Albert Camus is the representative. Albert Camus - famous French writer and philosopher
(1913-1960) French writer and philosopher
Albert Camus belonged to that rare type of writers who are called moralists. However, Camus's morality is of a special kind. The deep meaning of the works of the French writer is difficult to understand without familiarity with the philosophical system that underlies them. This philosophy is called existentialism, that is, the philosophy of existence.
Existentialists believed that a person is alone in a strange and terrible world, which presses on him from all sides, limits his freedom, forces him to obey invented conventions, and therefore does not allow him to become an independent and free person. This gives rise to sentiments of pessimism and the tragedy of existence, which in itself is meaningless, since everything ends in the death of a person.
True, existentialists gave a person the right to free choice, however, in their opinion, it was limited to only two options: to completely merge with society, to become like everyone else, or to remain oneself, which means opposing oneself to all other people.
Albert Camus chooses the second, although he understands the pointlessness of rebellion against social orders, no matter how absurd they may be.
The main character in Albert Camus, as well as in other existentialist philosophers, many of whom were also writers, is a man who is in a borderline situation - on the verge of life and death. These suffering and despairing people become the subject of the writer’s study. In such situations, all a person’s feelings become even more acute, and, conveying the emotional state of his hero, the writer shows that all these feelings - fear, conscience, care, responsibility, loneliness - are the main thing that accompanies a person throughout his life.
Camus did not immediately become such a writer, although tragic motives appeared in his early works. His characters try to enjoy life before it’s too late, constantly feeling that their existence will end sooner or later. This is the basis of the writer’s favorite aphorism: “Without despair in life there is no love for life.”
It is difficult to say what in the life of Albert Camus shaped his worldview, although life did not spoil him. Perhaps this was the main reason for the writer’s pessimism.
Albert Camus was born on November 7, 1913 on the Saint Paul farm, in the suburbs of Mondovi, in the Algerian department of Constantine. His father was French agricultural worker Lucien Camus, and his mother was Spanish Catherine Santes. The boy was not even a year old when his father was mortally wounded in the Battle of the Marne and died in hospital. To raise two sons, Lucien and Albert, the mother moved to the outskirts of Algiers and got a job as a cleaner. The family lived literally on pennies, but Albert managed to graduate with honors from Bellecourt elementary school.
A schoolteacher, who also fought on the Marne, secured a scholarship for the gifted boy at the Algerian Lycée Bugeaud. Here Albert Camus became truly interested in philosophy and became friends with the teacher of philosophy and literature, Jean Grenier, who studied religious existentialism. Obviously, he had a decisive influence on the worldview of the young Camus.
In the midst of his studies at the Lyceum, the young man fell ill with tuberculosis, this disease of poverty and deprivation. Since then, the disease has not left him, and Albert Camus had to undergo regular courses of treatment.
It was then at the Lyceum that he first read Dostoevsky, who became his favorite writer until the end of his life. Camus begins to keep diary entries and, on the advice of J. Grenier, tries to write himself. His first works are “Jean Rictus. Poet of Poverty”, “On Music”, “Philosophy of the Century” and others were published in the Lyceum magazine “South” in 1932. In the same year, Camus wrote literary and philosophical essays “Delusion”, “Doubt”, “The Temptation of Lies”, “Return to Oneself”, the names of which speak for themselves.
In the fall of 1932, he entered the Faculty of Philology at the University of Algiers, where he began to study ancient Greek philosophy. There, a philosophy course was taught by his mentor J. Grenier, with whom Albert Camus continued to maintain warm relations. In addition to ancient philosophy, he reads a lot of modern philosophers and is increasingly imbued with their way of thinking.
In his second year, when he was twenty years old, Camus married a student of his own department, Simone Guie. He and his wife spend the summer of next year in the Balearic Islands, and Albert Camus later described these happy days in his book “The Inside and the Face.”
