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Albert Camus
(French:
[albɛʁ kamy]
(
listen
); 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French
Pied-Noir
author, journalist, and philosopher. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as
absurdism
. He wrote in his essay "
The Rebel
" that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of
nihilism
while still delving deeply into individual freedom. Although often cited as a proponent of
existentialism
, the philosophy with which Camus was associated during his own lifetime, he rejected this particular label.
[2]
In an interview in 1945, Camus rejected any ideological associations: "No, I am not an existentialist.
Sartre
and I are always surprised to see our names linked..."
[3]
In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement after his split with
Garry Davis
's Citizens of the World movement, of which the surrealist
André Breton
was also a member.
[4]
The formation of this group, according to Camus, was intended to "denounce two ideologies found in both the
USSR
and the
USA
" regarding their idolatry of technology.
[5]
Camus was awarded the 1957
Nobel Prize for Literature
"for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times".
[6]
He was the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, after
Rudyard Kipling
, and the first African-born writer to receive the award.
[7]
He is the shortest-lived of any Nobel literature laureate to date, having died in an automobile accident just over two years after receiving the award.
Contents
Early years
Albert Camus was born on 7 November 1913 in
Dréan
(then known as Mondovi) in
French Algeria
to a
Pied-Noir
family.
[8]
His mother was of Spanish descent and was half-deaf.
[9]
His father Lucien, a poor agricultural worker, died in the
Battle of the Marne
in 1914 during
World War I
, while serving as a member of the
Zouave
infantry regiment. Camus and his mother lived in poor conditions during his childhood in the Belcourt section of
Algiers
.
In 1923, Camus was accepted into the
lycée
and eventually he was admitted to the
University of Algiers
. After he contracted
tuberculosis
(TB) in 1930, he had to end his
football
activities (he had been a
goalkeeper
for the university team) and reduce his studies to part-time. To earn money, he also took odd jobs: as private tutor, car parts clerk and assistant at the
Meteorological
Institute. He completed his
licence de philosophie
(
BA
) in 1935; in May 1936, he successfully presented his thesis on
Plotinus
,
Néo-Platonisme et Pensée Chrétienne
(Neo-Platonism and Christian Thought), for his
diplôme d'études supérieures
(roughly equivalent to an
MA
thesis).
French literature
By category
French literary history
Camus joined the
French Communist Party
in the spring of 1935, seeing it as a way to "fight inequalities between Europeans and 'natives' in Algeria." He did not suggest he was a Marxist or that he had read
Das Kapital
, but did write that "[w]e might see communism as a springboard and asceticism that prepares the ground for more spiritual activities."
[10]
In 1936, the independence-minded
Algerian Communist Party
(PCA) was founded. Camus joined the activities of the
Algerian People's Party
(
Le Parti du Peuple Algérien
), which got him into trouble with his Communist party comrades. As a result, in 1937 he was denounced as a
Trotskyite
and expelled from the party. Camus went on to be associated with the French
anarchist
movement.
The anarchist
André Prudhommeaux
first introduced him at a meeting in 1948 of the
Cercle des Étudiants Anarchistes
(Anarchist Student Circle) as a sympathiser familiar with anarchist thought. Camus wrote for anarchist publications such as
Le Libertaire
,
La révolution Proletarienne
and
Solidaridad Obrera
(Workers' Solidarity, the organ of the
anarcho-syndicalist
CNT
(National Confederation of Labor)). Camus stood with the anarchists when they expressed support for the
uprising of 1953 in East Germany
. He again allied with the anarchists in 1956, first in support of the workers’ uprising in
Poznań
, Poland, and then later in the year with the
Hungarian Revolution
.
In 1934, he married Simone Hié, a
morphine
addict, but the marriage ended as a consequence of infidelities on both sides. In 1935, he founded
Théâtre du Travail
(Worker's Theatre),
[11]
renamed
Théâtre de l'Equipe
(Team's Theatre) in 1937. It lasted until 1939. From 1937 to 1939 he wrote for a socialist paper,
Alger-Républicain
. His work included an account of the peasants who lived in
Kabylie
in poor conditions, which apparently cost him his job. From 1939 to 1940, he briefly wrote for a similar paper,
Soir-Republicain
. He was rejected by the French army because of his TB.
