Written by | Zhang Bo
Excerpt from | Xu Xueqin
In 1947, when The Plague was officially published in France, Camus himself had not personally experienced any large-scale epidemics. All of his pathological details about the plague are derived from second-hand experience in medical texts and historical sources.
He painstakingly collected and studied these documents in the preparatory stages of the novel, which eventually made his wording and description extremely professional. But more importantly, his comprehensive and profound insight into human nature made him feel like he was on the spot. His brushstrokes are all over bureaucrats, journalists, doctors, patients, and the masses, who are either tragic or humble, honorable or ridiculous, rational or crazy, or for the common good or for self-interest. Camus tells us who is prevaricating and who is taking on responsibilities; who is suppressing public opinion and who is enlightening the people's wisdom; who is spreading rumors and who is clarifying the facts; who is running away in fear, who is fighting on the front line; who is reckless in disregard of the safety of others, and who is giving early warning at the cost of their lives. Camus tried to prove that in the midst of the noise of sentient beings, not all of them only care about personal safety and even comfort. His eyes were on every nameless resistance, not only the doctors and nurses stationed on the front line, but also the clerks in charge of statistics, the janitors who guarded the camps, the caregivers of spontaneous organizations, etc., who used their meager strength to build the strongest anti-epidemic shield of mankind. In the backs of these great retrogrades, Camus shows us the nobility and brilliance of the light of humanity and tells us, "There is more praise in mankind than should be despised."
Today, we are still reading The Plague. There is even a perfect reason for us to enter the novel with real-world experience. I believe camus himself will deeply agree with this. Because this means that we begin to think about real life through reading literature, through the fiction of fiction to see our real life, to ask the true meaning of life. The symbolism of The Plague is intended to achieve this goal.
Albert Camus (1913-1960), French writer, philosopher, Nobel Prize winner in literature, representative works include "The Outsider", "The Plague", "The Myth of Sisyphus" and so on.
From absurdity to defiance: a human action triggered by the plague
If you want to extract a few key words from "Plague", then "absurdity" and "resistance" must be at the top. "Absurdity" is transformed into a deadly disease, and "resistance" is presented by countless people's war against the "epidemic". They are not the only plot of the novel, separation and exile, the other shore and this world, individual happiness and collective responsibility, the truth and illusion of love, and even the possibility and impossibility of writing, these rich contents together constitute the novel's vast spiritual world. This is not a philosophical text composed of pure speculation, but a literary creation "inscribed within the thickness of reality", so it should not have extracted any key words, because the greater the literary work, the more its meaning is immersed in details. Every topic mentioned above deserves attention and discussion. However, there is a main line in the novel: a human action triggered by the plague. Or more roughly: a revolt sparked by absurdity. We need to remember that this is only a rough simplification, it is not at all representative of the novel, but our study still chooses to end here.
Whether it is "absurd" or "rebellious", in Camus's world of thought it is a programmatic concept that transcends a single work. Therefore, they must have their origins and origins in Camus's pen. In order to clarify the "absurdity" and "resistance" in "Plague", it is not possible to limit itself to the content of the novel itself, but must be referred to by other works. On the one hand, this allows us to trace the origin of the idea of rebellion in the Plague and see its final results; on the other hand, many of Camus's expository texts and novels are ideologically mutually explicit than the roundabout expressions in the novel. They are essential tools for understanding the rebellious ideas of the Plague.
Plague [French] by Albert Camus, translated by Li Yumin, Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House, May 2020
In Camus's writing, the keywords "absurd" and "revolt" appeared before the writing of The Plague. Needless to say, the "absurd" has long been closely bound to the "absurd series" works such as "The Outsider", "The Myth of Sisyphus" and "Caligula". In contrast, Camus's early works on "rebellion" are more limited, but this does not lack importance. In the face of the absurdity of the world and life, Camus clearly felt from the beginning that man could not succumb to it, and needed to find a way to rebel against this situation and rebuild the meaning and value of life in an absurd world. Resisting "meaninglessness" with "meaning" is the original origin of Camus's rebellious ideas.
