LA CHUTE (THE FALL), by Albert Camus

I would like to begin this review with an outright statement about Albert Camus: he is an honest bloke. I didn’t meet him, I don’t know if he ever lied, if he cheated on his girlfriends, did something dishonest to make money, or any of those things we normal and still moral beings are bound to do at least once or twice a year. I don’t mean to say that he was a sort of angel come to earth to teach us about existence(ialism), but rather that he is an honest writer in the sense that he gets no pleasure at all from denouncing the ills of modern society or, for that matter, when he deals with that eternal companion of us called suffering. Camus was too sympathetic a person to celebrate human misery or to feel any satisfaction from beign the one opeing our eyes; he was definitely too good a guy to throw the first stone. When I read L’homme révolté I saw the person behind the philosopher, a person sad to admit that the estate born out of the ideology he had embraced so far killed people and honest enough with himself so as to speak out in spite of the enemies he knew he would earn (I am not saying that Camus was totally right here, I am just praising his honesty).

That honest man is still to be found in La chute. Now, honesty doesn’t turn whatever you say into “the truth” or even into something worth hearing. Well, for those who haven’t read the book I will only say it is basically about two men chatting in some dodgy bar in Amsterdam, the word “chatting”  being  in this case quite misleading because it is a monologue, and we know absolutely nothing about the non-speaking man (other than his being a really patient chap). I came across an interesting review in the shape of a dialogue in which this unknown man confesses to his wife that his trip to Amsterdam was a total pain in the neck because some self-important guy kept following him everywhere, talking about his former life in Paris when he was a successful lawyer and a dandy, and about how he had stolen an old painting and got elected as a pope in some concentration camp and a lot of stuff about philosophy and all men being guilty and what have you. I found this review quite funny and, in a way, I sometimes felt like that poor guy whose trip to Amsterdam was spoiled by Camus in disguise.

I wouldn’t say that I didn’t like the book or that I didn’t find anything suggestive or interesting in it, but I certainly struggled to relate to it. I was expecting something dealing with remorse, as I thought that the central episode of the book was the fall of a young woman into the Seine and how the main character failed to help her. This episode is in fact the turning point of our man’s life, but it does acquire an anecdotal dimension as the relation between it and the man’s real fall into the hells of Amsterdam is not as clear as I thought.

Of course, this is not a problem in itself. I guess that the problem is that rather than focusing on one philosophical problem, the book addresses a broad range of different issues that in the end always comes down to one of the most boringly recurrent tags: modern man’s ills. Modern man (and woman, possibly) is selfish, isolated from other beings, hypocritical, indifferent towards violence and injustice, etc… you know, those labels endlessly repeated book after book. That is why I have begun this review by saying that Camus is an honest man, that is, because I believe that he was sincerely concerned with those surely important issues. The difference might be that for millions of human beings those undeniable aspects of modern man (or should I just say “man” and remove the adjective?) are not the only ones that stand out when it comes to “live” within modernity, but also the examples of daily solidarity one sees on a daily basis in big cities, the actions carried out to help others and save them from loneliness and other such examples of caring and compassion. Evilness, indifference and loneliness are still a choice, probably as much as they have always been.

Now, of course, we have to deal with the fact that we do not live in a perfect world and also with that ultimate apparent contradiction, that we experience everything as individuals, but live in a society and a world beyond us and our experience. That makes possible to be hypocritical and selfish, to get angry and to fall into the hells desperation and suffering, because there is a difference between the reality as represented (ideals) and the reality as felt. The book’s only character, who has always prided himself on being on the side of justice, discovers that he was not really honest and that he was not only judgmental as most of his fellow human beings are, but also judged and punished (turned into a penitent).

There is a possible solution which makes me think of that anecdote attributed to Hobbes: he was known to have fathered a social theory in which individualism was the cornerstone. Once, after having given some money to a beggar someone brought to his attention that he was capable of altruism, to which Hobbes apparently replied that the ultimate aim of such act of generosity was not to relief the beggar’s suffering, but to feel better. So, why should we worry whether our generosity is genuine or not, if in the end the beggar gets his alms? Is not a society composed by an army of individuals pursuing their own happiness as good as any other? True, this too much of a mechanistic example of social engineering and the last thing I would like is to be linked to Bentham’s utilitarianism.

La chute is not properly a novel, at least not formally. There are no characters and there is not plot. Certainly, there is a story but that is not enough to make up a novel, for it is rather a confession which, surely, implies a number of events chronologically ordered. Some say that it is Camus’ own confession; I don’t know about that. Whatever the case, and whatever the impression one may get from it, it is certainly one thing: an example of an intellectually and emotionally honest piece of writing.    