During his student years, Albert was actively involved in public life. He tries to remake the world and writes in his diary: “I was halfway between poverty and the sun. Poverty prevented me from believing that all is well in history and under the sun, the sun taught me that history is not everything.” The study of ancient philosophers helped Albert Camus understand that human history has always been unfortunate, largely due to the fact that the world is ruled by selfish people. In his younger years, he was still a dreamer, so he thought that through common efforts, together with other “champions of honor,” he would be able to change the existing situation. He began to engage in educational work and in 1935 organized a traveling Theater of Labor, where he tried himself as a director, as a playwright, and as an actor. This theater staged plays by Russian authors, in particular, “The Stone Guest” by Pushkin, “At the Lower Depths” by Gorky, and a dramatization of “The Brothers Karamazov” by Dostoevsky.
Even earlier, Albert Camus took an active part in the work of the committee for promoting the international movement "Amsterdam-Pleyel" in defense of culture against fascism and in the fall of 1934 he joined the Algerian section of the French Communist Party.
In 1936, Albert Camus, along with his wife, as well as his university friend and co-author of the play “Revolt in Asturias,” Bourgeois, went on a trip to Central Europe, which he later described in his essay “With Death in the Soul.” When they were in Austria, they learned from the newspapers about the fascist uprising in Spain. This tragic news was mixed with personal troubles. Camus quarreled with his wife and then traveled alone. Returning to Algeria through Italy, Camus divorced his wife and, impressed by the adversity that befell him, began work on his main works - “The Myth of Sisyphus”, the novels “A Happy Death” and “The Stranger”.
Albert Camus himself called his philosophical work “The Myth of Sisyphus” “an essay on the absurd.” It is based on the famous ancient Greek legend about the eternal worker Sisyphus, who was doomed to eternal torment by the vengeful gods. He had to roll a piece of rock up the mountain, but, barely reaching the top, the block broke off, and he had to start all over again. Camus shows his Sisyphus as a wise and courageous hero who understands the injustice of his lot, but does not beg the gods for mercy, but despises them. Thus, while carrying out his seemingly meaningless work, Sisyphus does not give up and, with his spiritual rebellion, challenges the executioners.
The worsening of tuberculosis prevented Albert Camus from traveling to Spain to take part in the defense of the republic. And in the same year, 1937, another unpleasant event occurred. After graduating from university, Camus wanted to engage in scientific work, but due to health reasons he was not allowed to take competitive exams in philosophy, which blocked his path to obtaining an academic degree.
He soon became disillusioned with communist ideals and left the Communist Party, but continued to collaborate in the left-wing press. In 1938, he began working for the newspaper of the Parisian publisher Pascal Pyat, Algerepubliken (Republican Algeria), where he wrote a literary chronicle and other sections. In the same year, Albert Camus wrote the philosophical drama “Caligula” and thoroughly began writing the novel “The Stranger,” interspersing this work with writing essays, notes, and journalistic articles. By that time, his essay “Dostoevsky and Suicide” dates back, which, under the name “Kirillov”, was included in “The Myth of Sisyphus”, in addition, he wrote the famous pamphlet “Dialogue between the Chairman of the State Council and an employee with a monthly salary of 1200 francs”, which indicates that Camus was still characterized by rebellious sentiments, although he increasingly understood the futility of the struggle against the existing order. While still working on The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus came up with another of his favorite aphorisms: “The only truth is disobedience.”
However, unlike his hero Sisyphus, the writer not only silently despises the powers that be - he tries to openly fight them. In 1939, a trial in the Gaudin case took place in Algeria, at which the writer defended the unjustly accused small clerk, a Frenchman, and seven Arab farm laborers, as a result of which they were acquitted. In the same year, Albert Camus defended Muslim agricultural workers who were accused of organizing arson. He signs his reports from the courtroom with the pseudonym Meursault, which will become the name of the main character of his novel The Stranger.
In the spring of 1940, Albert Camus left for Oran, where, together with his future wife Francine Faure, he gave private lessons. But a month later he received an invitation from Pascal Pyat to work in his newspaper Paris-Soir (Evening Paris) and immediately left for Paris. However, he did not have to work quietly: in the summer of 1940, France was occupied by Nazi Germany, and before the Germans entered Paris, the editorial office of Paris-Soir moved to the small town of Clermont-Ferrand, and then to Lyon. Francine Faure came here to visit Camus, and at the end of the year they got married.
