That would be saying a great deal. But I sometimes feel that I could have been an actor and been satisfied with this profession. To what values in a work of art—and especially in a literary work of art— are you most sensitive?
Truth. And the artistic values that reflect it. Is there a theme in your work that you think is important and that you consider has been neglected by your commentators? Humor.
How do you look on the part of your work which is already completed? I don’t reread it. It is dead for me. I would like, I want, to do something else. What, in your view, distinguishes the creator?
The ability to renew himself. He always says the same thing, no doubt, but he tirelessly renews the forms in which he says it. He has a horror of rhymes. Which writers have formed you—or, at least, have helped you to become aware of what you wanted to say?
Among the moderns: Grenier, Malraux, Montherlant. Among classical writers: Pascal, Molière. Nineteenth-century Russian literature. The Spanish writers. What importance do you attribute to the plastic arts?
I would have liked to be a sculptor. Sculpture for me is the greatest of arts.
And music?
When I was young, I used to get drunk on it. Nowadays, very few musicians move me. But Mozart still does.
What do you think of the cinema?
And you?
There are often misunderstandings in the way artists are admired. What is the compliment that annoys you the most?
Honesty, conscience, humanity—you know, all the modern mouthwashes.
What, in your view, is the most marked feature of your character? That depends on the day. But, often, a kind of blind, heavy obstinacy. Which human characteristic do you value highest?
There is a mixture of intelligence and courage, which is fairly rare, that I like very much.
Your last hero, the narrator in The Fall, seems discouraged. Does he express what you feel at the present moment?
My hero is indeed discouraged, and this is why, as a good modern nihilist, he exalts servitude. Have I chosen to exalt servitude? You once wrote: “Secret of my universe: imagine God without the immortality of the soul.” Can you define more exactly what you meant? Yes. I have a sense of the sacred and I don’t believe in a future life, that’s all.
Is the simple pleasure of being alive, and the dispersion which it implies, threatened, in your view, by a vocation—an artistic one, for example—and by the discipline it demands?
Yes, unfortunately. I like burning, active days, a free life.… And this is why discipline is hard, and necessary. And this is why it is good to escape from it sometimes.
Have you a rule for living—or do you improvise, according to the circumstances and your reactions at the time?
I make strict rules for myself, in order to correct my nature. It is my nature in the end that I obey. The result is by no means brilliant. What, for example, was your first reaction to the personal attacks directed against you in the press after the award of the Nobel Prize?
Oh, first of all, I felt hurt. When a man has never asked for anything in his life, and is then suddenly subjected to excessive praise and excessive blame, both praise and blame are equally painful. And then I soon rediscovered the notion I normally rely on whenever things go against me: that this was in the order of things. Do you know the remark of a man who was a great solitary being in spite of himself? “They have no love for me. Is this a reason for not blessing them?” No, everything that happens to me is good, in a sense. Besides, these noisy events are essentially secondary.
What wish would you make, at this stage in your life?
“Within a superabundance of life-giving and restoring forces, even misfortunes have a sunlike glow and engender their own consolation.” This remark of Nietzsche’s is true, and I have experienced it myself. And all I ask is that this strength and this superabundance should be given to me again, even if infrequently.…
La Bibliothèque Idéale, Gallimard, 1959
1 One shouldn’t put too much stock in these cutting remarks. Camus expressed himself very thoughtfully on Kafka in The Myth of Sisyphus. According to René Char, Camus remained deeply troubled, even obsessed, by Kafka, and near the end of his life rendered him unlimited homage.
—Roger Quilliot, note from p. 1342, Pléiade II.
2 J.-C. Brisville, a writer of whom Camus had a high opinion, is a critic and novelist, and reader for the publishing house of Julliard. His study of Camus in the collection entitled “La
Bibliothèque idéale” was published by Gallimard in 1959.
3 Marie is Meursault’s mistress in The Stranger. Dora is Kaliayev’s mistress in The Just. Céleste is the owner of the little restaurant where Meursault takes his meals. When Meursault is on trial for shooting the Arab, Céleste tries to defend him by showing how good a person he is, but can say nothing but: “He is a man.” (See “Summer in Algiers,” this page) —P.T.
The end
