Camus' Politics: A Door in the Wall

In one of the very few books Camus that is worth reading, Albert Maquet has written: "The of Albert Camus is of the kind at requires us to be worthy of it . To respond to the honesty of message by the honesty of our That this is truer of that of almost all his is evident to anyone has read even one of his books. a new volume has appeared pertinence and power will the point home even more

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death just what it sounds like--an American publisher's title. Just his death Camus culled from three volumes of his Actuelies 23 essays he wanted preserved English. Sadly, actuelie is one those words that cannot be Its literal meaning is or "contemporary", and it notes as well "immediate", "near hand", "timely". It is an and as translator O'Brien in his introduction, the of the noun is for ambiguity.

any case, the pieces are "now" "near at hand". They are all selected to give the American audience Camus on the historical plane, when he descends the philosophical and issues.

the very statement of such is contrary to precise that spirit of Camus' that this illustrates so well. In writings, there is no split the man as philosopher as political being: the values art inform the values of his and of his life. In perhaps modern thinker are the timely the timeless fused so tightly. reading of, for example, The will show, metaphysical and rebellion are one; Camus artist, the commentator, and man are one.

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death a good introduction to Camus. curious are advised, by this at least, to begin with The of Slayphus and The Plague. for those already acquainted Camus' work, Knopf has here a powerful collection of essays and excerpts, some elsewhere in English, h will be a valuable addition any libraries.

of them are dated. The to a German Friend, in 1943 and 1944, seem obsolete now in reference both to history and to Camus' later writings. In the Preface for the Italian Edition, where the third and fourth letters were published for the first time, Camus explains: "I am contrasting two attitudes, not two nations, even if, at a certain moment in history, these two nations personified two enemy attitudes." And this is true, for the Resistance Frenchman, addressing a former comrade, is inclined to equate moral rectitude with winning wars, or at least to make the latter seem a result of the former. We know this is not always the case; in later years the writer himself was more detached. But inadequate as these pages might be for a manifesto of the French spirit, or of European civilization, they have a message that no history can render useless: "We had much to overcome, and, first of all, the constant temptation to imitate you."

This spirit is supplemented by the tribute to Rene Leynaud, written just after his death in 1944. Many have found Camus' undefined and imprecise use of the words "honor" and "decency" confusing: here is their explanation. A precis would be unfair, but Leynaud, who "never bargained about anything", will be recognized in his resemblance to Dr. Rieux in The Plague. When you have read the description of Leynaud, turn to Homage to an Exile, later in the volume, and read these sentences: "I cannot love all humanity except with a vast and somewhat abstract love. But I love a few men, living or dead, with such force and admiration that I am always eager to preserve in others what will someday perhaps make them resemble those I love."

In The Unbeliever and Christians, excerpted from a statement made in 1948 at the Dominican monastery of Latour-Mauborg in Paris, the reader will find baldly stated one tenet of Camus' entire outlook, echoing again and again through his works: "Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children." One thinks again of The Plague, and of the priest Paneloux who learned that suffering demands resistance, and that tyranny, in whatever form, cannot be excused by either its transcendental value or its universality.

A further development of this thought is in Why Spain?, a reply to Gabriel Marcel's stinging attack on Camus' play, Etat de Slege. Enslavement, metaphysical or historical, has only one answer--rebellion. And Camus is not "willing to keep silent about one reign of terror in order the better to combat another one". "The world I live in," he explains, "is loathsome to me. But I feel one with the men who suffer in it." Camus began, politically and philosophically, where his generation stopped: at despair. But in spite of and in a way because of despair, he continued to rebel against Fascism, Communism, blind faith, resignation, and the universe itself--because each of them increases instead of diminishing his despair. Against Marcel, who quarreled with his choice of Spain as an example of tyranny, Camus vented an anger barely hinted at in The Rebel, and only a little more obvious in The Fall, an anger which--subdued and carefully controlled--drove him "not to keep silent about anything".

This critic was among many who felt disappointed and a little betrayed when at the end of The Rebel, Camus defined his specific application of the values of rebellion to contemporary politics as "what is traditionally called revolutionary trade-unionism." Influenced no doubt by the use of the word "unions" in America, where it has come to mean something a little different, we thought Camus might be backing down. He wasn't. In a speech titled Bread and Freedom, addressed to a meeting of Parisian workingmen in 1953, he explains: "I have recognized only two aristocracies, that of labor and that of the intelligence"--he joins the rebellion of one to the revolution of the other to the encouragement of both. Unlike most of Camus' writings this article must be read and studied carefully before its implications will appear. But the task is a profitable one.

This critic must conress his disappointment in the Algerian Reports. They are topical, a little over-simplified, and a bit too glib. Especially annoying is the tinge of 19th-century liberalism in the appeal for unity and good will where substantive agreement is impossible. Algeria is the one subject on which Camus' patriotic emotions seem to have overwhelmed his lucidity. Even as this is written, the inadequacy of sham solidarity is being made apparent. Yet the values implicit in Camus' appeal are not inconsistent with those of his more dispassionate statements.

Knopf's collections also includes the masterful protections on the GuiMotine, written in collaboration with Arthur Koestler. In a sustained invective, Camus shows compelling skill in his application of The Rebel to another contemporary issue--capital punishment. "Freedom," he said elsewhere, "is the road to perfectibility"--but this must not mislead. Not liberal perfectibility, not optimism, but the stubborn refusal to deprive a man of his only chance at improvement. Under no circumstances can an irrevocable punishment be out, however inhuman the crime. It is, again, precisely because of the wretchedness of life that life must be allowed to go on.

Devotees of Camus will welcome a permanent copy of the superb dialogue with Jean Block-Michel, which was repdinted from in the November 23, 1957 issue of The Reporter. Here, in a translation that lacks the power of the Reporter version, it is retitled The Wager of Our Generation. Serious readers can find no more precise or cogent summary of the values that moved Camus throughout his life.

