It is rather difficult to say. But I can remember how overwhelmed I was by a book written by a young man and lent to me by Jean Grenier. It was called La Douleur, by André de Richaud. You must understand that this shock took place in the life of a very young man. At the time, I read everything, even Marcel Prévost. But Richaud, in La Douleur, talked about things I knew: he depicted poor areas; he described the nostalgias I had felt. I saw, while reading his book, that I too might perhaps have something personal to express. You spoke of Jean Grenier. I believe he was your teacher in the Lycée d’Alger.
Yes, Grenier gave me the taste for philosophical meditation; he guided my reading. Both in style and by sensibility, he is one of our leading writers. Perhaps we should be sorry that his modesty, and a certain detachment, prevent him from showing himself more frequently. But the fact remains that Les Iles is an admirable book. And what a marvelous friend, always bringing you back to the essential, in spite of yourself. Grenier was my teacher, and still is.
The highly classical purity of your art has often made me think that Gide was your master as well. He reigned over my youth—while Grenier nonetheless remained the keeper of the garden—Gide, or to be more accurate, the Malraux-Gide conjunction … Montherlant also affected me very deeply at that time. Not only by the ascendancy of his style: Service inutile is a book that moved me.… As for the earlier writers, the ones you go back to when you are tired of reading your contemporaries, it is Tolstoi I most like to reread nowadays.
There is an anguish in Tolstoi and a tragic sense doubtless less spectacular than Dostoevski’s, but which I persist in finding overwhelming since it remained his own fate until the very end: of the two, it was Dostoevski after all who died in his own bed.… You yourself are often thought of as riddled with anguish. You are seen as a pessimistic writer. What do you think of this weighty reputation?
First of all that I very obviously do not adopt the opposite attitude. Comfortable optimism surely seems like a bad joke in today’s world. Having said this, I am not one of those who proclaim that the world is hurtling toward its doom. I do not believe in the final collapse of our civilization. I believe—without, of course, nursing anything but … reasonable illusions on this subject—that a renaissance is possible. If the world were hurtling toward its doom, we would have to blame apocalyptic modes of thought. Not every pose horrifies me. But I have no sympathy at all for that of poète maudit.
When I do happen to look for what is most fundamental in me, what I find is a taste for happiness. I have a very keen liking for people. I have no contempt for the human race. I think that one can feel proud of being the contemporary of a certain number of men of our day whom I respect and admire.… At the center of my work there is an invincible sun. It seems to me that all this does not make up a very sad philosophy? Not sad. Grave and concerned. How could this fail to be the case, when one is as sensitive as you are to the drama of our century?
I am, in fact, very sensitive to it, and perhaps it is this sensitivity which has led me to write books which are, up to now, “blacker” than I would have liked. But it is also this sensitivity which has given you the attention and trust of a large section of young people. In turn, the new generation looks on you today as one of its masters …
(This time, the author of The Plague laughs out loud.) A master, already! But I don’t claim to teach anybody! Whoever thinks this is mistaken. The problems confronting young people today are the same ones confronting me, that is all. And I am far from having solved them. I therefore do not think that I have any right to play the role you mention.…
What are young people looking for? Certainties. I haven’t many to offer them. All I can say definitely is that there is a certain order of degradation I shall always refuse. I think this is something they feel. Those who trust me know that I will never lie to them. As to the young people who ask others to think for them, we must say “No” to them in the clearest possible terms.
That is all I have to say. Let us go back to your own formation. You acknowledge having learned from André Gide. But which André Gide? For there are several, are there not? And in any case there are no traces in your work, which never gives away secrets about your own life, of the Gide of “Si le grain ne meurt” or the Journals.
Well, my cult was directed above all to the artist, the master of modern classicism, let us say to the Gide of the Prétextes. Being fully aware of the anarchy of my nature, I need to give myself limits in art. Gide taught me how to do this. His conception of classicism as a romanticism brought under control is something I share. As for his deep respect for artistic matters, I agree with him completely. For I have the highest possible idea of art. I place it too high ever to agree to subject it to anything.
Then I shall not have to ask Albert Camus what is by now the ritual question on “committed” literature. You have just heard his reply. But immediately, with that care for accuracy which characterizes him, both a scruple and a taste for nuance:
Nevertheless, I do not want to defend aesthetic ideas and artistic forms that are out of date. The writer who allows himself to be fascinated by the political Gorgon is doubtless making a mistake. But it is also a mistake to pass over the social problems of our time in silence.… And besides, it would be quite useless to run away from them: turn your back on the Gorgon, and it starts to move.… What, in fact, is the aim of every creative artist? To depict the passions of his day.
In the seventeenth century, the passions of love were at the forefront of people’s minds. But today, the passions of our century are collective passions, because society is in disorder.
Artistic creation, instead of removing us from the drama of our time, is one of the means we are given of bringing it closer. Totalitarian regimes are well aware of this, since they consider us their first enemies. Isn’t it obvious that everything which destroys art aims to strengthen ideologies that make men unhappy? Artists are the only people who have never harmed the world. Would you say the same of philosophers?
The evil geniuses of contemporary Europe bore the label of philosopher: they are Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche. Nietzsche? I thought he was one of your spiritual ancestors? He is, undoubtedly. What is admirable, in Nietzsche, is that you always find in him something to correct what is dangerous elsewhere in his ideas. I place him infinitely higher than the two others.
We are living in their Europe, the Europe they have made. When we have reached the final stage in their logic, we will remember that another tradition exists; one that has never denied what makes man’s grandeur. Fortunately, there is a light that we Mediterraneans have known how to keep lit. If Europe were to reject certain values of the Mediterranean world—moderation, for example, true moderation, which has nothing to do with the more comfortable variety—can you imagine what the results would be?
They are in fact visible already. Yes, of course, the Mediterranean has its word to say at this tragic juncture. But isn’t it too detached to assume such a role, too skeptical? It was, until it was afflicted with its own truths. It is far less detached and skeptical today, now that it is stifling in a barbarous Europe.
I am judging, it is true, as a Mediterranean from North Africa, which is a harder and a harsher earth than your Provence. But equally fecund in new talents, it seems to me. Indeed. It’s a regular nest of singing birds: The generation before ours did not know even how to read.
And now we have an Audisio, a Roblès, a Jules Roy, a de Fréminville, a Rosfelder, a Pierre Millecan, etc., and a young author who is going to make his debut with Gallimard, with a very curious novel. Fruits grow quickly there. Of course, it was the country of Jugurtha and Saint Augustine. A singularly explosive mixture, don’t you think?
Let us come back to sad Europe. I am thinking of certain European novelists many people will be surprised not to have heard you name among your intellectual mentors. The Czech writer, Franz Kafka, for example, the great painter of the absurd.
I look upon Kafka as a very great storyteller. But it would be wrong to say that he has influenced me. If a painter of the Absurd has played a role in my idea of literary art, it is the author of the admirable Moby Dick, the American, Melville.… I think that what repels me a little in Kafka is the fantastic element. I