In the section "Absurd Freedom" in the Myth of Sisyphus, Camus first proposed the connotation of "rebellion", he wrote: "Resistance gives life to its own value." It extends in the complete beginning and end of existence, restoring the greatness of survival. For the broad-minded, there is no beauty that can outwit the struggle of wisdom with a reality that overwhelms the people. Human self-esteem is an unparalleled landscape. All depreciation here will be meaningless. This code of spiritual self-discipline, this will forged by all things, this attitude of facing it, there is something powerful and unique in it. The inhumanity of reality creates man's greatness, and weakening this reality also weakens man himself. ”
Camus does not shy away from the "inhumanity" of reality (synonymous with "absurd"), but he emphasizes the need for humanity to be thoroughly aware of the status quo, to bear the weight of this realization, and ultimately to transform this pressure into a motivation to find value. Acknowledging an inescapable heavy reality, but not acknowledging that humanity is destined to be "absurdly" assimilated in the face of this reality, is what Camus symbolizes by borrowing the image of Sisyphus pushing the boulder, and it is also the meaning he gives here to "resistance". For every ordinary person who works from Monday to Friday at the counter, in the office, on the assembly line, or elsewhere, we live in a way that never ends in front of a boulder that can never be pushed. This is a dilemma that Camus sees as one of the manifestations of the "absurd.". In the face of absurdity, Camus "longed to know whether he could live without hesitation", asking about the meaning and value of survival. If the absurdity of the world cannot be dissolved, or if the absurdity is part of the world, if everyone has a boulder waiting for him to push, how should life be faced? Camus said precisely at this time: Pushing the boulder and enduring this absurd world does not mean submission, and when we wake up in this world and see our absurd situation and the end of our doomed failure (death), we see our own limitations, and at the same time know that the meaning of life comes neither from heaven nor from the other shore, it comes only from man, must be created by man himself, and can only be created through man. Having a calm understanding of one's own situation, maintaining a rebellious soul, guarding the independence of the soul, and pushing the boulder up again and again is a heroic thing in Camus's view. Creating meaning with human hands in a meaningless world is the mission and connotation of "rebellion" in Camus's eyes when he wrote The Myth of Sisyphus.
At the same time, we need to realize that the Myth of Sisyphus, like The Outsider, is about the universal everyday, so that the boulder that oppressed Sisyphus remains unbroken, and all of Camus's account of Sisyphus is based on acknowledging its existence. For in Camus's view at the time, this boulder was part of everyday life, and could even be described as its inherent attribute: "The inhumanity of reality creates man's greatness, and weakening this reality also weakens man himself." So, instead of letting Sisyphus lead the rebellion to this external boulder, he instead inspired an indomitable will in his heart. Sisyphus can thus be called the "inner rebel".
In 1992, a poster for the movie of the same name based on Camus's Plague.
However, the outbreak of war in September 1939 completely changed the external environment of everyday life. The world is no longer just a meaningless desolation, it is being covered with the darkness of human nature, the roar of cruelty and the cries of despair, and the absurdity is not only an inexhaustible boulder, but also a killing machine (plague) that cannot be filled with flesh and blood. In the face of such a situation, Camus refused to acknowledge the status quo, he wanted to break all this injustice, so the Sisyphus-style inner rebellion was transformed into a full-fledged action. The birth of Plague also began here. He decided to get up and smash the boulder, which was a key juncture for Camus. Shortly after the outbreak of the war, he wrote this monologue in his Notes:
Attempts to isolate from the world are always illusory, even if it is to isolate the foolishness and cruelty of others. We can't say "I don't know". Either go along with the flow or stand up for it. Nothing is more unforgivable than war and the incitement of national hatred. However, once war breaks out, it is vain and cowardly to try to stay out of it under the pretext of not caring about oneself. The ivory tower has collapsed. Whether it is for oneself or others, it is strictly forbidden to go against the grain.
Judging an event from the outside is impossible and immoral. Only within this absurd calamity do we retain the right to despise it... I am in the midst of war and I have the right to judge it. Judge and act.
The note clearly foreshadows that Camus resisted "isolation" and would "act" in war, leaving the collapsing ivory tower and heading for a wider crowd. This will be a new phase in his life and will form the true foundation of Camus's "Resistance Series", including Plague. This confession by Camus should be seen as an important motivation for his decision to write Plague in April 1941. In this sense, the war not only constitutes the historical background of the creative stage of The Plague, but also a profound stimulus that makes him realize the necessity of stepping out of the lonely artistic world of the individual.