Read it and read again--it is a mature, carefully worded expression of the political, philosophical, and personal credo of a man whose bravery confronts us with the need to answer. Read: "The aim of art, the aim of life, can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, he is suppress that freedom, temporarily." And read; "One even have to fight a in the of a quarter-truth." Rebellion neither nor accepts rebellion against anything that minishes man, rebellion not in name of what will happen but what might happen--this is wager of Albert Camus. As a journalist, as an Underground fight as a man, never less in action in words, Camus struggled to worthy of his own ideals.

There is nothing in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death of the metaphysical Camus; all the subjects are socio-political. In this Camus is a challenge, not because we necessarily are in concord his views or values, but because consistently and without rest man lived the views, and lived values.

He held himself firm to their never denying the futility of what he was doing others to do. His was most difficult of rebellious that of the rebel who finds in silence of his opponents his reason for struggle, who finds his struggle his only claim to justification. "Let us not look the door," he says at the end this collection, "anywhere but the wall against which we living".

In 1957 an American critic on the publication of The "Camus has forced man to the Good! For so long as he there will be no peace." Three later Camus was dead, and in volume we are again of how much we have

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death just what it sounds like--an American publisher's title. Just his death Camus culled from three volumes of his Actuelies 23 essays he wanted preserved English. Sadly, actuelie is one those words that cannot be Its literal meaning is or "contemporary", and it notes as well "immediate", "near hand", "timely". It is an and as translator O'Brien in his introduction, the of the noun is for ambiguity.

any case, the pieces are "now" "near at hand". They are all selected to give the American audience Camus on the historical plane, when he descends the philosophical and issues.

the very statement of such is contrary to precise that spirit of Camus' that this illustrates so well. In writings, there is no split the man as philosopher as political being: the values art inform the values of his and of his life. In perhaps modern thinker are the timely the timeless fused so tightly. reading of, for example, The will show, metaphysical and rebellion are one; Camus artist, the commentator, and man are one.

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death a good introduction to Camus. curious are advised, by this at least, to begin with The of Slayphus and The Plague. for those already acquainted Camus' work, Knopf has here a powerful collection of essays and excerpts, some elsewhere in English, h will be a valuable addition any libraries.

of them are dated. The to a German Friend, in 1943 and 1944, seem obsolete now in reference both to history and to Camus' later writings. In the Preface for the Italian Edition, where the third and fourth letters were published for the first time, Camus explains: "I am contrasting two attitudes, not two nations, even if, at a certain moment in history, these two nations personified two enemy attitudes." And this is true, for the Resistance Frenchman, addressing a former comrade, is inclined to equate moral rectitude with winning wars, or at least to make the latter seem a result of the former. We know this is not always the case; in later years the writer himself was more detached. But inadequate as these pages might be for a manifesto of the French spirit, or of European civilization, they have a message that no history can render useless: "We had much to overcome, and, first of all, the constant temptation to imitate you."

This spirit is supplemented by the tribute to Rene Leynaud, written just after his death in 1944. Many have found Camus' undefined and imprecise use of the words "honor" and "decency" confusing: here is their explanation. A precis would be unfair, but Leynaud, who "never bargained about anything", will be recognized in his resemblance to Dr. Rieux in The Plague. When you have read the description of Leynaud, turn to Homage to an Exile, later in the volume, and read these sentences: "I cannot love all humanity except with a vast and somewhat abstract love. But I love a few men, living or dead, with such force and admiration that I am always eager to preserve in others what will someday perhaps make them resemble those I love."

In The Unbeliever and Christians, excerpted from a statement made in 1948 at the Dominican monastery of Latour-Mauborg in Paris, the reader will find baldly stated one tenet of Camus' entire outlook, echoing again and again through his works: "Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children." One thinks again of The Plague, and of the priest Paneloux who learned that suffering demands resistance, and that tyranny, in whatever form, cannot be excused by either its transcendental value or its universality.

A further development of this thought is in Why Spain?, a reply to Gabriel Marcel's stinging attack on Camus' play, Etat de Slege. Enslavement, metaphysical or historical, has only one answer--rebellion. And Camus is not "willing to keep silent about one reign of terror in order the better to combat another one". "The world I live in," he explains, "is loathsome to me. But I feel one with the men who suffer in it." Camus began, politically and philosophically, where his generation stopped: at despair. But in spite of and in a way because of despair, he continued to rebel against Fascism, Communism, blind faith, resignation, and the universe itself--because each of them increases instead of diminishing his despair. Against Marcel, who quarreled with his choice of Spain as an example of tyranny, Camus vented an anger barely hinted at in The Rebel, and only a little more obvious in The Fall, an anger which--subdued and carefully controlled--drove him "not to keep silent about anything".

This critic was among many who felt disappointed and a little betrayed when at the end of The Rebel, Camus defined his specific application of the values of rebellion to contemporary politics as "what is traditionally called revolutionary trade-unionism." Influenced no doubt by the use of the word "unions" in America, where it has come to mean something a little different, we thought Camus might be backing down. He wasn't. In a speech titled Bread and Freedom, addressed to a meeting of Parisian workingmen in 1953, he explains: "I have recognized only two aristocracies, that of labor and that of the intelligence"--he joins the rebellion of one to the revolution of the other to the encouragement of both. Unlike most of Camus' writings this article must be read and studied carefully before its implications will appear. But the task is a profitable one.

This critic must conress his disappointment in the Algerian Reports. They are topical, a little over-simplified, and a bit too glib. Especially annoying is the tinge of 19th-century liberalism in the appeal for unity and good will where substantive agreement is impossible. Algeria is the one subject on which Camus' patriotic emotions seem to have overwhelmed his lucidity. Even as this is written, the inadequacy of sham solidarity is being made apparent. Yet the values implicit in Camus' appeal are not inconsistent with those of his more dispassionate statements.

