One word more. This undertaking, I know, cannot be accomplished without dangers and bitterness. We must accept the dangers: the era of chairbound artists is over. But we must reject the bitterness. One of the temptations of the artist is to believe himself solitary, and in truth he bears this shouted at him with a certain base delight. But this is not true. He stands in the midst of all, in the same rank, neither higher nor lower, with all those who are working and struggling. His very vocation, in the face of oppression, is to open the prisons and to give a voice to the sorrows and joys of all. This is where art, against its enemies, justifies itself by proving precisely that it is no one’s enemy. By itself art could probably not produce the renascence which implies justice and liberty. But without it, that renascence would be without forms and, consequently, would be nothing. Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.
(1953)
* * *
[1] 1 From the point of view of the relative value of truth. On the other hand, from the point of view of virile behavior, this scholar’s fragility may well make us smile.
[2] 2 Let us not miss this opportunity to point out the relative character of this essay. Suicide may indeed be related to much more honorable considerations—for example, the political suicides of protest, as they were called, during the Chinese revolution.
[3] 3 I have heard of an emulator of Peregrinos, a post-war writer who, after having finished his first hook, committed suicide to attract attention to his work. Attention was in fact attracted, but the book was judged no good.
[4] 4 But not in the proper sense. This is not a definition, but rather an enumeration of the feelings that may admit of the absurd. Still, the enumeration finished, the absurd has nevertheless not been exhausted.
[5] 5 Apropos of the notion of exception particularly and against Aristotle.
[6] 6 It may be thought that I am neglecting here the essential problem, that of faith. But I am not examining the philosophy of Kierkegaard or of Chestov or, later on, of Husserl (this would call for a different place and a different attitude of mind); I am simply borrowing a theme from them and examining whether its consequences can fit the already established rules. It is merely a matter of persistence.
[7] 7 I did not say “excludes God,” which would still amount to asserting.
[8] 8 Let me assert again: it is not the affirmation of God that is questioned here, but rather the logic leading to that affirmation.
[9] 9 Even the most rigorous epistemologies imply metaphysics. And to such a degree that the metaphysic of many contemporary thinkers consists in having nothing but an epistemology.
[10] 1 A.—At that time reason had to adapt itself or die. It adapts itself. With Plotinus, after being logical it becomes aesthetic. Metaphor takes the place of the syllogism.
B.—Moreover, this is not Plotinus’ only contribution to phenomenology. This whole attitude is already contained in the concept so dear to the Alexandrian thinker that there is not only an idea of man but also an idea of Socrates.
[11] 2 I am concerned here with a factual comparison, not with an apology of humility. The absurd man is the contrary of the reconciled man.
[12] 3 Quantity sometimes constitutes quality. If I can believe the latest restatements of scientific theory, all matter is constituted by centers of energy. Their greater or lesser quantity makes its specificity more or less remarkable. A billion ions and one ion differ not only in quantity but also in quality. It is easy to find an analogy in human experience.
[13] 4 Same reflection on a notion as different as the idea of eternal nothingness. It neither adds anything to nor subtracts anything from reality. In psychological experience of nothingness, it is by the consideration of what will happen in two thousand years that our own nothingness truly takes on meaning. In one of its aspects, eternal nothingness is made up precisely of the sum of lives to come which will not be ours.
[14] 5 The will is only the agent here: it tends to maintain consciousness. It provides a discipline of life, and that is appreciable.
[15] 6 What matters is coherence. We start out here from acceptance of the world. But Oriental thought teaches that one can indulge in the same effort of logic by choosing against the world. That is just as legitimate and gives this essay its perspectives and its limits. But when the negation of the world is pursued just as rigorously, one often achieves ( in certain Vedantic schools) similar results regarding, for instance, the indifference of works. In a book of great importance, Le Choix, Jean Grenier establishes in this way a veritable “philosophy of indifference.”
[16] 1In the fullest sense and with his faults. A healthy attitude also includes faults.