Stills from the Spanish TV series The Black Death.
In contrast, Sisyphus, as an "inner rebel," should be seen as a precursor to the perfection of the rebellious mind. Of course, in the Myth of Sisyphus, "rebellion" is seen as a way for humans to find and create meaning in a meaningless world, and this has always been valid. "Resistance" has always been fundamentally an action to rebuild value, and the reason why it opposes and breaks something is because it first approves and insists on something, which is also Camus's consistent way of moving from negation to affirmation. As he put it at the beginning of his 1945 Commentary on "Resistance": "What is a rebel? A man who says 'no'. But if he said no, he never gave up, so he is also a person who says 'yes' from the beginning. This passage was later placed untouched at the beginning of The Rebel, and can be seen as an important footnote to the Plague — don't forget that in 1945 Camus was making intensive revisions to the Plague, and this Commentary on the "Resistance" expressed two sides of the same thing as the Plague. Understanding this article goes a long way toward clarifying the relationship between absurdity and rebellion in Plague.
A rebel who says "yes" is fundamentally a person who reconstructs value and meaning, and Sisyphus conveys this by saying "no" to the gods precisely because he says "yes" to human dignity; at the same time, Camus is constantly giving more to "resistance", which is not only a process of individual self-search, self-search, and self-construction of meaning, but also calls on human beings to work together in the face of common suffering. This also became the subtext that Camus had every time he used the word "rebellion" after the war. In Camus's 1955 open letter to Roland Barthes, he made it clear: "Compared to The Outsider, the Plague unquestionably points to a path from a lonely attitude of defiance to a common understanding that must fight hand in hand." If existence evolves from The Outsider to The Plague, it is in the sense of solidarity and sharing. These statements about "solidarity and sharing" are by no means an afterthought. As early as the Commentary on "Rebellion", Camus has already stated: "We have seen in the confirmation of resistance something beyond the individual, which pulls the individual out of the supposed loneliness and lays down a value. He then further argues:
Therefore, the individual does not defend this value just for himself. The participation of all is needed. It is in rebellion that man transcends himself to others, and it is from this point of view that human solidarity is transcendental.
At least, this is the first step taken by the spirit of rebellion, which unfolds a deep contemplation of the absurdity of the world and its superficial meaninglessness. In the experience of the absurd, tragedy is personal. Starting with the revolt movement, it will produce a collective consciousness. It's an adventure for all.
For the first time in this essay, Camus distinguishes between the experience of the absurd and the experience of rebellion, not to deny the sense of rebellion in the experience of the absurd, but to define and analyze "resistance" more clearly. It is also a clear thread that leads us from the Myth of Sisyphus to Rieux, Tarou, Gran, Lambert, and Panalu in Plague.
In The Black Death, those killed by the plague are buried in a concentrated manner.
Get out of your own loneliness and the dilemma of personal logic
In 1946, Camus wrote in his Notes: "From a neoclassical point of view, the Plague should be the first attempt to shape some kind of collective passion." "Collective consciousness" and "collective passion", in such words, Camus tried to highlight the necessity of unity and sharing between people. At the end of The Plague, we can also see a similar expression in Rieux's reflections.
Beginning with The Plague and Commentary on "Resistance," Camus expanded his meaning of rebellion, directing the inner struggle of being alone into an all-out struggle of a group of people. From this moment on, Camus realized that this rebellion would free one from the predicament of his own loneliness and his own logic, that he would still struggle for himself while fighting with others and for others, and that such unity and sharing would not diminish the independence of the individual. This is evident in the many characters portrayed in Plague: for Rieux, the narrator of the story and the rescuer on the front lines, everything he does in the face of the plague is reduced to his "job" – to cure the sick and save people. He was not concerned with salvation in the religious sense, but only with the health of every sick person, for only the latter could be touched by the efforts of his own hands. He doesn't have flowery language, but there's never a lack of hard work. He was a mortal, and there was also his helplessness and exhaustion, but he persevered in a humble way. For him, fighting the "epidemic" is his responsibility.