After the occupation of all of France, Camus had to travel for several years along the “roads of defeat.” He worked in Marseille, then went to Oran, from where he returned to France. Here Camus joined the ranks of the French Resistance and became involved in the work of the underground organization "Comba" ("Struggle").
During the years of occupation, Albert Camus collected intelligence data for the partisans and worked in the illegal press, where in 1943-1944. His “Letters to a German Friend” were published - a philosophical and journalistic rebuke to those who tried to justify the atrocities of the Nazis. When an uprising occurred in Paris in August 1944, Camus found himself at the head of the Combat newspaper. At that time he was experiencing a real boom. Several of his plays, in particular "The Misunderstanding" and "Caligula", where Gerard Philip played the main role, were staged in theaters. Two twins were born into the family of Albert Camus. Paris was liberated from occupation, and on the pages of the newspaper the writer called for the establishment of a system in France that would allow “to reconcile freedom and justice” and to open access to power only to those who are honest and care about the welfare of others. But at thirty he turned out to be the same dreamer as he was at twenty. Counting on universal brotherhood, which helped during the war, Camus did not take into account the fact that people with different interests united only during times of danger. And when she passed, everything fell into place; in any case, Camus with his calls for honesty and justice was again not heard.
The ensuing disappointment once again confirmed the writer’s belief that society lives according to its own laws, which individual honest people cannot change, so one must either adapt to them, or remain oneself, showing “spiritual disobedience.”
By this time, Albert Camus had already become a world famous writer. His novel “The Outsider,” which was published back in 1942, gained enormous popularity. In it, Camus expressed his long-sought idea that a person who does not want to be a hypocrite and conform to generally accepted standards is a stranger, an “outsider” in this world of universal lies.
However, Albert Camus has unlimited faith in the power of his literary word and continues to fight alone. In 1947, his next novel, “The Plague,” was published, in which he describes a terrible plague epidemic that broke out in one city. However, the title makes readers remember the phrase “brown plague,” as fascism was called, and the writer’s remark that “the plague, like war, always took people by surprise,” leaves no doubt that this novel is directed against fascism.
In 1951, Albert Camus published the philosophical pamphlet “The Rebel Man,” in which he sharply criticized communist ideals. However, the further, the more Camus feels that he is trapped in his own denial of everything. He protests, but this changes little, although the writer is already called the “conscience of the West.” Camus travels a lot - throughout the USA, South American countries, Greece, Italy, and other countries, but everywhere he observes the same thing.
In his speech when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on December 10, 1957, Albert Camus admitted that he was too firmly tied to the “gallery of his time” to so easily refuse not to “row with others, even though he believed that the galley stank of herring.” “that there are too many overseers on it and that, above all, the wrong course has been taken.”
In the last year before his unexpected death, Albert Camus almost stopped writing, he thought about taking up directing and had already tried to stage, but not his plays, but stage adaptations of “Requiem for a Nun” by W. Faulkner and “Demons” by F. Dostoevsky. However, he was unable to find new support for himself in life. On January 4, 1960, while returning to Paris after the Christmas holidays, Albert Camus died in a car accident.
The famous writer and philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, with whom Camus had many connections - both friendship and enmity, said in his farewell speech: “Camus represented in our century - and in the dispute against current history - today's heir to the ancient breed of those moralists whose work represents is probably the most original line in French literature. His stubborn humanism, narrow and pure, stern and sensual, waged a battle of doubtful outcome against the crushing and ugly trends of the era.”
Years of life: from 07.11.1913 to 04.01.1960
French writer and philosopher, existentialist, Nobel Prize winner in literature.
Albert Camus was born on November 7, 1913 in Algeria, on the San Pol farm near the town of Mondovi. When the writer's father died in the Battle of the Marne at the beginning of the First World War, his mother moved with the children to the city of Algiers.
In Algeria, after graduating from primary school, Camus studied at the lyceum, where he was forced to interrupt his studies for a year in 1930 due to tuberculosis.
In 1932-1937 studied at the University of Algiers, where he studied philosophy. On the advice of Grenier at the university, Camus began keeping diaries and writing essays, influenced by the philosophy of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. During his senior years at the university, he became interested in socialist ideas and in the spring of 1935 joined the French Communist Party and conducts propaganda activities among Muslims. He was a member of the local branch of the French Communist Party for more than a year, until he was expelled for connections with the Algerian People's Party, accusing him of “Trotskyism.”