[17] 2 At this point I am thinking of Moliere’s Alceste. Everything is so simple, so obvious and so coarse. Alceste against Philinte,
[18] It is curious to note that the most intellectual kind of painting, the one that tries to reduce reality to its essential elements, is ultimately but a visual delight. All it has kept of the world is its color. (This is apparent particularly in Leger.)
[19] If you stop to think of it, this explains the worst novels. Almost everybody considers himself capable of thinking and, to a certain degree, whether right or wrong, really does think. Very few, on the contrary, can fancy themselves poets or artists in words. But from the moment when thought won out over style, the mob invaded the novel.
That is not such a great evil as is said. The best are led to make greater demands upon themselves. As for those who succumb, they did not deserve to survive.
[20] Malraux’s work, for instance. But it would have been necessary to deal at the same time with the social question which in fact cannot be avoided by absurd thought (even though that thought may put forward several solutions, very different from one another). One must, however, limit oneself.
[21] “Stavrogin: ‘Do you believe in eternal life in the other world?’ Kirilov: ‘No, but in eternal life in this world.’”
[22] “Man simply invented God in order not to kill himself. That is the summary of universal history down to this moment.”
[23] Boris de Schloezer.
[24] Gide’s curious and penetrating remark: almost all Dostoevsky’s heroes are polygamous.
[25] Melville’s Moby Dick, for instance.
[26] It is worth noting that the works of Kafka can quite as legitimately be interpreted in the sense of a social criticism (for instance in The Trial). It is probable, moreover, that there is no need to choose. Both interpretations are good. In absurd terms, as we have seen, revolt against men is also directed against God: great revolutions are always metaphysical.
[27] In The Castle it seems that “distractions” in the Pascalian sense are represented by the assistants who “distract” K. from his anxiety. If Frieda eventually becomes the mistress of one of the assistants, this is because she prefers the stage setting to truth, everyday life to shared anguish.
[28] This is obviously true only of the unfinished version of The Castle that Kafka left us. But it is doubtful that the writer would have destroyed in the last chapters his novel’s unity of tone.
[29] Purity of heart.
[30] The only character without hope in The Castle is Amalia. She is the one with whom the Land Surveyor is most violently contrasted.
[31] On the two aspects of Kafka’s thought, compare “In the Penal Colony,” published by the Cahiers du Sud (and in America by Partisan Review—translator’s note): “Guilt [‘of man’ is understood] is never doubtful” and a fragment of The Castle (Momus’s report): “The guilt of the Land Surveyor K. is hard to establish.”
[32] What is offered above is obviously an interpretation of Kafka’s work. But it is only fair to add that nothing prevents its being considered, aside from any interpretation, from a purely aesthetic point of view. For instance, B. Groethuysen in his remarkable preface to The Trial limits himself, more wisely than we, to follow
ing merely the painful fancies of what he calls, most strikingly, a daydreamer. It is the fate and perhaps the greatness of that work that it offers everything and confirms nothing.
[33] May I take the ridiculous position of saying that I do not like the way Gide exalts the body? He asks it to restrain its desire to make it keener. Thus he comes dangerously near to those who in brothel slang are called involved or brain-workers. Christianity also wants to suspend desire. But, more natural, it sees a mortification in this. My friend Vincent, who is a cooper and junior breast-stroke champion, has an even clearer view. He drinks when he is thirsty, if he desires a woman tries to go to bed with her, and would marry her if he loved her (this hasn’t yet happened). Afterward he always says: “I feel better”—and this sums up vigorously any apology that might be made for satiety.
[34] Gogol’s Klestakov is met in Oran. He yawns and then: “I feel I shall soon have to be concerned with something lofty.”
[35] Doubtless in memory of these good words, an Oran lecture-and-discussion group has been founded under the name of Cogito-Club.
[36] And the new boulevard called Front-de-Mer.
[37] Another quality of the Algerian race is, as you see, candor.
[38] This essay deals with a certain temptation. It is essential to have known it. One can then act or not, but with full knowledge of the facts.
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
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