That’s it. And of course one must add purely personal experiences.
We spoke of inserting a work into its time. But it also belongs to a current of thought that is, in a way, geographical. It strikes me that your work, like that of several contemporary writers—I am thinking particularly of Silone and Ortega y Gasset—can be said to belong to Europe. Are you aware of this and does that intellectual Europe seem to you a reality?
Yes, I am aware of such a Europe and I believe it foreshadows our political future. The more French I feel, the more I believe this. No one is more closely attached to his Algerian province than I, and yet I have no trouble feeling a part of French tradition.
Consequently, I learned, as naturally as we learn to breathe, that love of one’s native land can broaden without dying. And, finally, it is because I love my country that I feel European. Just take for example Ortega y Gasset, whom you were right to mention. He is perhaps the greatest of European writers after Nietzsche, and yet it would be hard to be more Spanish. Silone speaks to all of Europe, and the reason I feel so close to him is that he is also so unbelievably rooted in his national and even provincial tradition.
Unity and diversity, and never one without the other—isn’t this the very secret of our Europe? Europe has lived on its contradictions, flourished on its differences, and, constantly transcending itself thereby, has created a civilization on which the whole world depends even when rejecting it. This is why I do not believe in a Europe unified under the weight of an ideology or of a technocracy that would overlook these differences. Any more than I believe in a Europe left to its differences alone—in other words, left to an anarchy of enemy nationalisms.
If Europe is not destroyed by fire, it will come into being. And Russia will in time be added to it, with its individual differences. It will take more than Mr. Khrushchev to make me forget what links us to Tolstoy, to Dostoevsky, and to their people. But that future is threatened by war. Let me repeat, this is our wager. But it is one of the few wagers worth accepting.
You are an Algerian French writer. This is indeed what you made a point of emphasizing when you were awarded the Nobel Prize. But when you are aware of being an Algerian Frenchman, certainly you are not defining yourself by opposition to Algerians not of French origin. Albert Camus, a Frenchman from Algeria—doesn’t this mean that you feel a solidarity with all Algerians? How can this be and how does that Algeria fit into the spiritual Europe to which you are also aware of belonging?
My role in Algeria never has been and never will be to divide, but rather to use whatever means I have to unite. I feel a solidarity with everyone, French or Arab, who is suffering today in the misfortune of my country. But I cannot all alone rebuild what so many men persist in destroying. I have done what I could. I shall begin again when there is again a chance of helping to rebuild an Algeria freed from all hatreds and all forms of racism.
But, to limit ourselves to the domain we have chosen, I merely want to remind you that, simply by virtue of a generous interchange and a real solidarity, we have built up a community of Algerian writers, both French and Arab writers. That community is cut in two, for the time being. But men like Feraoun, Mammeri, Chraïbi, Dib, and so many others have taken their place among European writers. Whatever the future may be, and however dark it looks to me, I am sure that this cannot be forgotten.
Frequently when speaking of French culture you have used the word “rebirth.” Not only do you wish for it, but it also seems that at times you perceive its first promise. What may be the form of that rebirth? What are the signs of it?
The change in generations taking place on all levels is one of the first signs. The quality of the new generation is another, as well as the increasing unwillingness to adopt slogans or ideologies and the return to less pretentious and more tangible values.
Europe (and France) has not yet emerged from fifty years of nihilism. But the moment people begin rejecting the mystifications on which that nihilism is based, then hope is possible. The whole question is to know whether or not we shall develop faster than the rocket with a nuclear warhead. And, unfortunately, the fruits of the spirit are slower to ripen than intercontinental missiles. But, after all, since atomic war would divest any future of its meaning, it gives us complete freedom of action. We have nothing to lose except everything. So let’s go ahead. This is the wager of our generation. If we are to fail, it is better, in any case, to have stood on the side of those who choose life than on the side of those who are destroying.
In all your work there coexist philosophical pessimism and, nonetheless, not optimism but a sort of confidence. Confidence in the spirit rather than in man, in nature rather than in the universe, in action rather than in its results. Do you think this attitude—which is that of the rebel, for the value of the revolt makes up for the world’s absurdity—can be adopted by the majority or is it condemned to remain the privilege of a few wise men?
Is that position really so special? And do not the men of today, threatened and yet resisting, live in this manner? We stifle and yet survive, we think we are dying of grief and yet life wins out. The men of our time, whom we encounter in the streets, show in their faces that they know. The only difference is that some of them show more courage. Besides, we have no choice.
It is either that or nihilism. If our societies must plunge into nihilism, whether totalitarian or bourgeois, then those individuals who refuse to give in will stand apart, and they must accept this. But in their place and within their means, they must do what is necessary so that all can live together again.
Personally, I have never wanted to stand apart. For the man of today there is a sort of solitude, which is certainly the harshest thing our era forces upon us. I feel its weight, believe me. But, nevertheless, I should not want to change eras, for I also know and respect the greatness of this one. Moreover, I have always thought that the maximum danger implied the maximum hope.
One cannot avoid tackling certain subjects today. The most serious one is a problem for all men: in the struggles dividing the world today, must we really be willing to forget all that is bad on one side to fight what is worse on the other?
Before he died in combat in the last war, Richard Hilary found the phrase that sums up this dilemma: “We were fighting a lie in the name of a half-truth.” He thought he was expressing a very pessimistic idea. But one may even have to fight a lie in the name of a quarter-truth. This is our situation at present. However, the quarter-truth contained in Western society is called liberty. And liberty is the way, and the only way, of perfectibility.
Without liberty heavy industry can be perfected, but not justice or truth. Our most recent history, from Berlin to Budapest, ought to convince us of this. In any case, it is the reason for my choice. I have said in this very place that none of the evils totalitarianism claims to remedy is worse than totalitarianism itself. I have not changed my mind. On the contrary, after twenty years of our harsh history, during which I have tried to accept every experience it offered, liberty ultimately seems to me, for societies and for individuals, for labor and for culture, the supreme good that governs all others.
CREATE DANGEROUSLY
(Lecture given at the University of Uppsala in December 1957)
AN ORIENTAL wise man always used to ask the divinity in his prayers to be so kind as to spare him from living in an interesting era. As we are not wise, the divinity has not spared us and we are living in an interesting era. In any case, our era forces us to take an interest in it. The writers of today know this. If they speak up, they are criticized and attacked. If they become modest and keep silent, they are vociferously blamed for their silence.
In the midst of such din the writer cannot hope to remain