In 1937, Camus graduated from the university, having defended his thesis in philosophy on the topic “Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism.” Camus wanted to continue his academic activities, but due to health reasons he was denied postgraduate studies, for the same reason he was later not drafted into the army.
After graduating from university, Camus briefly headed the Algiers House of Culture and then headed some left-wing opposition newspapers that were closed by military censorship after the outbreak of World War II. During these years, Camus wrote a lot, mainly essays and journalistic materials. In January 1939, the first version of the play “Caligula” was written.
Having lost his job as an editor, Camus moved with his wife to Oran, where they earned a living by giving private lessons, and at the beginning of the war he moved to Paris.
In May 1940, Camus completed work on the novel The Stranger. In December, Camus, not wanting to live in an occupied country, returns to Oran, where he teaches French at a private school. In February 1941, The Myth of Sisyphus was completed.
Soon Camus joined the ranks of the Resistance Movement, became a member of the underground organization Combat, and returned to Paris.
In 1943, he met and participated in productions of his plays (in particular, it was Camus who first uttered the phrase “Hell is others” from the stage).
After the end of the war, Camus continued to work at Combat; his previously written works were published, which brought the writer popularity, but in 1947 his gradual break with the leftist movement and personally with Sartre began. As a result, Camus leaves Combe and becomes an independent journalist - he writes journalistic articles for various publications (later published in three collections called “Topical Notes”).
In the fifties, Camus gradually abandoned his socialist ideas, condemned the policies of Stalinism and the connivance of the French socialists towards this, which led to an even greater break with his former comrades and, in particular, with Sartre.
At this time, Camus became increasingly fascinated by the theater; in 1954, the writer began staging plays based on his own dramatizations, and was negotiating the opening of the Experimental Theater in Paris. In 1956, Camus wrote the story “The Fall,” and the following year a collection of short stories, “Exile and the Kingdom,” was published.
In 1957, Camus received the Nobel Prize for Literature. In his acceptance speech, he said that he was “too firmly chained to the galley of his time not to row with others, even though he believed that the galley stank of herring, that it had too many overseers and that, above all, it had taken the wrong course.” In the last years of his life, Camus wrote practically nothing.
On January 4, 1960, Albert Camus died in a car accident while returning from Provence to Paris. The writer died instantly. The writer's death occurred at approximately 13:54. Michel Gallimard, who was also in the car, died in hospital two days later, but the writer's wife and daughter survived. . Albert Camus was buried in the town of Lourmarin in the Luberon region in the south of France. In November 2009, French President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed transferring the writer's ashes to the Pantheon.
In 1936, Camus created the amateur “People's Theater”, organized, in particular, a production of “The Brothers Karamazov” based on Dostoevsky, where he himself played Ivan Karamazov.
Writer's Awards
1957 - in literature “For his enormous contribution to literature, highlighting the importance of human conscience”
Bibliography
(1937)
(1939)
(1942)
(1942)
(1944]early edition – 1941)
Misunderstanding (1944)
(1947)
State of Siege (1948)
Letters to a German Friend (1948) under the pseudonym Louis Nieuville)
The Righteous (1949)
Topical Notes, Book 1 (1950)
(1951)
Topical Notes, Book 2 (1953)
Summer (1954)
(1956)
Requiem for a Nun (1956) adaptation of the novel by William Faulkner)
Exile and Kingdom (1957)
(1957)
Topical Notes, Book 3 (1958)
Demons (1958) adaptation of the novel by F. M. Dostoevsky)
Diaries, May 1935 - February 1942
Diaries, January 1942 - March 1951
Diaries, March 1951 - December 1959
Happy death (1936-1938)
Film adaptations of works, theatrical productions
1967 - The Outsider (Italy, L. Visconti)
1992 - Plague
1997 - Caligula
2001 - Fate (based on the novel "The Outsider", Türkiye)
Man is an unstable creature. He is characterized by a feeling of fear, hopelessness and despair. At least, this opinion was expressed by adherents of existentialism. Albert Camus was close to this philosophical teaching. The biography and creative path of the French writer is the topic of this article.
