The Paper's reporter Fan Jialai
"People will eventually die, and they will not live happily." In 1944, the 25-year-old French writer Camus wrote in Caligula.
Camus, a writer, a thinker. "Albert Camus", one of the most shining names in the history of human culture in the 20th century. On a piece of paper marked March 1951 to December 1953, he listed his beloved words: world, pain, earth, motherhood, humanity, desert, honor, suffering, summer, sea. This sums up all that he has dedicated his life to.
On November 7, translator Yuan Xiaoyi, dean of the School of Foreign Languages of East China Normal University, Zhang Bo, doctor of literature at the Sorbonne University in Paris, France, and Cheng Yanliang, host of the podcast "Suddenly Left and Suddenly Right", gathered at the Hong Kong Sanlian Bookstore to share with readers the Camus and the "absurdity" in their hearts on the occasion of the 107th anniversary of Camus's birth.
Yuan Xiaoyi (left) vs. Zhang Bo (right)
An absurd fate is inevitable, but humanity must face it
Zhang Bo introduced that as a genius-type writer, Camus became famous in the French literary circles with the publication of "The Outsider" at the age of twenty-nine, and even won the Nobel Prize for Literature, which symbolizes the highest honor of world literature, at the age of forty-four, although the car accident absurdly ended his too short life, but in his life of only forty-seven years, he has left one classic after another for mankind, not only "The Outsider", "The Myth of Sisyphus", "Plague", "Rebel", which are familiar masterpieces, and if completed, it is comparable to "The Rebel". War and Peace", the posthumous manuscript "The First Man".
Yuan Xiaoyi believes that in Camus's creative process, there are two important triangles that confirm Camus's talent and unity as a novelist, philosopher and playwright: one triangle is "The Outsider" - "The Myth of Sisyphus" - "Caligula", its center is absurdity; the other triangle is "Plague" - "The Righteous" - "The Rebel", and its center is resistance. In Camus's writings, truth has no fixed form, and reading his novels, one can feel the power of calm and reason.
The reasons she liked Camus can be summed up in three words: truth, passion, and heroism. 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.
Camus's "Plague" is undoubtedly one of the most talked about novels in the epidemic. This highly symbolic novel brings reflection and enlightenment to people in the midst of disaster. Zhang Bo mentioned that "Plague" is Camus's second novel officially published after "The Outsider", and it is also the foundation of his transition from the "absurd series" to the "resistance series". Zhang Bo believes that the core meaning of "Plague" is not to describe the plague itself, but to show how the humans who face it directly act in their own ways.
For example, in the midst of the celebration 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 Camus's pen, the plague that was temporarily over was still like a boulder carried by Sisyphus, falling from the top of the mountain at any time, and the rebels were still bearing the burden 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.
Zhang Bo believes that in "The Plague" Camus tried to prove that in times of crisis, not everyone only cares about personal safety and 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 human beings, there is more praise than there should be contempt."
"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. ”
The scene of the event
Camus and Sartre, friendship or enemies
When it comes to the history of French literature, Camus's relationship with Sartre has always been talked about. Camus, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 and Sartre in 1964, were world-renowned thinkers, writers, social activists of the 20th century, and forged deep friendships.
But as their political views changed, the two engaged in polemics in the journal Modern, edited by Sartre, and fell into a state of emotional intensity due to ideological confrontation, and after fiercely attacking each other, they were inseparable. This complex relationship has also become a legend in the history of French literature.
Zhang Bo mentions that Camus and Sartre met in a small time: in 1943, when Camus and Sartre first met, Sartre was already famous, and Camus was still an obscure newspaper editor. At that time, Sartre's "Disgust" had just been published, and in the face of existence, Sartre used the concept of "disgusting" and Camus used the concept of "absurdity", both negating the traditional essentialist philosophy's definition of the transcendental value of man, making room for personal free choice and responsibility. Appreciating each other's talents and creativity, Camus soon became a member of Sartre's circle of celebrities.
"I don't think they were soul mates from the start, and the one who really resonated with Camus's thoughts was René Charles, whose relationship with Sartre was more like an intellectual interlocutor." Yuan Xiaoyi said that Camus and Sartre once had an argument over the protagonist of the play "Dirty Hands". Sartre's belief that he was willing to sacrifice morality for his own ends, while Camus hated such a practice, also reflected the fact that the values of the two were fundamentally very different. "The rupture between Camus and Sartre, the misunderstanding that Camus was in the circumstances of the time. He did not break with Sartre alone, but was completely separated from the whole group and atmosphere at that time, and the Paris literary scene at that time, at least in public attitude, could not accept him. ”
But in the depths of human nature, the two also have understanding and commonalities. Camus was killed in a car accident on January 4, and Sartre said in his January 7 lament that Camus, through his rejection of history, had "re-established the existence of moral facts at the center of our time." He mentioned that after he and Camus "broke up", they were "living together in another way", and although the former intimacy no longer existed, the two souls still left a profound revelation on the political and ideological confrontation.
Editor-in-Charge: Chen Shihuai
Proofreader: Ding Xiao