Knopf's collections also includes the masterful protections on the GuiMotine, written in collaboration with Arthur Koestler. In a sustained invective, Camus shows compelling skill in his application of The Rebel to another contemporary issue--capital punishment. "Freedom," he said elsewhere, "is the road to perfectibility"--but this must not mislead. Not liberal perfectibility, not optimism, but the stubborn refusal to deprive a man of his only chance at improvement. Under no circumstances can an irrevocable punishment be out, however inhuman the crime. It is, again, precisely because of the wretchedness of life that life must be allowed to go on.

Devotees of Camus will welcome a permanent copy of the superb dialogue with Jean Block-Michel, which was repdinted from in the November 23, 1957 issue of The Reporter. Here, in a translation that lacks the power of the Reporter version, it is retitled The Wager of Our Generation. Serious readers can find no more precise or cogent summary of the values that moved Camus throughout his life.

Read it and read again--it is a mature, carefully worded expression of the political, philosophical, and personal credo of a man whose bravery confronts us with the need to answer. Read: "The aim of art, the aim of life, can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, he is suppress that freedom, temporarily." And read; "One even have to fight a in the of a quarter-truth." Rebellion neither nor accepts rebellion against anything that minishes man, rebellion not in name of what will happen but what might happen--this is wager of Albert Camus. As a journalist, as an Underground fight as a man, never less in action in words, Camus struggled to worthy of his own ideals.

There is nothing in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death of the metaphysical Camus; all the subjects are socio-political. In this Camus is a challenge, not because we necessarily are in concord his views or values, but because consistently and without rest man lived the views, and lived values.

He held himself firm to their never denying the futility of what he was doing others to do. His was most difficult of rebellious that of the rebel who finds in silence of his opponents his reason for struggle, who finds his struggle his only claim to justification. "Let us not look the door," he says at the end this collection, "anywhere but the wall against which we living".

In 1957 an American critic on the publication of The "Camus has forced man to the Good! For so long as he there will be no peace." Three later Camus was dead, and in volume we are again of how much we have

any case, the pieces are "now" "near at hand". They are all selected to give the American audience Camus on the historical plane, when he descends the philosophical and issues.

the very statement of such is contrary to precise that spirit of Camus' that this illustrates so well. In writings, there is no split the man as philosopher as political being: the values art inform the values of his and of his life. In perhaps modern thinker are the timely the timeless fused so tightly. reading of, for example, The will show, metaphysical and rebellion are one; Camus artist, the commentator, and man are one.

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death a good introduction to Camus. curious are advised, by this at least, to begin with The of Slayphus and The Plague. for those already acquainted Camus' work, Knopf has here a powerful collection of essays and excerpts, some elsewhere in English, h will be a valuable addition any libraries.

of them are dated. The to a German Friend, in 1943 and 1944, seem obsolete now in reference both to history and to Camus' later writings. In the Preface for the Italian Edition, where the third and fourth letters were published for the first time, Camus explains: "I am contrasting two attitudes, not two nations, even if, at a certain moment in history, these two nations personified two enemy attitudes." And this is true, for the Resistance Frenchman, addressing a former comrade, is inclined to equate moral rectitude with winning wars, or at least to make the latter seem a result of the former. We know this is not always the case; in later years the writer himself was more detached. But inadequate as these pages might be for a manifesto of the French spirit, or of European civilization, they have a message that no history can render useless: "We had much to overcome, and, first of all, the constant temptation to imitate you."

This spirit is supplemented by the tribute to Rene Leynaud, written just after his death in 1944. Many have found Camus' undefined and imprecise use of the words "honor" and "decency" confusing: here is their explanation. A precis would be unfair, but Leynaud, who "never bargained about anything", will be recognized in his resemblance to Dr. Rieux in The Plague. When you have read the description of Leynaud, turn to Homage to an Exile, later in the volume, and read these sentences: "I cannot love all humanity except with a vast and somewhat abstract love. But I love a few men, living or dead, with such force and admiration that I am always eager to preserve in others what will someday perhaps make them resemble those I love."

In The Unbeliever and Christians, excerpted from a statement made in 1948 at the Dominican monastery of Latour-Mauborg in Paris, the reader will find baldly stated one tenet of Camus' entire outlook, echoing again and again through his works: "Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children." One thinks again of The Plague, and of the priest Paneloux who learned that suffering demands resistance, and that tyranny, in whatever form, cannot be excused by either its transcendental value or its universality.

A further development of this thought is in Why Spain?, a reply to Gabriel Marcel's stinging attack on Camus' play, Etat de Slege. Enslavement, metaphysical or historical, has only one answer--rebellion. And Camus is not "willing to keep silent about one reign of terror in order the better to combat another one". "The world I live in," he explains, "is loathsome to me. But I feel one with the men who suffer in it." Camus began, politically and philosophically, where his generation stopped: at despair. But in spite of and in a way because of despair, he continued to rebel against Fascism, Communism, blind faith, resignation, and the universe itself--because each of them increases instead of diminishing his despair. Against Marcel, who quarreled with his choice of Spain as an example of tyranny, Camus vented an anger barely hinted at in The Rebel, and only a little more obvious in The Fall, an anger which--subdued and carefully controlled--drove him "not to keep silent about anything".

This critic was among many who felt disappointed and a little betrayed when at the end of The Rebel, Camus defined his specific application of the values of rebellion to contemporary politics as "what is traditionally called revolutionary trade-unionism." Influenced no doubt by the use of the word "unions" in America, where it has come to mean something a little different, we thought Camus might be backing down. He wasn't. In a speech titled Bread and Freedom, addressed to a meeting of Parisian workingmen in 1953, he explains: "I have recognized only two aristocracies, that of labor and that of the intelligence"--he joins the rebellion of one to the revolution of the other to the encouragement of both. Unlike most of Camus' writings this article must be read and studied carefully before its implications will appear. But the task is a profitable one.

