To what extent should we look upon your books, whether they are novels or plays, as symbolic translations of the philosophy of the Absurd? People have often done this. This word “Absurd” has had an unhappy history, and I confess that now it rather annoys me. When I analyzed the feeling of the Absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus, I was looking for a method and not a doctrine. I was practicing methodical doubt. I was trying to make a “tabula rasa,” on the basis of which it would then be possible to construct something.
If we assume that nothing has any meaning, then we must conclude that the world is absurd. But does nothing have a meaning? I have never believed that we could remain at this point. Even as I was writing The Myth of Sisyphus I was thinking about the essay on revolt that I would write later on, in which I would attempt, after having described the different aspects of the feeling of the Absurd, to describe the different attitudes of man in revolt. (That is the title of the book I am completing.)
And then there are new events that enrich or correct what has come to one through observation, the continual lessons life offers, which you have to reconcile with those of your earlier experiences. This is what I have tried to do … though, naturally, I still do not claim to be in possession of any truth. Robert de Luppé seems to have brought out this constant development of your ideas very well in the little book on your work he has just published.
At any rate, it’s a book written in a spirit of sympathetic objectivity, and for this I am grateful to its author. I appreciate the way he has not presented me as a doctrinal writer enslaved to one particular system. What is more complex than the birth of thought? The right explanation is always double, at least. Greece teaches us this, Greece to which we must always return. Greece is both shadow and light. We are well aware, aren’t we, if we come from the South, that the sun has its black side?
The sun that a painter like Jean Marchand likes to bring bursting into his skies? Exactly. René Char has also given very fine expression to this duality. I consider him one of the few French poets who are great today and will still be great tomorrow.… I mean that he is ahead of his time, although he is at one with it. The truth is that it is a hard fate to be born in a pagan land in Christian times. This is my case. I feel closer to the values of the classical world than to those of Christianity. Unfortunately, I cannot go to Delphi to be initiated!
Interview with Gabriel d’Aubarède in Les Nouvelles littéraires, May 10, 1951
§ III Replies to Jean-Claude Brisville2
At what time in your life did you become clearly aware of your vocation as a writer? Vocation is perhaps not the right word. I wanted to be a writer when I was about seventeen, and at the same time I was vaguely aware that I would become one. Were you thinking then of another profession? Teaching. By necessity. But I have always wanted to have a second profession to ensure my freedom to work as a writer.
At the time of The Wrong Side and the Right Side did you have any idea of what your literary future would be? After The Wrong Side and the Right Side I had doubts. I wanted to give up. And then an overwhelming sense of life burst to express itself in me:
I wrote Noces.Do you find it difficult to reconcile your role as a creator with the social role you see yourself obliged to play? Is this an important problem for you? Of course. But our century has reached the point where it gives so derisory or odious a face to “social preoccupations” that it helps us to feel freer in this respect. The fact remains that writing while others are gagged or imprisoned is a delicate undertaking. So as not to fall short, either in one direction or in the other, we have to remember that the writer lives for his work and fights for liberties. Do you feel at ease in your personality as a writer?
Very much at ease in my private relationships. But the public aspect of my calling, which I have never liked, is becoming unbearable. If for any reason you had to give up writing, do you think that you could nevertheless be happy? Would the simple “agreement between the earth and the foot” of which you speak in Caligula be enough to compensate for the happiness of expressing yourself? When I was younger, I could have been happy without writing. Even today I have great gifts for silent happiness. However, I have to acknowledge now that I probably could not live without my art.
Do you think that your early success—the fact of having been considered, whether you wanted it or not, as an “intellectual master” after the publication of The Myth of Sisyphus—has given any particular direction to your work? Do you, in short, think that you would have written the same books if you had composed them in relative obscurity?
Of course, having a reputation changed many things. But, on this point, I have few complexes. My rule has always been a simple one:
refuse all that could be refused quietly; in any case, make no effort to gain either reputation or obscurity. Accept either in silence, if it is to be one or the other, and perhaps accept them both. As to being an “intellectual leader,” it simply makes me laugh. To teach, you need to know. To guide other people, you must know how to guide yourself. Even so, it is true that I have known the servitudes of having a reputation before having written all my books. The most obvious consequence of this is that I have been obliged, and still am obliged, to struggle against society to find time for my work. I manage, but at a high price.
Do you consider the main part of your work as completed? I am forty-five, and have a rather disturbing vitality. Does the development of your work follow a general plan established long in advance, or do you discover this plan while you are actually writing? Both. There is a plan that circumstances, on the one hand, and the actual writing of my books, on the other, tend to modify. What is your method of working?
Notes, scraps of paper, vague musing, and this for years on end. One day, the idea, the conception that causes these scattered fragments to coagulate, comes along. Then the long and painful task of setting everything to order begins. And this task is all the longer because of the immensity of my profound anarchy. Do you feel the need to talk about the work while you are writing it? No. When, once in a while, I happen to talk about it, I am not pleased with myself. When it is completed, do you ask the views of a friend—or do you content yourself with your own opinion?
I have two or three friends who read my manuscripts and note down what they don’t like. Nine times out of ten, they are right, and I make the correction. What, in your work as a writer, is the moment you prefer (the conception, the first draft, the working over of what you have written)? The moment of conception. Do you see any kind of relationship in the artist between the life of the body and his inspiration (or the nature of his work)? If so, what do you think this relationship is?
Physical life in the open air, in the sun, sport, and a proper balance in my body are, for me, the conditions under which I do my best intellectual work. Together (and the two things are connected) with a good timetable. To tell the truth, I rarely find myself in these conditions.
But in any case I know that creation is an intellectual and bodily discipline, a school of energy. I have never achieved anything in anarchy or physical slackness. Do you work regularly?
I try to. When everything is going well: four or five hours at the start of every day. When everything is going badly! …
Do you find fault with yourself when you put your work off to the next day? Yes. I feel guilty. How shall I put it? I don’t like myself. Is there a character in your work of whom you are particularly fond? Marie, Dora, Céleste.3
There seem to be two families of people in your work: the first, illustrated by Caligula, seem to correspond to a taste for powerful individuality; the second, which might be represented by Meursault, correspond to the temptation of self-effacement. Can you recognize this double direction in yourself?
Yes, I have a liking for energy and conquests. But I soon tire of what I have obtained. This is my great weakness. I also have a liking for obscurity, for self-effacement. But the passion for life urges me forward again. In short, I never solve the dilemma.
Which technique—fiction, the theater, or the essay—gives you the most satisfaction as a creator? The alliance of all these techniques
