Three Interviews, Albert Camus
Three Interviews
§ I No, I am not an existentialist …
“No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked. We have even thought of publishing a short statement in which the undersigned declare that they have nothing in common with each other and refuse to be held responsible for the debts they might respectively incur. It’s a joke, actually.
Sartre and I published all our books, without exception, before we had ever met. When we did get to know each other, it was to realize how much we differed. Sartre is an existentialist, and the only book of ideas that I have published, The Myth of Sisyphus, was directed against the so-called existentialist philosophers.
Sartre and I do not believe in God, it is true. And we don’t believe in absolute rationalism either. But neither do Jules Romains, Malraux, Stendhal, Paul de Kock, the Marquis de Sade, André Gide, Alexandre Dumas, Montaigne, Eugène Sue, Molière, Saint-Evremond, the Cardinal de Retz, or André Breton.
Must we put all these people in the same school? But we had better leave this aside. After all, I don’t see why I should apologize for being interested in those who live outside Grace. It is high time we began concerning ourselves with them, since they are the most numerous.
Doesn’t a philosophy that insists upon the absurdity of the world run the risk of driving people to despair? All I can do is reply on my own behalf, realizing that what I say is relative. Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful. An analysis of the idea of revolt could help us to discover ideas capable of restoring a relative meaning to existence, although a meaning that would always be in danger.
Revolt takes a different form in every individual. Would it be possible to pacify it with notions valid for everyone?
… Yes, because if there is one fact that these last five years have brought out, it is the extreme solidarity of men with one another. Solidarity in crime for some, solidarity in the upsurge of resistance in others. Solidarity even between victims and executioners. When a Czech was shot, the life of a grocer in the rue de Beaune was in jeopardy. The individualism of the French makes it difficult for them to have a real experience of this solidarity.
That remains to be proved. And besides, in a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among men, a greater sincerity. We must achieve this or perish. To do so, certain conditions must be fulfilled: men must be frank (falsehood confuses things), free (communication is impossible with slaves). Finally, they must feel a certain justice around them.
You wrote in “The Myth of Sisyphus”: “A man without hope, and conscious of this condition, no longer belongs to the future.” Since you do not believe that men can escape into religion, are you not afraid that young people today will be led into a dangerous neglect of action? If it were not possible nowadays to live or act without reference to God, then perhaps a very great number of people in the West would be condemned to sterility. Young people know this very well.
And if I feel so great a solidarity with so many students, for example, it is because we are all confronted with the same problem, and because I am confident that, like me, they want to solve it by trying to act more effectively and to serve man. Since you know young people so well, does this mean that you have been a teacher?
Never. But to continue my studies, I had to work at a number of jobs. I sold spare parts for automobiles, worked in a meteorological office, in a shipping firm, and in a préfecture. I was an actor (I belonged to a company that performed for a fortnight each month, and during the rest of the time I prepared my licence), and, finally, I worked as a journalist, which gave me the chance to travel.
To write after having had a number of jobs is more usual in America than in France. Your first novel, The Stranger, recalls certain works by Faulkner and Steinbeck. Is this simply coincidence?
No. But the technique of the American novel seems to me to lead to a dead end. I used it in The Stranger, it is true. But this was because it suited my purpose, which was to describe a man with no apparent awareness of his existence. By generalizing this particular technique, we would end up with a universe of automatons and instincts.
It would be a considerable impoverishment. That is why, although I appreciate the real value of the American novel, I would give a hundred Hemingways for one Stendhal or one Benjamin Constant. And I regret the influence of this literature on many young writers.
You are nevertheless considered a revolutionary writer. I don’t know what that means. If it is revolutionary to ask oneself questions about one’s art, then perhaps … but I cannot imagine literature without style. I know of only one revolution in art; it belongs to all ages, and consists of the exact adjustment of form to subject matter, of language to theme. From this point of view, I love, deeply, only the great classical French literature. It is true that I include here Saint-Evremond and the works of the Marquis de Sade. It is also true that I exclude certain academicians, both present and past.
What are your projects? A novel about the plague, an essay on man in revolt. And perhaps I ought to make my mind up to study existentialism … An interview with Jeanine Delpech, in Les Nouvelles littéraires, November 15, 1945
§ II Encounter with Albert Camus
Albert Camus, who is still a young writer, is considered one of the intellectual leaders of the younger generation. However, I will say at once that not for a moment when I was with him did he seem to have the strained look of a Master or a director of consciences. I will even go so far as to say that he seemed very little interested in such matters. “I am often depicted as an austere character,” he told me, not without the kind of irony that breaks almost imperceptibly through the gravity of his writings.
There is also a discreet smile on his tormented face, a high, wrinkled forehead beneath very dark, crisp hair, a manly, North African face that has grown paler in our climate. A discreet but frequent smile, and his rather deep voice is not afraid of humorous inflexions.
The world was not hostile to me at first. I had a happy childhood … Happy in its poverty, in spite of its poverty. Born in a village in the province of Constantine, Mondovici, the birthplace of General Juin, he was only a year old when his mother, widowed in the First World War, took him to Algiers where she had to work hard to bring up her two sons.
Nevertheless, he will never hear an envious or a bitter word. So that he doesn’t know what envy or bitterness are like. He feels himself rich in natural bounty. In Africa, of course, this is easier. He enjoys the sun and the sea, lives happily in the street or on the beach, until the day when he allows himself to be convinced of the usefulness of acquiring knowledge. He studies at the Lycée d’Alger, has to take a number of jobs in order to carry on up to the licence. He even works as an actor …
I have had my share of difficult experiences. However, I did not begin my life with a feeling of anguish. Similarly, I did not go in for literature scorning or sneering of it, as many people do, but with admiration. How did you first get the urge to write? Can you remember the first feeling?
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