In 1940, Camus married
Francine Faure
, a pianist and mathematician. Although he loved her, he had argued passionately against the institution of marriage, dismissing it as unnatural. Even after Francine gave birth to twins, Catherine and Jean, on 5 September 1945, he continued to joke to friends that he was not cut out for marriage. Camus conducted numerous affairs, particularly an irregular and eventually public affair with the Spanish-born actress
María Casares
. In the same year, Camus began to work for
Paris-Soir
magazine. In the first stage of
World War II
, the so-called
Phoney War
, Camus was a
pacifist
. In Paris during the Wehrmacht occupation, on 15 December 1941, Camus witnessed the execution of
Gabriel Péri
; it crystallized his revolt against the Germans. He moved to
Bordeaux
with the rest of the staff of
Paris-Soir
. In the same year he finished his first books,
The Stranger
and
The Myth of Sisyphus
. He returned briefly to
Oran
, Algeria in 1942.
[ Literary career
During the war Camus joined the
French Resistance
cell
Combat
, which published an underground newspaper of the same name. This group worked against the Nazis, and in it Camus assumed the
nom de guerre
Beauchard
. Camus became the paper's editor in 1943. He first met Sartre at the dress rehearsal of Sartre's play,
The Flies
, in June 1943.
[12]
When
the Allies
liberated Paris in August 1944, Camus witnessed and reported the last of the fighting. Soon after the event on 6 August 1945, he was one of the few French editors to publicly express opposition and disgust to the United States' dropping
the atomic bomb in Hiroshima
. He resigned from
Combat
in 1947 when it became a commercial paper. After the war, Camus began frequenting the
Café de Flore
on the
Boulevard Saint-Germain
in Paris with Sartre and others. He also toured the United States to lecture about French thought. Although he leaned
left
, politically, his strong criticisms of Communist doctrine did not win him any friends in the
Communist parties
and eventually alienated Sartre.
In 1949, his TB returned and Camus lived in seclusion for two years. In 1951, he published
The Rebel
, a philosophical analysis of rebellion and revolution which expressed his rejection of communism. Upsetting many of his colleagues and contemporaries in France, the book brought about the final split with Sartre. The dour reception depressed Camus; he began to translate plays.
Camus' first significant contribution to philosophy was his
idea of the absurd
. He saw it as the result of our desire for clarity and meaning within a world and condition that offers neither, which he expressed in
The Myth of Sisyphus
and incorporated into many of his other works, such as
The Stranger
and
The Plague
. Despite his split from his "study partner", Sartre, some[
who?
] still argue that Camus falls into the
existentialist
camp. He specifically rejected that label in his essay "Enigma" and elsewhere (see:
The Lyrical and Critical Essays of Albert Camus
). The current confusion arises, in part, because many recent applications of existentialism have much in common with many of Camus's
practical
ideas (see:
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death
). But, his personal understanding of the world (e.g., "a benign indifference", in
The Stranger
), and every vision he had for its progress (e.g., vanquishing the "adolescent furies" of history and society, in
The Rebel
) undoubtedly set him apart.
In the 1950s, Camus devoted his efforts to
human rights
. In 1952, he resigned from his work for
UNESCO
when the UN accepted Spain as a member under the leadership of
General Franco
. In 1953, he criticized
Soviet
methods to crush a workers' strike in
East Berlin
. In 1956, he protested against similar methods in Poland (protests in
Poznań
) and the Soviet repression of the Hungarian revolution in October.
The monument to Camus built in the small town of
Villeblevin
, France where he died in an automobile accident on 4 January 1960
Camus maintained his pacifism and resisted capital punishment anywhere in the world. He wrote an essay against capital punishment in collaboration with
Arthur Koestler
, the writer, intellectual and founder of the League Against Capital Punishment.
The bronze plaque on the monument to Camus in the town of
Villeblevin
, France. The plaque reads: "From the General Council of the Yonne Department, in homage to the writer Albert Camus whose remains lay in vigil at the Villeblevin town hall on the night of 4 to 5 January 1960."
When the
Algerian War
began in 1954, Camus was confronted with a moral dilemma. He identified with the
pied-noirs
such as his own parents and defended the French government's actions against the revolt. He argued that the Algerian uprising was an integral part of the 'new Arab imperialism' led by Egypt and an 'anti-Western' offensive orchestrated by Russia to 'encircle Europe' and 'isolate the United States'.