Childhood
Camus was born in 1913. His father was a native of Alsace, and his mother was Spanish. Albert Camus had very painful memories of his childhood. The biography of this writer is closely connected with his life. However, for every poet or prose writer, their own experiences serve as a source of inspiration. But in order to understand the reason for the depressive mood that reigns in the books of the author, which will be discussed in this article, you should learn a little about the main events of his childhood and adolescence.
Camus's father was a poor man. He did heavy physical labor at a wine company. His family was on the verge of disaster. But when a significant battle took place near the Marne River, the life of the wife and children of Camus the Elder became completely hopeless. The fact is that this historical event, although it culminated in the defeat of the enemy German army, had tragic consequences for the fate of the future writer. Camus's father died during the Battle of the Marne.
Left without a breadwinner, the family found itself on the brink of poverty. Albert Camus reflected this period in his early work. The books “Marriage” and “Inside and Out” are dedicated to a childhood spent in poverty. In addition, during these years, young Camus suffered from tuberculosis. Unbearable conditions and a serious illness did not discourage the future writer from striving for knowledge. After graduating from school, he entered the university to study philosophy.
Youth
The years of study at the University of Algiers had a huge influence on Camus’s ideological position. During this period, he became friends with the once famous essayist Jean Grenier. It was during his student years that the first collection of stories was created, which was called “Islands.” For some time he was a member of the Communist Party of Albert Camus. His biography, however, is more connected with such names as Shestov, Kierkegaard and Heidegger. They belong to thinkers whose philosophy largely determined the main theme of Camus’s work.
Albert Camus was an extremely active person. His biography is rich. As a student, he played sports. Then, after graduating from university, he worked as a journalist and traveled a lot. The philosophy of Albert Camus was formed not only under the influence of contemporary thinkers. For some time he was interested in the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky. According to some reports, he even played in an amateur theater, where he had the opportunity to play the role of Ivan Karamazov. During the capture of Paris, at the beginning of the First World War, Camus was in the French capital. He was not taken to the front due to a serious illness. But even during this difficult period, Albert Camus was quite active in social and creative activities.
"Plague"
In 1941, the writer gave private lessons and took an active part in the activities of one of the underground Parisian organizations. At the beginning of the war, Albert Camus wrote his most famous work. "The Plague" is a novel that was published in 1947. In it, the author reflected the events in Paris, occupied by German troops, in a complex symbolic form. Albert Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for this novel. The wording is “For the important role of literary works that confront people with the problems of our time with penetrating seriousness.”
The plague begins suddenly. City residents are leaving their homes. But not all. There are townspeople who believe that the epidemic is nothing more than punishment from above. And you shouldn't run. You should be imbued with humility. One of the heroes - the pastor - is an ardent supporter of this position. But the death of an innocent boy forces him to reconsider his point of view.
People are trying to escape. And the plague suddenly recedes. But even after the worst days are over, the hero is haunted by the thought that the plague may return again. The epidemic in the novel symbolizes fascism, which killed millions of residents of Western and Eastern Europe during the war.
In order to understand what the main philosophical idea of this writer is, you should read one of his novels. In order to feel the mood that reigned in the first years of the war among thinking people, it is worth getting acquainted with the novel “The Plague,” which Albert wrote in 1941 from this work - the sayings of an outstanding philosopher of the 20th century. One of them is “In the midst of disasters, you get used to the truth, namely, to silence.”
Worldview
At the center of the French writer’s work is consideration of the absurdity of human existence. The only way to fight it, according to Camus, is to recognize it. The highest embodiment of the absurd is the attempt to improve society through violence, namely fascism and Stalinism. In the works of Camus there is a pessimistic confidence that evil is completely impossible to defeat. Violence begets more violence. And rebellion against him cannot lead to anything good at all. It is precisely this position of the author that can be felt while reading the novel “The Plague”.
"Stranger"
At the beginning of the war, Albert Camus wrote many essays and stories. It’s worth saying briefly about the story “The Outsider.” This work is quite difficult to understand. But it is precisely this that reflects the author’s opinion regarding the absurdity of human existence.