Gran's anti-epidemic campaign was more quiet than Rieux's. The government's temporary employee, a dispensable little man in society, diligently counted the death toll outside of work, always adhering to this seemingly insignificant job. He participated in the fight against the "epidemic" because he also wanted to contribute. As Rieux said, whether the media promotes it or not, such a person will never be involved in those glorious images of heroism. Despite being unnoticed, Gran contributed his part. Don't talk about it, just do what you can.
As for Lambert, he pursues personal happiness, and for the sake of his distant lover, he tries desperately to leave the blockaded city. This is a legitimate pursuit, and Rieux understands. Lambert longed for love and therefore resisted separation, he was anxious to be reunited with a distant lover, and his understanding of love was not based on ideas, but on perception, so he rejected abstract concepts and emphasized the real contact of the flesh. He possesses a firm worldview based on physical sensibility. His transformation was characterized not by reason of being persuaded intellectually, but by chance from Tarroux that Rieux's wife was also far away and seriously ill. The empathy triggered by this similar situation led him to decide to participate in the fight against the epidemic. Emotional touch is the reason for his action.
Father Panalu was involved in the rescue for a completely different reason. Although his first sermon was criticized by Rieux, he was deeply touched by the death of his young son Oton who was tortured by illness, so in his second sermon he changed "you" to "we" and called on all people to embody God's love with a full spirit of selflessness and contempt for personal safety. He led by example, on the front line of the fight against the "epidemic", but until his death, he still revealed his indifference to medical care. This is not contradictory to Panaru, whose selfless devotion and surrender of himself to God are in accordance with God's will. The reason for Panalu's participation in the fight against the "epidemic" has always relied on religion and is religious thinking.
As soon as Taru appeared, he seemed to have completely recognized himself. After the lockdown, he took the initiative to contact Rieux, hoping to set up an epidemic prevention organization, which he took for granted. In his own words, he participated in the fight against the "epidemic" only for the sake of inner peace. Just like his early years against the death penalty, he could not bear to watch his life die. Unlike Panalu, Who had been trying to smile before his death, the last words he left in the novel were Rieux's old mother hearing him say on his deathbed, "Everything is fine now.". Seek peace, and then there is peace.
Five protagonists, five attitudes, one action. Camus proved in this way that the collective does not destroy individuality. The only counterexample is Kotal, because he stands for "absurdity", the embodiment of "absurdity". Kotal's appearance was a suicide attempt, followed by a successful plague epidemic, and after the outbreak ended, he shot in the street in horror. This information is enough to make us think that this is a person who has given up resistance and been swallowed up by absurdity. Kotal is the only capitulator in the face of the plague in the entire Plague, and even welcomes and expects it from the bottom of his heart, and eventually becomes an accomplice to the plague. Kotal is both a representative of all negative personalities in the face of the plague, and a symbol of cowardice and submission to the absurd that is rooted in human nature, which requires us to remain vigilant.
If the main line of Plague can be roughly reduced to a rebellion sparked by the absurd, Camus's focus falls on the different attitudes of each character to the "absurd" and the different ways in which they move towards "rebellion" (Kotal represents the kind of person who does not rebel in the face of the absurd). The other themes of the novel also revolve entirely on these characters. We must not forget that all kinds of problems that Camus is concerned with must eventually return to human attributes and be verified in concrete life. In The Notebook, Camus conceived in August 1942: "Novel. Don't put 'plague' in the headline. It's things like 'prisoners'. The so-called "prisoners" of course refer to Rieux, Tarou, Lambert and other people who are trapped in the plague and struggle to survive. Although Camus eventually named the novel The Plague, the appearance of the alternative title "Prisoners" is enough to show that the characters in Plague are not only the characters who make up the story, they are themselves the main content of the story.