This critic must conress his disappointment in the Algerian Reports. They are topical, a little over-simplified, and a bit too glib. Especially annoying is the tinge of 19th-century liberalism in the appeal for unity and good will where substantive agreement is impossible. Algeria is the one subject on which Camus' patriotic emotions seem to have overwhelmed his lucidity. Even as this is written, the inadequacy of sham solidarity is being made apparent. Yet the values implicit in Camus' appeal are not inconsistent with those of his more dispassionate statements.

Knopf's collections also includes the masterful protections on the GuiMotine, written in collaboration with Arthur Koestler. In a sustained invective, Camus shows compelling skill in his application of The Rebel to another contemporary issue--capital punishment. "Freedom," he said elsewhere, "is the road to perfectibility"--but this must not mislead. Not liberal perfectibility, not optimism, but the stubborn refusal to deprive a man of his only chance at improvement. Under no circumstances can an irrevocable punishment be out, however inhuman the crime. It is, again, precisely because of the wretchedness of life that life must be allowed to go on.

Devotees of Camus will welcome a permanent copy of the superb dialogue with Jean Block-Michel, which was repdinted from in the November 23, 1957 issue of The Reporter. Here, in a translation that lacks the power of the Reporter version, it is retitled The Wager of Our Generation. Serious readers can find no more precise or cogent summary of the values that moved Camus throughout his life.

Read it and read again--it is a mature, carefully worded expression of the political, philosophical, and personal credo of a man whose bravery confronts us with the need to answer. Read: "The aim of art, the aim of life, can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, he is suppress that freedom, temporarily." And read; "One even have to fight a in the of a quarter-truth." Rebellion neither nor accepts rebellion against anything that minishes man, rebellion not in name of what will happen but what might happen--this is wager of Albert Camus. As a journalist, as an Underground fight as a man, never less in action in words, Camus struggled to worthy of his own ideals.

There is nothing in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death of the metaphysical Camus; all the subjects are socio-political. In this Camus is a challenge, not because we necessarily are in concord his views or values, but because consistently and without rest man lived the views, and lived values.

He held himself firm to their never denying the futility of what he was doing others to do. His was most difficult of rebellious that of the rebel who finds in silence of his opponents his reason for struggle, who finds his struggle his only claim to justification. "Let us not look the door," he says at the end this collection, "anywhere but the wall against which we living".

In 1957 an American critic on the publication of The "Camus has forced man to the Good! For so long as he there will be no peace." Three later Camus was dead, and in volume we are again of how much we have

the very statement of such is contrary to precise that spirit of Camus' that this illustrates so well. In writings, there is no split the man as philosopher as political being: the values art inform the values of his and of his life. In perhaps modern thinker are the timely the timeless fused so tightly. reading of, for example, The will show, metaphysical and rebellion are one; Camus artist, the commentator, and man are one.

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death a good introduction to Camus. curious are advised, by this at least, to begin with The of Slayphus and The Plague. for those already acquainted Camus' work, Knopf has here a powerful collection of essays and excerpts, some elsewhere in English, h will be a valuable addition any libraries.

of them are dated. The to a German Friend, in 1943 and 1944, seem obsolete now in reference both to history and to Camus' later writings. In the Preface for the Italian Edition, where the third and fourth letters were published for the first time, Camus explains: "I am contrasting two attitudes, not two nations, even if, at a certain moment in history, these two nations personified two enemy attitudes." And this is true, for the Resistance Frenchman, addressing a former comrade, is inclined to equate moral rectitude with winning wars, or at least to make the latter seem a result of the former. We know this is not always the case; in later years the writer himself was more detached. But inadequate as these pages might be for a manifesto of the French spirit, or of European civilization, they have a message that no history can render useless: "We had much to overcome, and, first of all, the constant temptation to imitate you."

This spirit is supplemented by the tribute to Rene Leynaud, written just after his death in 1944. Many have found Camus' undefined and imprecise use of the words "honor" and "decency" confusing: here is their explanation. A precis would be unfair, but Leynaud, who "never bargained about anything", will be recognized in his resemblance to Dr. Rieux in The Plague. When you have read the description of Leynaud, turn to Homage to an Exile, later in the volume, and read these sentences: "I cannot love all humanity except with a vast and somewhat abstract love. But I love a few men, living or dead, with such force and admiration that I am always eager to preserve in others what will someday perhaps make them resemble those I love."

In The Unbeliever and Christians, excerpted from a statement made in 1948 at the Dominican monastery of Latour-Mauborg in Paris, the reader will find baldly stated one tenet of Camus' entire outlook, echoing again and again through his works: "Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children." One thinks again of The Plague, and of the priest Paneloux who learned that suffering demands resistance, and that tyranny, in whatever form, cannot be excused by either its transcendental value or its universality.

A further development of this thought is in Why Spain?, a reply to Gabriel Marcel's stinging attack on Camus' play, Etat de Slege. Enslavement, metaphysical or historical, has only one answer--rebellion. And Camus is not "willing to keep silent about one reign of terror in order the better to combat another one". "The world I live in," he explains, "is loathsome to me. But I feel one with the men who suffer in it." Camus began, politically and philosophically, where his generation stopped: at despair. But in spite of and in a way because of despair, he continued to rebel against Fascism, Communism, blind faith, resignation, and the universe itself--because each of them increases instead of diminishing his despair. Against Marcel, who quarreled with his choice of Spain as an example of tyranny, Camus vented an anger barely hinted at in The Rebel, and only a little more obvious in The Fall, an anger which--subdued and carefully controlled--drove him "not to keep silent about anything".