The story “The Stranger” is a kind of manifesto that Albert Camus proclaimed in his early work. Quotes from this work can hardly say anything. In the book, a special role is played by the monologue of the hero, who is monstrously impartial to everything that happens around him. “The condemned person is obliged to morally participate in the execution” - this phrase is perhaps the key.
The hero of the story is a person who is in some sense inferior. Its main feature is indifference. He is indifferent to everything: to the death of his mother, to the grief of others, to his own moral decline. And only before death does his pathological indifference to the world around him leave him. And it is at this moment that the hero understands that he cannot escape the indifference of the world around him. He is sentenced to death for committing murder. And all he dreams of in the last minutes of his life is not to see indifference in the eyes of the people who will watch his death.
"A fall"
This story was published three years before the writer's death. The works of Albert Camus, as usual, belong to the philosophical genre. "The Fall" is no exception. In the story, the author creates a portrait of a man who is an artistic symbol of modern European society. The hero's name is Jean-Baptiste, which translated from French means John the Baptist. However, Camus's character has little in common with the biblical one.
In “The Fall” the author uses a technique characteristic of the impressionists. The narration is conducted in the form of a stream of consciousness. The hero talks about his life to his interlocutor. At the same time, he talks about the sins he committed without a shadow of regret. Jean-Baptiste personifies the selfishness and poverty of the inner spiritual world of Europeans, the writer’s contemporaries. According to Camus, they are not interested in anything other than achieving their own pleasure. The narrator periodically distracts himself from his life story, expressing his point of view regarding one or another philosophical issue. As in other works of art by Albert Camus, the plot of the story “The Fall” is centered on a person of an unusual psychological make-up, which allows the author to reveal in a new way the eternal problems of existence.
After the war
In the late forties, Camus became an independent journalist. He permanently ceased public activities in any political organizations. At this time he created several dramatic works. The most famous of them are “The Righteous”, “State of Siege”.
The theme of the rebellious personality in the literature of the 20th century was quite relevant. A person’s disagreement and his reluctance to live according to the laws of society is a problem that worried many authors in the sixties and seventies of the last century. One of the founders of this literary movement was Albert Camus. His books, written back in the early fifties, are imbued with a feeling of disharmony and a sense of despair. “Rebel Man” is a work that the writer dedicated to the study of human protest against the absurdity of existence.
If in his student years Camus was actively interested in the socialist idea, then in adulthood he became an opponent of the radical left. In his articles, he repeatedly raised the topic of violence and authoritarianism of the Soviet regime.
Death
In 1960, the writer died tragically. His life was cut short on the road from Provence to Paris. As a result of the car accident, Camus died instantly. In 2011, a version was put forward according to which the writer’s death was not an accident. The accident was allegedly staged by members of the Soviet secret service. However, this version was later refuted by Michel Onfray, the author of the writer’s biography.
The French writer and philosopher, close to existentialism, received the common name during his lifetime “The Conscience of the West”
Albert Camus was born November 7, 1913 in a French Algerian family in Algeria, on the San Pol farm near the town of Mondovi. His father, a wine cellar keeper, was mortally wounded at the Battle of Marly in 1914, and after his death his family faced serious financial difficulties.
In 1918, Albert began attending primary school, from which he graduated with honors in 1923. Then he studied at the Algerian Lyceum. In 1932-1937, Albert Camus studied at the University of Algiers, where he studied philosophy.
In 1934 he married Simone Iye (divorced in 1939), an extravagant nineteen-year-old girl who turned out to be a morphine addict.
He received a bachelor's degree in 1935 and a master's degree in philosophy in May 1936.
In 1936 he created the amateur “Theater of Labor” (French. Theater du Travail), renamed in 1937 the “Team Theater” (fr. Théâtre de l'Equipe). In particular, he organized the production of “The Brothers Karamazov” based on Dostoevsky, and played Ivan Karamazov. In 1936-1937 he traveled through France, Italy and the countries of Central Europe. In 1937, the first collection of essays, “The Inside Out and the Face,” was published, and the following year the novel “Marriage” was published.
