Who Was Albert Camus?

“I have sought only reasons to transcend our darkest nihilism. Not, I would add, through virtue, nor because of some rare elevation of the spirit, but from an instinctive fidelity to a light in which I was born, and in which for thousands of years men have learned to welcome life even in suffering.”^[1]

These words, written by Albert Camus in 1950, express the fullest aspirations of their oft misunderstood author. A writer commonly associated with themes of absurdity and despair, Camus regarded himself as an ally of the light. As both an admirer of Augustine and child of coastal North Africa, light—especially the sun—had guiding significance for Camus. On the one hand, it represented philosophical illumination—an unflinchingly honest view of the world. On the other, the inviting warmth of his homeland—the joy of an Algerian youth bathed in the glow of the Mediterranean.  

Camus’ life, and especially his literary labor, were an exercise in fidelity to these twin loves: truth and happiness. Camus walked the tragic tension between these loves in ways that often put him at odds with the literary and political establishments of his day. This tension was also the source of his genius and profound humanity.

Childhood and Education

Born November 7, 1913, in Mondovi, Algeria, Camus’ parents were pieds-noirs, Algerians of French dissent. His father, Lucien, was killed in the Battle of the Marne, one of the earliest and bloodiest skirmishes of World War I. Lucien’s death meant near destitution for Camus’s already modestly-resourced family. His mother, Catharine—illiterate and partly deaf—was forced to move the family in with her mother, a harsh and overbearing matriarch who instilled a deep sense of discipline (and a touch of fear) in her grandsons. 

Camus and his older brother Lucien attended primary school just ten-minutes from their working-class neighborhood, where Albert showed early promise, especially in French. In 1930, with his teacher’s help, Camus earned a scholarship to attend a prestigious high school in Algiers. There, under the guidance of Jean Grenier, a true homme de lettres, Camus flourished academically. His first loves were literature and philosophy, with special fondness for figures like Plato, Augustine, Pascal, and Nietzsche. During this time Camus was also diagnosed with tuberculosis, a condition which would plague him for the remainder of his life.  

During high school and at university, Camus balanced his time between aesthetics and politics. Though hesitant to embrace what he saw as the fanaticism of communism, he nevertheless became a member of the party for a brief period in 1935. Camus also began a local theater company, worked in journalism, and pursued graduate studies in philosophy at the University of Algiers. His doctoral thesis on, “Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism” brought Greek philosophy into dialogue with Christian thought, and saw Plotinus and Augustine as important bridges. He seemed to especially admire the latter’s profound sense of joy, a fervent love of existence that endured, not in spite of, but in and through life’s tragedies. 

Early Career

After early success as a politically progressive journalist and editor of Algerian-based newspapers (ultimately censored-to-death by the French government), in early 1940 Camus left North Africa to write for the Paris-Soir, though the German invasion in June of the same year eventually required Camus to be laid off. He also married pianist and mathematician Francine Faure, and finished what would become his first and best-known novel, L’Étranger (variously translated The Outsider or The Stranger). Its philosophical companion, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, would be published later the same year (1942) and would usher their author from obscurity into the limelight of French letters. 

In July of 1942, Camus’s tuberculosis had become enflamed and his doctor advised him to spend the coming winter months at a higher altitude. After a brief stay in Algeria, Camus returned to France to convalesce in the Vivarais region in the south. This was an important period for Camus as it provided him the time to develop his next novel, La Peste (in English, The Plague). 

The novel, set in a plague-beset Oran (a coastal city in Algeria), is a story of communal revolt that can be read on several levels, among them, as a way to chronicle Camus’s generation’s resistance to Nazism. By 1942, under the direction of the Vichy regime, German collaboration was the official policy of the French state. This collaboration included assistance in the collection and murder of French Jews. Among France’s most valiant pockets of resistance was the small Huguenot village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. This protestant enclave, just a few miles from the farm where Camus began work on La Peste, saved—by some reports—thousands of Jewish lives during WWII. It also, it seems, provided inspiration for the general contours and even some of the more specific characters of Camus’ novel.   

By 1943, Camus had relocated to Paris where he dove headlong into the French resistance. He edited and wrote for the paper Combat, publishing details of Nazi atrocities and the small victories of the opposition. At this time, Camus also developed close friendships with the most important figures in the Parisian philosophical scene, most famously, Jean-Paul Sartre and his life-long comrade in arms Simone de Beauvoir. After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Camus continued on at Combat as an important voice in the national conversation regarding both the punishment of French collaborators and the future structure of the French state. 

On the issue of collaboration, Camus became embroiled in a heated back-and-forth with Catholic writer François Mauriac. Choosing what he saw as the way of charity, and in deference to divine justice, Mauriac refused to endorse the death penalty. With frustration, Camus averred: “Each time I spoke of justice with respect to purification, Mr. Mauriac spoke of charity. And the virtue of charity is rather singular in that it seems to make me argue for hatred when what I am really calling for is justice.”^[2] Eventually, Camus would take up the cause of “charity,” claiming—on the issue of pardons—“M. François Mauriac was right.”^[3]

After the War

Though the early post-war years saw important new friendships and political causes for Camus, without a doubt the most significant personal events were the publications of La Peste (1947) and L'Homme révolté (1951). In both works, but especially the latter book-length essay, Camus attempts to articulate the philosophical grounds for social revolt in the face of evil. Given the necessary modesty of all claims made about the nature and significance of the world (a point emphasized in Le Mythe), Camus reasons that all sociopolitical solutions must be open-ended, moderate, and provisional. 