This critic was among many who felt disappointed and a little betrayed when at the end of The Rebel, Camus defined his specific application of the values of rebellion to contemporary politics as "what is traditionally called revolutionary trade-unionism." Influenced no doubt by the use of the word "unions" in America, where it has come to mean something a little different, we thought Camus might be backing down. He wasn't. In a speech titled Bread and Freedom, addressed to a meeting of Parisian workingmen in 1953, he explains: "I have recognized only two aristocracies, that of labor and that of the intelligence"--he joins the rebellion of one to the revolution of the other to the encouragement of both. Unlike most of Camus' writings this article must be read and studied carefully before its implications will appear. But the task is a profitable one.

This critic must conress his disappointment in the Algerian Reports. They are topical, a little over-simplified, and a bit too glib. Especially annoying is the tinge of 19th-century liberalism in the appeal for unity and good will where substantive agreement is impossible. Algeria is the one subject on which Camus' patriotic emotions seem to have overwhelmed his lucidity. Even as this is written, the inadequacy of sham solidarity is being made apparent. Yet the values implicit in Camus' appeal are not inconsistent with those of his more dispassionate statements.

Knopf's collections also includes the masterful protections on the GuiMotine, written in collaboration with Arthur Koestler. In a sustained invective, Camus shows compelling skill in his application of The Rebel to another contemporary issue--capital punishment. "Freedom," he said elsewhere, "is the road to perfectibility"--but this must not mislead. Not liberal perfectibility, not optimism, but the stubborn refusal to deprive a man of his only chance at improvement. Under no circumstances can an irrevocable punishment be out, however inhuman the crime. It is, again, precisely because of the wretchedness of life that life must be allowed to go on.

Devotees of Camus will welcome a permanent copy of the superb dialogue with Jean Block-Michel, which was repdinted from in the November 23, 1957 issue of The Reporter. Here, in a translation that lacks the power of the Reporter version, it is retitled The Wager of Our Generation. Serious readers can find no more precise or cogent summary of the values that moved Camus throughout his life.

Read it and read again--it is a mature, carefully worded expression of the political, philosophical, and personal credo of a man whose bravery confronts us with the need to answer. Read: "The aim of art, the aim of life, can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, he is suppress that freedom, temporarily." And read; "One even have to fight a in the of a quarter-truth." Rebellion neither nor accepts rebellion against anything that minishes man, rebellion not in name of what will happen but what might happen--this is wager of Albert Camus. As a journalist, as an Underground fight as a man, never less in action in words, Camus struggled to worthy of his own ideals.

There is nothing in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death of the metaphysical Camus; all the subjects are socio-political. In this Camus is a challenge, not because we necessarily are in concord his views or values, but because consistently and without rest man lived the views, and lived values.

He held himself firm to their never denying the futility of what he was doing others to do. His was most difficult of rebellious that of the rebel who finds in silence of his opponents his reason for struggle, who finds his struggle his only claim to justification. "Let us not look the door," he says at the end this collection, "anywhere but the wall against which we living".

In 1957 an American critic on the publication of The "Camus has forced man to the Good! For so long as he there will be no peace." Three later Camus was dead, and in volume we are again of how much we have

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death a good introduction to Camus. curious are advised, by this at least, to begin with The of Slayphus and The Plague. for those already acquainted Camus' work, Knopf has here a powerful collection of essays and excerpts, some elsewhere in English, h will be a valuable addition any libraries.

of them are dated. The to a German Friend, in 1943 and 1944, seem obsolete now in reference both to history and to Camus' later writings. In the Preface for the Italian Edition, where the third and fourth letters were published for the first time, Camus explains: "I am contrasting two attitudes, not two nations, even if, at a certain moment in history, these two nations personified two enemy attitudes." And this is true, for the Resistance Frenchman, addressing a former comrade, is inclined to equate moral rectitude with winning wars, or at least to make the latter seem a result of the former. We know this is not always the case; in later years the writer himself was more detached. But inadequate as these pages might be for a manifesto of the French spirit, or of European civilization, they have a message that no history can render useless: "We had much to overcome, and, first of all, the constant temptation to imitate you."

This spirit is supplemented by the tribute to Rene Leynaud, written just after his death in 1944. Many have found Camus' undefined and imprecise use of the words "honor" and "decency" confusing: here is their explanation. A precis would be unfair, but Leynaud, who "never bargained about anything", will be recognized in his resemblance to Dr. Rieux in The Plague. When you have read the description of Leynaud, turn to Homage to an Exile, later in the volume, and read these sentences: "I cannot love all humanity except with a vast and somewhat abstract love. But I love a few men, living or dead, with such force and admiration that I am always eager to preserve in others what will someday perhaps make them resemble those I love."

In The Unbeliever and Christians, excerpted from a statement made in 1948 at the Dominican monastery of Latour-Mauborg in Paris, the reader will find baldly stated one tenet of Camus' entire outlook, echoing again and again through his works: "Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children." One thinks again of The Plague, and of the priest Paneloux who learned that suffering demands resistance, and that tyranny, in whatever form, cannot be excused by either its transcendental value or its universality.

A further development of this thought is in Why Spain?, a reply to Gabriel Marcel's stinging attack on Camus' play, Etat de Slege. Enslavement, metaphysical or historical, has only one answer--rebellion. And Camus is not "willing to keep silent about one reign of terror in order the better to combat another one". "The world I live in," he explains, "is loathsome to me. But I feel one with the men who suffer in it." Camus began, politically and philosophically, where his generation stopped: at despair. But in spite of and in a way because of despair, he continued to rebel against Fascism, Communism, blind faith, resignation, and the universe itself--because each of them increases instead of diminishing his despair. Against Marcel, who quarreled with his choice of Spain as an example of tyranny, Camus vented an anger barely hinted at in The Rebel, and only a little more obvious in The Fall, an anger which--subdued and carefully controlled--drove him "not to keep silent about anything".

