Marcel Rus 12:01 am on December 21, 2018
Tags: absolute truth, , absurdity, abyss, Albert Camus, Algeria, boulder, , dignity, existance, , , misery, Mondovi, Nobel Prize in Literature, perfection, philospher, revolt, , The Myth of Sisyphus, The Stranger, torture, ,   

Albert Camus – Philosopher of Absurdity and Revolt

camus

Albert Camus

The Camus family, of Alsatian origin, moved to Algeria in 1871. Here, in Mondovi, Albert Camus was born on November 7, 1913, as the son of wine-maker Lucien Camus, who died soon of the injuries suffered in the Battle of Marna.

Camus’s childhood was sad and full of poverty and lived in an environment of poor and sick people living in a peripheral neighborhood of Algires, where his mother soon moved after her husband’s death.

During the school years Camus read with interest the work of Marcel Proust. He studied philosophy at the University of Algeiers, but at the same time he had to work to live.

After the invasion of France by Nazi Germany, Camus entered the Resistance, and in 1943 his resistance group moved to Paris. After war Camus traveled to North America, South America, Algeria and Italy.

Albert Camus is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. He died in 1960 in a car accident.

*

Camus’s book, The Myth of Sisyphus, belongs to the philosophy of the absurd. Sisyphus, a character of Greek-Latin mythology, has been condmned to always roll a boulder to the top of a mountain, boulder that  then rolls back to the valley, symbolizing the tragic existance of man. Between man and society, on the one hand, and between man and the universe on the other hand, there is an abyss that can’t be crossed. Man was not destined for the perfection to which he tends without ceasing, but for the misery of everyday life.

However, life must be lived, and man has found in the tragedy of his existance a way to face the absurd. Moreover, “Sisyphus find in his eternal torture the feeling of dignity, for although he was condemned to defeat, he doesn’t abandon but defy his destiny”.

sisif-camus

The Stranger is the literary transposition of ideas from The Myth of Sisyphus. The hero of the novel, Meursault, tells first seemingly meaningless occurrences, but which have decisively marked his existance. He’s not an exuberant, but an internalized. At the funeral of his mother he didn’t cry, and being asked if he loved his mother he was silent. The charcter seems to be an aboulic man. But one day on the beach being crazy because of the warmth of the sun, he kills an Arab.

“Killing because of the sun” is not a plausible reason for justice and the hero is sentenced to death. During his trial, he was accused of not having loved his mother because he did not cry to her death, which led the judge to consider him a man lacking human feelings.

In the days before execution, Meursault revisits his existance, finding it absurd, meaningless… Life is absurd, and people can not touch the absolute truth during their existance, which is why they will be condemned one day.

Ovidiu Dramba, Literatura universala

#absolute-truth, #absurd, #absurdity, #abyss, #albert-camus, #algeria, #boulder, #destiny, #dignity, #existance, #life, #man, #misery, #mondovi, #nobel-prize-in-literature, #perfection, #philospher, #revolt, #society, #the-myth-of-sisyphus, #the-stranger, #torture, #tragedy, #universe