LA PESTE (THE PLAGUE), by Albert Camus

I wonder if it is important at all that I am writing this review something like two months after reading the book, instead of two or three days as I normally do: the reason is that I have been on holidays, which in turn begs the question of whether I regard this blog as a kind of job, which is not necessarily true although I must admit that like many people who have blogs sometimes I go through periods of certain apathy during which you don’t give a…I mean, you do not consider your intellectual activity as important as you used to, which is in turn closely related to matters of self-perception and ego: in short, that all intellectuals are mere egocentrics.

Are they? Well, of course not. Was Camus and egocentric? I don’t know but it is not the impression I had when reading La peste. I must say, by the way, that it is the first book I have ever read in French and, yes, I didn’t understand one out of five words. Thus, I will keep all comments on Camus’ style I may have for myself. But I understood enough so as to have taken a glimpse to the “core” of the book (as my admired Pamuk would put it). The book is supposed to be, or so it is often said, a sort of metaphor of the ills of war, or, to be more exact, of the occupation of France by the Nazis with the subsequent themes of exile, loneliness and the flip side of the coin, resistance and hope. There are also a few passages consisting in a more or less open statement against death penalty voiced by one of the characters. Thus, La peste may be defined as another literary creation showing to the world that its author is deeply concerned with the brutality human beings and, even worst, civilized human beings, are capable of, insofar as under such interpretation, human suffering is generated by the actions of other humans.

I tend to think, though, or at least this is the way the book struck me, that somehow Oran represents the world itself and its poor citizens the human race as a whole and that the dreaded bacteria are the representation of the fears that necessarily determine the existence of a being doomed by its very physicality. And by this I don’t mean only diseases and illnesses, but the awareness that we are fragile and bound to be eventually destroyed by one or another of the menaces that threaten us and ensure that our destiny as mortals will be fulfilled.

The predominant feeling I had when reading the book was that of helplessness and anguish: it was not so much a battle, that of the characters, against a particular and specific enemy or disease; La peste is not so much an account of an unlikely event and the reactions of series of men to it, but rather an account of the struggle for survival, no matter whether by means of sticks and stones or by means of sophisticated medical equipment and vaccines. Oran is Rome, the light of civilization and life itself fighting the darkness of barbarism, nihilism, oblivion and annihilation. But, being as it is death a sure thing to come, this very battle is doomed to fail and thus those fighting can’t help but coming across as sad and melancholic people, as if seen under a dim and fading light, that of existence itself.

Yes, even though in the end the good guys win, it is a sad victory which turns La peste into a sad book, a book written by someone whom you can imagine spending sleepless nights tormented by the very absurdity of his existence. The question is if there is any room for hope in the book. Well, Camus is definitely not oblivious of the comfort and consolation to be found in human relationships and the book also exhales human warmth. However alone each individual may be with his thoughts and fears, our capacity of communication is acknowledged, however faulty and deficient it may be. We can at least hold hands and stand together until decay brings us to our end.

The doctor, precisely the man whose life is dedicated to save people from death and supposedly to give hope, is the one in which the helplessness of this struggle is more evident. Bien sur, he is an atheist, a materialist and this view is in the end the conclusion one may extract from the book: for all our culture, sentiments and ideals, we are no more than purposeless matter destined to fade away into nothingness and, maybe, absolute loneliness: the question would be, what is there to be left alone forever once the matter has disappeared? Camus does not seek to solve this dilemma, but why should he? He is in the end concerned with those still living and suffering; spirituality is none of his business.

At any rate, all good books must leave a gap that has to be filled by the reader’s beliefs and ideas. La peste feels a bit like a sad poem or a melancholic melody in which it is perceptible that the author’s desire to be hopeful is offset by his or her fear that reality may turn up to be hostile and cold. But, precisely like in a poem or a melody, there is an element of subjectivity: Camus knows it and he knows that, maybe, he may be wrong. But what’s the point of talking about one’s sorrows if you are not completely sure that they are justified, reasonable, even beautiful? What is often the point of literature but to brag about one’s sensibility? You may suggest or imply (but never openly state) that, the hell with it!, maybe you are totally wrong and your sadness is laughable, that maybe it is only you that see life as purposeless and gloomy, and that you are at fault for it, you are weak and faithless. In any case, there is much at stake for Camus to take himself too seriously and I am sure that he would have loved to learn that he was totally wrong, that we are much more than fragile and insubstantial chunks of flesh, that there is much more to life and existence than you can even imagine. I keep thinking that Camus was definitely not an egotistic person.