This critic was among many who felt disappointed and a little betrayed when at the end of The Rebel, Camus defined his specific application of the values of rebellion to contemporary politics as "what is traditionally called revolutionary trade-unionism." Influenced no doubt by the use of the word "unions" in America, where it has come to mean something a little different, we thought Camus might be backing down. He wasn't. In a speech titled Bread and Freedom, addressed to a meeting of Parisian workingmen in 1953, he explains: "I have recognized only two aristocracies, that of labor and that of the intelligence"--he joins the rebellion of one to the revolution of the other to the encouragement of both. Unlike most of Camus' writings this article must be read and studied carefully before its implications will appear. But the task is a profitable one.

This critic must conress his disappointment in the Algerian Reports. They are topical, a little over-simplified, and a bit too glib. Especially annoying is the tinge of 19th-century liberalism in the appeal for unity and good will where substantive agreement is impossible. Algeria is the one subject on which Camus' patriotic emotions seem to have overwhelmed his lucidity. Even as this is written, the inadequacy of sham solidarity is being made apparent. Yet the values implicit in Camus' appeal are not inconsistent with those of his more dispassionate statements.

Knopf's collections also includes the masterful protections on the GuiMotine, written in collaboration with Arthur Koestler. In a sustained invective, Camus shows compelling skill in his application of The Rebel to another contemporary issue--capital punishment. "Freedom," he said elsewhere, "is the road to perfectibility"--but this must not mislead. Not liberal perfectibility, not optimism, but the stubborn refusal to deprive a man of his only chance at improvement. Under no circumstances can an irrevocable punishment be out, however inhuman the crime. It is, again, precisely because of the wretchedness of life that life must be allowed to go on.

Devotees of Camus will welcome a permanent copy of the superb dialogue with Jean Block-Michel, which was repdinted from in the November 23, 1957 issue of The Reporter. Here, in a translation that lacks the power of the Reporter version, it is retitled The Wager of Our Generation. Serious readers can find no more precise or cogent summary of the values that moved Camus throughout his life.

Read it and read again--it is a mature, carefully worded expression of the political, philosophical, and personal credo of a man whose bravery confronts us with the need to answer. Read: "The aim of art, the aim of life, can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, he is suppress that freedom, temporarily." And read; "One even have to fight a in the of a quarter-truth." Rebellion neither nor accepts rebellion against anything that minishes man, rebellion not in name of what will happen but what might happen--this is wager of Albert Camus. As a journalist, as an Underground fight as a man, never less in action in words, Camus struggled to worthy of his own ideals.

There is nothing in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death of the metaphysical Camus; all the subjects are socio-political. In this Camus is a challenge, not because we necessarily are in concord his views or values, but because consistently and without rest man lived the views, and lived values.

He held himself firm to their never denying the futility of what he was doing others to do. His was most difficult of rebellious that of the rebel who finds in silence of his opponents his reason for struggle, who finds his struggle his only claim to justification. "Let us not look the door," he says at the end this collection, "anywhere but the wall against which we living".

In 1957 an American critic on the publication of The "Camus has forced man to the Good! For so long as he there will be no peace." Three later Camus was dead, and in volume we are again of how much we have

of them are dated. The to a German Friend, in 1943 and 1944, seem obsolete now in reference both to history and to Camus' later writings. In the Preface for the Italian Edition, where the third and fourth letters were published for the first time, Camus explains: "I am contrasting two attitudes, not two nations, even if, at a certain moment in history, these two nations personified two enemy attitudes." And this is true, for the Resistance Frenchman, addressing a former comrade, is inclined to equate moral rectitude with winning wars, or at least to make the latter seem a result of the former. We know this is not always the case; in later years the writer himself was more detached. But inadequate as these pages might be for a manifesto of the French spirit, or of European civilization, they have a message that no history can render useless: "We had much to overcome, and, first of all, the constant temptation to imitate you."

This spirit is supplemented by the tribute to Rene Leynaud, written just after his death in 1944. Many have found Camus' undefined and imprecise use of the words "honor" and "decency" confusing: here is their explanation. A precis would be unfair, but Leynaud, who "never bargained about anything", will be recognized in his resemblance to Dr. Rieux in The Plague. When you have read the description of Leynaud, turn to Homage to an Exile, later in the volume, and read these sentences: "I cannot love all humanity except with a vast and somewhat abstract love. But I love a few men, living or dead, with such force and admiration that I am always eager to preserve in others what will someday perhaps make them resemble those I love."

In The Unbeliever and Christians, excerpted from a statement made in 1948 at the Dominican monastery of Latour-Mauborg in Paris, the reader will find baldly stated one tenet of Camus' entire outlook, echoing again and again through his works: "Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children." One thinks again of The Plague, and of the priest Paneloux who learned that suffering demands resistance, and that tyranny, in whatever form, cannot be excused by either its transcendental value or its universality.

A further development of this thought is in Why Spain?, a reply to Gabriel Marcel's stinging attack on Camus' play, Etat de Slege. Enslavement, metaphysical or historical, has only one answer--rebellion. And Camus is not "willing to keep silent about one reign of terror in order the better to combat another one". "The world I live in," he explains, "is loathsome to me. But I feel one with the men who suffer in it." Camus began, politically and philosophically, where his generation stopped: at despair. But in spite of and in a way because of despair, he continued to rebel against Fascism, Communism, blind faith, resignation, and the universe itself--because each of them increases instead of diminishing his despair. Against Marcel, who quarreled with his choice of Spain as an example of tyranny, Camus vented an anger barely hinted at in The Rebel, and only a little more obvious in The Fall, an anger which--subdued and carefully controlled--drove him "not to keep silent about anything".

