Misunderstanding is a work of easy access if only one accepts the language and is willing to grant that the author has deeply committed himself in it. The theater is not a game—that is my conviction.
WHEN State of Siege first opened in Paris, there was no dissenting voice among the critics. Truly, few plays have ever enjoyed such a unanimous slashing. This is the more deplorable since I have never given up thinking that State of Siege, with all its shortcomings, is, of all my writings, the one that most resembles me. Still, the reader is quite free to decide that, however faithful it may be, he doesn’t like that image. But in order to give greater force and freedom to that judgment, I must first challenge certain presumptions. For instance, it is better to know that:
(1) State of Siege is in no sense an adaptation of my novel The Plague. To be sure, I gave that symbolic name to one of my characters. But since he is a dictator, that appellation is correct.
(2) State of Siege is not a play of classical conception. It might better be compared with what were called “moralités” in the French Middle Ages and in Spain “autos sacramentales”—a sort of allegorical drama which staged subjects known to the whole audience in advance. I focused my play on what seems to me the only living religion in the century of tyrants and slaves—I mean liberty. Hence it is utterly useless to accuse my characters of being symbolical. I plead guilty. My avowed aim was to divest the stage of psychological speculations in muffled voices so that it might ring with the loud shouts that today enslave or liberate masses of men. From this point of view alone, I am still convinced that my attempt deserves attention. By the way, this play about liberty is as badly looked upon by dictatorships of the Right as by dictatorships of the Left. Played constantly for years in Germany, it has never been produced either in Spain or behind the Iron Curtain.* Much might still be said about the hidden or obvious intentions of this play. But I wish merely to enlighten my readers’ judgment, not to influence it.
THE JUST ASSASSINS had more luck. It was well received. Sometimes, however, praise, like blame, arises from a misunderstanding. Hence I should like to make clear that:
(1) The events recounted in The Just Assassins are historical, even the surprising interview between the Grand Duchess and her husband’s murderer. One must therefore judge merely the extent to which I managed to give plausibility to what was true.
(2) The form of the play must not mislead the reader. I tried to achieve dramatic tension through classical means—that is, the opposition of characters who were equal in strength and reason. But it would be wrong to conclude that everything balances out and that, in regard to the problem raised here, I recommend doing nothing. My admiration for my heroes, Kaliayev and Dora, is complete. I merely wanted to show that action itself had limits. There is no good and just action but what recognizes those limits and, if it must go beyond them, at least accepts death. Our world of today seems loathsome to us for