Importantly for Camus, this meant that communism of the sort practiced by the Soviets and praised by the French left-wing, an idealized future purchased at the cost of  contemporary violence and oppression, was not defensible Camus maintained that even the best of ends could not justify the worst of means. At the same time, Camus refused to endorse what he saw as the blind optimism of American-style capitalism. Here too, naïve trust in an economic solution with its own unsavory compromises was unjustifiable.  

While Camus’ refusal to endorse the “American model” was anything but controversial among the French literati, his refusal to endorse Soviet communism was seen as beyond the pale. In a scathing twenty-page review of L'Homme révolté, Jean-Paul Sartre—Camus’ one-time friend and France’s philosophical star—officially parted ways with Camus. His essay, ostensibly a work of professional criticism, began “My dear Camus, our friendship was not easy, but I shall miss it.”^[4]

Though the fallout from L'Homme révolté had the effect of drawing Camus away from the public light, events in his native Algeria demanded involvement. By 1954, Algeria had been under French colonial control for over one hundred and twenty-four years. During this time, for a host of reasons including explicitly racist governmental policies, native Algerians had suffered severe economic and social hardship. With a heightened post-war political conscience, and the firm support of the French left, frustration transformed into revolution, as the Algerian National Liberation Front took arms against the French government. Brutal tactics were adopted on both sides. The Front regularly targeted civilians, while the French government licensed unspeakably violent torture techniques.

Camus was invited to take sides, but he refused, seeking instead a truce between the parties that would put an end to civilian casualties. This “half-measure” was taken as yet further evidence, by both the Liberation Front and the French left, that Camus had evacuated the moral high ground. In reality, Camus saw himself as again opposing measures that sought freedom at any and all costs. Until the end, Camus held out hope for a unified French Algeria.  

Out of frustration and with a genuine sense that his interventions were causing more harm than good, Camus settled into an official policy of silence on Algeria. At the same time, however, he continued to intervene privately for prisoners sentenced to death on both sides. He turned his attention back to theatre and writing. 

The most notable product during this period was his late novel La Chute (The Fall, 1956). The most autobiographical of the novels published during Camus’ lifetime, La Chute can be read as a merciless dissection of both personal and generational faults. Its main character, Jean-Baptiste Clamence (a clear homage to Dostoevsky’s “Underground Man”), is a victim of a kind of bourgeoise decadence. The novel is structured as a confession of sorts, with Clamence both defending his actions and manipulating his audience in and through his “contrition.” The novel testifies to the perverse convolutions of modern self-pity and reflection. La Chute, though clearly marked by Camus’ perceived failures and disappointments, stands out as a masterwork every bit as profound as L’Étranger and La Peste. Even Sartre agreed. 

In 1957, Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and in 1958, with renewed confidence, Camus moved his family away from the pressure and pretense of Paris, buying a rural estate in southern France. From Lourmarin, Camus embarked upon what would turn out to be his last novel, an explicitly autobiographical work (Le Premier Homme) that Camus sensed to be his best yet, his first great novel.  

Alas, he would never see it in print. Just after the turn of the year, in January of 1960, Camus—in the company of friends and en route to meet his family for a holiday—was tragically killed in an automobile accident. His longtime companion and publishing partner, Michel Gallimard, lost control of the car, slamming into a tree. Camus was dead on scene. 

In the immediate aftermath of Camus’ death, he was generously eulogized by even his staunchest critics. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, for instance, that Camus “represented in this century the current heir of the long line of moralists whose works make up perhaps the most original part of French literature.” He added, “His stubborn humanism, narrow and pure, austere and sensual, was a dubious weapon against the massive, deformed events of our time.”^[5] 

In the years since his death, Camus’ star continues to rise. Ever the moralist and never the moralizer, Camus remains for us today a call to honesty, a figure—to the frustration of many—more inclined to ask questions than offer prepackaged answers.^[6] At the root of this commitment to truth-telling is a deep conviction in the sacredness of life. While Camus refused to give a philosophical justification for this sense, his life and letters were an unflinching acknowledgment of its reality. In this respect, he is sure to always find serious readers among the religious and rebellious.    

 

Back to Reading Guide Next: Camus on the Absurd

 

Sources:

Olivier Todd. Albert Camus: A Life, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2000. 

Robert Zaretsky. A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013

 

^[1] Quoted in Zaretsky, 8. [back]

^[2] Todd, 198. [back]

^[3] Todd, 202. [back]

^[4] Quoted in Todd, 308. [back] 

^[5] Quoted in Todd, 415. [back]

^[6] Zaretsky emphasizes this. See p. 8. [back]