This critic was among many who felt disappointed and a little betrayed when at the end of The Rebel, Camus defined his specific application of the values of rebellion to contemporary politics as "what is traditionally called revolutionary trade-unionism." Influenced no doubt by the use of the word "unions" in America, where it has come to mean something a little different, we thought Camus might be backing down. He wasn't. In a speech titled Bread and Freedom, addressed to a meeting of Parisian workingmen in 1953, he explains: "I have recognized only two aristocracies, that of labor and that of the intelligence"--he joins the rebellion of one to the revolution of the other to the encouragement of both. Unlike most of Camus' writings this article must be read and studied carefully before its implications will appear. But the task is a profitable one.

This critic must conress his disappointment in the Algerian Reports. They are topical, a little over-simplified, and a bit too glib. Especially annoying is the tinge of 19th-century liberalism in the appeal for unity and good will where substantive agreement is impossible. Algeria is the one subject on which Camus' patriotic emotions seem to have overwhelmed his lucidity. Even as this is written, the inadequacy of sham solidarity is being made apparent. Yet the values implicit in Camus' appeal are not inconsistent with those of his more dispassionate statements.

Knopf's collections also includes the masterful protections on the GuiMotine, written in collaboration with Arthur Koestler. In a sustained invective, Camus shows compelling skill in his application of The Rebel to another contemporary issue--capital punishment. "Freedom," he said elsewhere, "is the road to perfectibility"--but this must not mislead. Not liberal perfectibility, not optimism, but the stubborn refusal to deprive a man of his only chance at improvement. Under no circumstances can an irrevocable punishment be out, however inhuman the crime. It is, again, precisely because of the wretchedness of life that life must be allowed to go on.

Devotees of Camus will welcome a permanent copy of the superb dialogue with Jean Block-Michel, which was repdinted from in the November 23, 1957 issue of The Reporter. Here, in a translation that lacks the power of the Reporter version, it is retitled The Wager of Our Generation. Serious readers can find no more precise or cogent summary of the values that moved Camus throughout his life.

Read it and read again--it is a mature, carefully worded expression of the political, philosophical, and personal credo of a man whose bravery confronts us with the need to answer. Read: "The aim of art, the aim of life, can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, he is suppress that freedom, temporarily." And read; "One even have to fight a in the of a quarter-truth." Rebellion neither nor accepts rebellion against anything that minishes man, rebellion not in name of what will happen but what might happen--this is wager of Albert Camus. As a journalist, as an Underground fight as a man, never less in action in words, Camus struggled to worthy of his own ideals.

There is nothing in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death of the metaphysical Camus; all the subjects are socio-political. In this Camus is a challenge, not because we necessarily are in concord his views or values, but because consistently and without rest man lived the views, and lived values.

He held himself firm to their never denying the futility of what he was doing others to do. His was most difficult of rebellious that of the rebel who finds in silence of his opponents his reason for struggle, who finds his struggle his only claim to justification. "Let us not look the door," he says at the end this collection, "anywhere but the wall against which we living".

In 1957 an American critic on the publication of The "Camus has forced man to the Good! For so long as he there will be no peace." Three later Camus was dead, and in volume we are again of how much we have

This spirit is supplemented by the tribute to Rene Leynaud, written just after his death in 1944. Many have found Camus' undefined and imprecise use of the words "honor" and "decency" confusing: here is their explanation. A precis would be unfair, but Leynaud, who "never bargained about anything", will be recognized in his resemblance to Dr. Rieux in The Plague. When you have read the description of Leynaud, turn to Homage to an Exile, later in the volume, and read these sentences: "I cannot love all humanity except with a vast and somewhat abstract love. But I love a few men, living or dead, with such force and admiration that I am always eager to preserve in others what will someday perhaps make them resemble those I love."

In The Unbeliever and Christians, excerpted from a statement made in 1948 at the Dominican monastery of Latour-Mauborg in Paris, the reader will find baldly stated one tenet of Camus' entire outlook, echoing again and again through his works: "Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children." One thinks again of The Plague, and of the priest Paneloux who learned that suffering demands resistance, and that tyranny, in whatever form, cannot be excused by either its transcendental value or its universality.

A further development of this thought is in Why Spain?, a reply to Gabriel Marcel's stinging attack on Camus' play, Etat de Slege. Enslavement, metaphysical or historical, has only one answer--rebellion. And Camus is not "willing to keep silent about one reign of terror in order the better to combat another one". "The world I live in," he explains, "is loathsome to me. But I feel one with the men who suffer in it." Camus began, politically and philosophically, where his generation stopped: at despair. But in spite of and in a way because of despair, he continued to rebel against Fascism, Communism, blind faith, resignation, and the universe itself--because each of them increases instead of diminishing his despair. Against Marcel, who quarreled with his choice of Spain as an example of tyranny, Camus vented an anger barely hinted at in The Rebel, and only a little more obvious in The Fall, an anger which--subdued and carefully controlled--drove him "not to keep silent about anything".

This critic was among many who felt disappointed and a little betrayed when at the end of The Rebel, Camus defined his specific application of the values of rebellion to contemporary politics as "what is traditionally called revolutionary trade-unionism." Influenced no doubt by the use of the word "unions" in America, where it has come to mean something a little different, we thought Camus might be backing down. He wasn't. In a speech titled Bread and Freedom, addressed to a meeting of Parisian workingmen in 1953, he explains: "I have recognized only two aristocracies, that of labor and that of the intelligence"--he joins the rebellion of one to the revolution of the other to the encouragement of both. Unlike most of Camus' writings this article must be read and studied carefully before its implications will appear. But the task is a profitable one.

This critic must conress his disappointment in the Algerian Reports. They are topical, a little over-simplified, and a bit too glib. Especially annoying is the tinge of 19th-century liberalism in the appeal for unity and good will where substantive agreement is impossible. Algeria is the one subject on which Camus' patriotic emotions seem to have overwhelmed his lucidity. Even as this is written, the inadequacy of sham solidarity is being made apparent. Yet the values implicit in Camus' appeal are not inconsistent with those of his more dispassionate statements.