The Outsider [french] by Albert Camus, translated by Jin Yi, Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House, March 2019
The absurd is barren and cruel, and it is only responsible for destroying everything
Plague is Camus's second novel to be officially published after The Outsider and the foundation of his transition from the "Absurd Series" to the "Rebellion Series". During the initial conception and drafting of Plague, Camus became clearly aware of the difference between the novel in the works and The Outsider. In two of his 1942 notes, Camus made this self-analysis:
There is no tomorrow
What exactly is something I think about that is greater than I am and that makes me feel unable to define it? A certain arduous trek toward the sanctity of negation—a kind of heroism without God—ends up as pure man. All human virtues, including loneliness in the face of God... The Outsider is the zero point. So is Myth. Plague is a progress, not from zero to infinity, but towards a deeper, undefined complexity. The end point will be the Sage, but he also has his arithmetic value— as measurable as a normal person.
plague. Can't get out of it. There were too many "surprises" in the draft this time. It must be closely conceived. The Outsider describes the nakedness of man in the face of absurdity. Plague confronts the same absurdity with the depth and reciprocity of many personal opinions. It's an improvement that will gradually become clear in other works. Beyond that, though, The Plague proves that absurdity itself teaches nothing. This is a decisive step forward.
In both monologues, Camus gives the same sentence to the original Plague: "progress" (progrès). "The Outsider" is the zero point, the origin point, the starting point, the "nakedness of man in the face of absurdity", while "Plague" is from the zero point "to a deeper, more defined complexity", "the deep reciprocity of many personal views in the face of the same absurdity". This "deep equivalence" is what is called "polyphony" above. Camus's attempt to depict in The Plague the attitudes and actions of many characters in the face of absurdity and to discover their inner commonalities was born from the time he conceived the Plague; at the same time, he felt during the conception: "The Plague proves that the absurdity itself does not teach anything. The meaning of this sentence is not that man cannot learn anything from the absurd, but that the absurd, as a part of the world and life, is itself barren, cruel, indifferent, it does not take the initiative to give any teaching, it is like the plague responsible for unilateral destruction.
The lesson comes from people, from people's attitudes and reactions in the face of absurdity, and from the judgment and reflection of their own actions after contacting absurdity. Therefore, the most urgent step in indicating the existence of "absurdity" is not to continue to analyze the "absurdity" itself, but to think about how people should think and act. Camus's so-called "decisive progress" points in this direction. His ultimate goal is to think about the possibility of human beings attaining the dignity of existence in the case of a complete freedom from the gods, and how man can live in the world in his own strength and create the meaning of life. So he would say, "The end will be the Sage, but he also has his arithmetic values—as measurable as a normal person." Here, the saint completely detaches from or even reverses the traditional religious meaning, returns to the attributes of the homme, and the religious nature is completely dissolved, transformed into a moral and ethical nature, a victory of man over God, human nature over divinity, or, in camus's words in this note, "a heroism without God" and "ultimately a pure man.". Man was always the object of Camus's close attention. The central meaning of Plague is not to describe the plague itself, but to show how the humans confronted with it act in their own ways. This series of ideas was eventually realized in Plague.
In the midst of the jubilation at the end of The Plague, Rieux reminds himself that the "absurdity" symbolized by the plague will not disappear completely, and that neither the madness of the world nor the darkness of the heart can be won once and for all by human beings. The rebels, represented by Rieux, remained vigilant. In the long run, the plague remained like a boulder on Sisyphus's back, falling from the top of the mountain at any time, and the rebels were still bearing the weight of the boulder, but each time they tried their best to crush the stone. In these rebels, there is a strong vitality that has been tempered by pain and courage. They refused to acknowledge that "existence is reasonable," as Camus later said, "Each of us carries in ourselves our servitude, our sins, and our wounds." Yet our task is not to release them into the world, but to fight them in us and with others. From bearing the boulder to breaking it, Camus completed the evolution of the "absurd series" to the "resistance series". He wrote in The Plague: "Out of the principle of conscience, he [Rieux] did not hesitate to side with the victims, hoping to be reunited with humanity, with his fellow citizens, in the only things they all had in common, namely love, suffering, and exile." So there was no part of the anxiety of his fellow citizens with whom he did not share it, and there was no situation not of his own. "The world is absurd in nature, but it is more than absurd. Recognizing the absurd, resisting the absurd, constantly creating the meaning of life in the rebellion, motivating and supporting each other, uniting and sharing, it is all this that makes the actions of the rebels have tangible value, which is already called "decisive progress".
This article is excerpted from the reader's edition of the "Plague", the original text is nearly 20,000 words, the subtitle is added by the editor, and published with the permission of the publisher reader.
Written by Zhang Bo
Excerpt from Xu Xueqin
Edited by Xu Wei