In 1936 he joined the Communist Party, from which he was expelled in 1937. In the same 1937 he published his first collection of essays, “The Inside Out and the Face.”
After the ban on Soir Republiken in January 1940, Camus and his future wife Francine Faure, a mathematician by training, moved to Oran, where they gave private lessons. Two months later we moved from Algeria to Paris.
In 1942, The Stranger was published, which brought popularity to the author, and in 1943, The Myth of Sisyphus. In 1943, he began publishing in the underground newspaper Komba, then became its editor. From the end of 1943 he began working at the Gallimard publishing house (he collaborated with it until the end of his life). During the war, he published “Letters to a German Friend” under a pseudonym (later published as a separate publication). In 1943 he met Sartre and participated in productions of his plays.
In 1944, Camus wrote the novel “The Plague,” in which fascism is the personification of violence and evil (it was published only in 1947).
50s are characterized by Camus’ conscious desire to remain independent, to avoid biases dictated solely by “party affiliation.” One of the consequences was disagreements with Jean Paul Sartre, a prominent representative of French existentialism. In 1951, an anarchist magazine published Albert Camus's book "The Rebellious Man", in which the author explores how a person struggles with the internal and external absurdity of his existence. The book was perceived as a rejection of socialist beliefs, a condemnation of totalitarianism and dictatorship, to which Camus also included communism. Diary entries indicate the writer's regret about the strengthening of pro-Soviet sentiment in France and the political blindness of the left, who did not want to notice the crimes of the Soviet Union in the countries of Eastern Europe.
Shortly thereafter, his mother, born Catherine Sintes, an illiterate woman of Spanish descent, suffered a stroke that left her semi-mute. K.'s family moved to Algeria, to live with her disabled grandmother and uncle, and in order to feed the family, Catherine was forced to go to work as a maid. Despite his unusually difficult childhood, Albert did not withdraw into himself; he admired the amazing beauty of the North African coast, which did not fit in with the boy’s life of complete deprivation. Childhood impressions left a deep imprint on the soul of K. – a person and an artist.
His school teacher Louis Germain had a great influence on K., who, recognizing his student’s abilities, provided him with every possible support. With the help of Germain, Albert managed to enter the Lyceum in 1923, where the young man combined his interest in learning with a passion for sports, especially boxing. However, in 1930, K. fell ill with tuberculosis, which forever deprived him of the opportunity to play sports. Despite his illness, the future writer had to change many professions in order to pay for his studies at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Algiers. In 1934, K. married Simone Iye, who turned out to be a morphine addict. They lived together for no more than a year, and in 1939 they officially divorced.
After completing his works on St. Augustine and the Greek philosopher Plotinus, K. received a master's degree in philosophy in 1936, but the academic career of the young scientist was hampered by another outbreak of tuberculosis, and K. did not remain in graduate school.
After leaving the university, K. takes a trip to the French Alps for medicinal purposes and finds himself in Europe for the first time. Impressions from traveling through Italy, Spain, Czechoslovakia and France made up the writer’s first published book, “The Inside and the Face” (“L" Envers et 1 “endroit”, 1937), a collection of essays that also included memories of his mother, grandmother, and uncle. In 1936, K. began work on his first novel, “A Happy Death” (“La Mort heureuse”), which was published only in 1971.
Meanwhile, in Algeria, K. was already considered a leading writer and intellectual. During these years, he combined his theatrical activities (K. was an actor, playwright, and director) with work in the newspaper “Republican Algeria” (“Alger Republicain”) as a political reporter, book reviewer and editor. A year after the publication of the writer’s second book, “Marriage” (“Noces”, 1938), K. moved to France forever.
During the German occupation of France, K. took an active part in the Resistance movement, collaborating in the underground newspaper “The Battle” (“Le Comat”), published in Paris. Along with this activity, fraught with serious danger, K. is working on completing the story “The Outsider” (“L" Etranger, 1942), which he began in Algeria and which brought him international fame. The story is an analysis of alienation, the meaninglessness of human existence. Hero story - a certain Meursault, who was destined to become a symbol of an existential anti-hero, refuses to adhere to the conventions of bourgeois morality. For the “absurd” murder he committed, that is, devoid of any motive, Meursault is sentenced to death - the hero K. dies, because he does not share generally accepted norms behavior.The dry, detached style of narration (which, according to some critics, makes K. similar to Hemingway) further emphasizes the horror of what is happening.