Knopf's collections also includes the masterful protections on the GuiMotine, written in collaboration with Arthur Koestler. In a sustained invective, Camus shows compelling skill in his application of The Rebel to another contemporary issue--capital punishment. "Freedom," he said elsewhere, "is the road to perfectibility"--but this must not mislead. Not liberal perfectibility, not optimism, but the stubborn refusal to deprive a man of his only chance at improvement. Under no circumstances can an irrevocable punishment be out, however inhuman the crime. It is, again, precisely because of the wretchedness of life that life must be allowed to go on.

Devotees of Camus will welcome a permanent copy of the superb dialogue with Jean Block-Michel, which was repdinted from in the November 23, 1957 issue of The Reporter. Here, in a translation that lacks the power of the Reporter version, it is retitled The Wager of Our Generation. Serious readers can find no more precise or cogent summary of the values that moved Camus throughout his life.

Read it and read again--it is a mature, carefully worded expression of the political, philosophical, and personal credo of a man whose bravery confronts us with the need to answer. Read: "The aim of art, the aim of life, can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, he is suppress that freedom, temporarily." And read; "One even have to fight a in the of a quarter-truth." Rebellion neither nor accepts rebellion against anything that minishes man, rebellion not in name of what will happen but what might happen--this is wager of Albert Camus. As a journalist, as an Underground fight as a man, never less in action in words, Camus struggled to worthy of his own ideals.

There is nothing in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death of the metaphysical Camus; all the subjects are socio-political. In this Camus is a challenge, not because we necessarily are in concord his views or values, but because consistently and without rest man lived the views, and lived values.

He held himself firm to their never denying the futility of what he was doing others to do. His was most difficult of rebellious that of the rebel who finds in silence of his opponents his reason for struggle, who finds his struggle his only claim to justification. "Let us not look the door," he says at the end this collection, "anywhere but the wall against which we living".

In 1957 an American critic on the publication of The "Camus has forced man to the Good! For so long as he there will be no peace." Three later Camus was dead, and in volume we are again of how much we have

Devotees of Camus will welcome a permanent copy of the superb dialogue with Jean Block-Michel, which was repdinted from in the November 23, 1957 issue of The Reporter. Here, in a translation that lacks the power of the Reporter version, it is retitled The Wager of Our Generation. Serious readers can find no more precise or cogent summary of the values that moved Camus throughout his life.

Read it and read again--it is a mature, carefully worded expression of the political, philosophical, and personal credo of a man whose bravery confronts us with the need to answer. Read: "The aim of art, the aim of life, can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, he is suppress that freedom, temporarily." And read; "One even have to fight a in the of a quarter-truth." Rebellion neither nor accepts rebellion against anything that minishes man, rebellion not in name of what will happen but what might happen--this is wager of Albert Camus. As a journalist, as an Underground fight as a man, never less in action in words, Camus struggled to worthy of his own ideals.

There is nothing in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death of the metaphysical Camus; all the subjects are socio-political. In this Camus is a challenge, not because we necessarily are in concord his views or values, but because consistently and without rest man lived the views, and lived values.

He held himself firm to their never denying the futility of what he was doing others to do. His was most difficult of rebellious that of the rebel who finds in silence of his opponents his reason for struggle, who finds his struggle his only claim to justification. "Let us not look the door," he says at the end this collection, "anywhere but the wall against which we living".

In 1957 an American critic on the publication of The "Camus has forced man to the Good! For so long as he there will be no peace." Three later Camus was dead, and in volume we are again of how much we have

Read it and read again--it is a mature, carefully worded expression of the political, philosophical, and personal credo of a man whose bravery confronts us with the need to answer. Read: "The aim of art, the aim of life, can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, he is suppress that freedom, temporarily." And read; "One even have to fight a in the of a quarter-truth." Rebellion neither nor accepts rebellion against anything that minishes man, rebellion not in name of what will happen but what might happen--this is wager of Albert Camus. As a journalist, as an Underground fight as a man, never less in action in words, Camus struggled to worthy of his own ideals.

There is nothing in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death of the metaphysical Camus; all the subjects are socio-political. In this Camus is a challenge, not because we necessarily are in concord his views or values, but because consistently and without rest man lived the views, and lived values.

He held himself firm to their never denying the futility of what he was doing others to do. His was most difficult of rebellious that of the rebel who finds in silence of his opponents his reason for struggle, who finds his struggle his only claim to justification. "Let us not look the door," he says at the end this collection, "anywhere but the wall against which we living".

In 1957 an American critic on the publication of The "Camus has forced man to the Good! For so long as he there will be no peace." Three later Camus was dead, and in volume we are again of how much we have

There is nothing in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death of the metaphysical Camus; all the subjects are socio-political. In this Camus is a challenge, not because we necessarily are in concord his views or values, but because consistently and without rest man lived the views, and lived values.

He held himself firm to their never denying the futility of what he was doing others to do. His was most difficult of rebellious that of the rebel who finds in silence of his opponents his reason for struggle, who finds his struggle his only claim to justification. "Let us not look the door," he says at the end this collection, "anywhere but the wall against which we living".

In 1957 an American critic on the publication of The "Camus has forced man to the Good! For so long as he there will be no peace." Three later Camus was dead, and in volume we are again of how much we have

He held himself firm to their never denying the futility of what he was doing others to do. His was most difficult of rebellious that of the rebel who finds in silence of his opponents his reason for struggle, who finds his struggle his only claim to justification. "Let us not look the door," he says at the end this collection, "anywhere but the wall against which we living".

In 1957 an American critic on the publication of The "Camus has forced man to the Good! For so long as he there will be no peace." Three later Camus was dead, and in volume we are again of how much we have

In 1957 an American critic on the publication of The "Camus has forced man to the Good! For so long as he there will be no peace." Three later Camus was dead, and in volume we are again of how much we have