[13]
Although favouring greater Algerian
autonomy
or even federation, though not full-scale independence, he believed that the
pied-noirs
and Arabs could co-exist. During the war he advocated a civil truce that would spare the civilians, which was rejected by both sides, who regarded it as foolish. Behind the scenes, he began to work for imprisoned Algerians who faced the death penalty.
From 1955 to 1956, Camus wrote for
L'Express
. In 1957 he was awarded the
Nobel Prize in literature
"for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times", not for his novel
The Fall
, published the previous year, but for his writings against capital punishment in the essay "
Réflexions sur la Guillotine
" (Reflections on the Guillotine). When he spoke to students at the
University of Stockholm
, he defended his apparent inactivity in the Algerian question; he stated that he was worried about what
might happen to his mother, who still lived in Algeria. This led to further ostracism by French left-wing intellectuals.
[Revolutionary Union Movement and Europe
As he wrote in
L'Homme révolté
(in the chapter about "The Thought on Midday"), Camus was a follower of the ancient Greek 'Solar Tradition' (la
pensée solaire
). In 1947–48 he founded the Revolutionary Union Movement (
Groupes de liaison internationale
– GLI)
[10]
a trade union movement in the context of revolutionary syndicalism (
Syndicalisme révolutionnaire
). According to Olivier Todd, in his biography, 'Albert Camus, une vie', it was a group opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton. For more, see the book
Alfred Rosmer et le mouvement révolutionnaire internationale
by Christian Gras.
His colleagues were Nicolas Lazarévitch,
Louis Mercier
, Roger Lapeyre, Paul Chauvet, Auguste Largentier, Jean de Boë (see the article: "Nicolas Lazarévitch, Itinéraire d'un syndicaliste révolutionnaire" by Sylvain Boulouque in the review Communisme, n° 61, 2000). His main aim was to express the positive side of
surrealism
and existentialism, rejecting the negativity and the
nihilism
of
André Breton
.
From 1943, Albert Camus had correspondence with
Altiero Spinelli
who founded the
European Federalist Movement
in Milan—see
Ventotene Manifesto
and the book "Unire l'Europa, superare gli stati", Altiero Spinelli nel Partito d'Azione del Nord Italia e in Francia dal 1944 al 1945-annexed a letter by Altiero Spinelli to Albert Camus.
In 1944 Camus founded the "French Committee for the European Federation" (
Comité Français pour la Féderation Européene
– CFFE) declaring that Europe "can only evolve along the path of economic progress, democracy and peace if the nation states become a federation."
From 22–25 March 1945, the first conference of the European Federalist Movement was organised in Paris with the participation of Albert Camus, George Orwell,
Emmanuel Mounier
,
Lewis Mumford
,
André Philip
,
Daniel Mayer
,
François Bondy
and Altiero Spinelli (see the book
The Biography of Europe
by Pan Drakopoulos). This specific branch of the
European Federalist Movement
disintegrated in 1957 after
Winston Churchill
's ideas about the European integration rose to dominance.
Death
Camus died on 4 January 1960 at the age of 46, in a car accident near
Sens
, in Le Grand Fossard in the small town of
Villeblevin
. In his coat pocket was an unused train ticket. He had planned to travel by train with his wife and children, but at the last minute he accepted his publisher's proposal to travel with him.
[14]
The driver of the
Facel Vega
car, Michel Gallimard, who was Camus's publisher and close friend, also died in the accident.
[15]
In August 2011, the Milan newspaper
Corriere della Sera
reported a theory that the writer had been the victim of a Soviet plot, but Camus's biographer
Olivier Todd
did not consider it credible.
[16]
Camus was buried in the Lourmarin Cemetery,
Lourmarin
, Vaucluse, France.
He was survived by his wife and twin son and daughter, Jean and Catherine, who hold the copyrights to his work.
Two of Camus's works were published posthumously. The first, entitled
A Happy Death
(1970), featured a character named Patrice Mersault, comparable to
The Stranger
's Meursault. There is scholarly debate as to the relationship between the two books. The second was an unfinished novel,
The First Man
(1995), which Camus was writing before he died. The novel was an autobiographical work about his childhood in
Algeria
.
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