The Stranger, which was a huge success, was followed by the philosophical essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” (“Le Mythe de Sisyphe”, 1942), where the author compares the absurdity of human existence with the work of the mythical Sisyphus, doomed to wage a constant struggle against forces with which he cannot cope with. Rejecting the Christian idea of salvation and the afterlife, which gives meaning to man’s “Sisyphean labor,” K. paradoxically finds meaning in the struggle itself. Salvation, according to K., lies in daily work, the meaning of life is in activity.
After the end of the war, K. continued to work for some time at the Battle, which now became the official daily newspaper. However, political disagreements between the right and left forced K., who considered himself an independent radical, to leave the newspaper in 1947. In the same year, the writer’s third novel, “The Plague” (“La Reste”), the story of a plague epidemic in the Algerian city of Oran, was published; In a figurative sense, however, the "Plague" is the Nazi occupation of France and, more broadly, a symbol of death and evil. “Caligula” (1945), the writer’s best play, according to the unanimous opinion of critics, is also dedicated to the theme of universal evil. Caligula, which is based on Suetonius's book On the Lives of the Twelve Caesars, is considered a significant milestone in the history of the theater of the absurd.
Being one of the leading figures in post-war French literature, K. at this time became close to Jean Paul Sartre. At the same time, the ways of overcoming the absurdity of existence between Sartre and K. do not coincide, and in the early 50s. as a result of serious ideological differences, K. breaks with Sartre and with existentialism, the leader of which Sartre was considered. In “The Rebel Man” (“L"Homme revolte”, 1951), K. examines the theory and practice of protest against power over the centuries, criticizing dictatorial ideologies, including communism and other forms of totalitarianism, which encroach on freedom and, therefore, human dignity Although back in 1945 K. said that he had “too few points of contact with the now fashionable philosophy of existentialism, the conclusions of which are false,” it was the denial of Marxism that led to K.’s break with the pro-Marxist Sartre.
In the 50s K. continues to write essays, plays, and prose. In 1956, the writer published the ironic story “The Fall” (“La Chute”), in which the repentant judge Jean Baptiste Clamence admits to his crimes against morality. Turning to the theme of guilt and repentance, K. makes extensive use of Christian symbolism in “The Fall.”
In 1957, K. was awarded the Nobel Prize “for his enormous contribution to literature, highlighting the importance of human conscience.” Presenting the prize to the French writer, Anders Oesterling, a representative of the Swedish Academy, noted that “K.’s philosophical views were born in an acute contradiction between the acceptance of earthly existence and the awareness of the reality of death.” In his response, K. said that his work is based on the desire to “avoid outright lies and resist oppression.”
When K. received the Nobel Prize, he was only 44 years old and, in his own words, he had reached creative maturity; the writer had extensive creative plans, as evidenced by notes in notebooks and memories of friends. However, these plans were not destined to come true: at the beginning of 1960, the writer died in a car accident in the south of France.
Although K.'s work caused lively controversy after his death, many critics consider him one of the most significant figures of his time. K. showed the alienation and disappointment of the post-war generation, but stubbornly sought a way out of the absurdity of modern existence. The writer was sharply criticized for his rejection of Marxism and Christianity, but nevertheless his influence on modern literature is beyond doubt. In an obituary published in the Italian newspaper “Evening Courier” (“Corriere della sera”), the Italian poet Eugenio Montale wrote that “K.’s nihilism does not exclude hope, does not free a person from solving a difficult problem: how to live and die with dignity.”
According to the American researcher Susan Sontag, “K.’s prose is devoted not so much to his heroes as to the problems of guilt and innocence, responsibility and nihilistic indifference.” Believing that K.’s work is “not distinguished by either high art or depth of thought,” Sontag declares that “his works are distinguished by a beauty of a completely different kind, moral beauty.” The English critic A. Alvarez shares the same opinion, calling K. “a moralist who managed to raise ethical problems to philosophical ones.”