Abstracts

Raphael Luiz de Araújo: ‘Albert Camus’ Poetics’

In his favorable review of Blanche Balain’s Temps lointain that appeared in L’Arche on February 1947, Camus distinguishes Balain from the poets of his time and declares that most of them bore him. However, there are also other poets that he admires, such as René Char, Paul Verlaine, Jehan Rictus, Claude de Fréminville and René Leynaud. Except for Verlaine, the friendship with these poets is the starting point for a method of criticism that does not separate the life of the author from his work: poetry is evaluated by Camus according to the ethical position of the poet. Thus, he emphasizes the modesty and the simplicity of their style, asserting that Rictus speaks the language of the poor and knows how to express the eternal human suffering. In his essays about Verlaine, Balain and Fréminville, Camus draws portraits of a melancholy that nurtures the impulse for revolt, life celebration, the search for the sun, as he affirms about Fréminville’s sonnets: “(…) these poetries mark one step forward, an effort to abandon the melancholy, an impetus out of oneself and towards the sun before entering life”. Nevertheless, most of these texts were written before his friendship with Char. Camus confesses that for him poetry was dispensable before meeting the poet, as we read in a letter of 18th may 1956: “Nothing that showed up would speak to me. For ten years, on the contrary, I’ve had an empty place inside of me, a hole, that I can only fill by reading you”. Given this turning point, this presentation aims to sketch an overview of a “Camus’ poetics” from these early essays to his relation with Char. For this purpose, apart from the mentioned essays, we will point out Camus’ remarks about Char and his attempts to write poetry in his Notebooks and in The posterity of the sun, presenting what has changed and what has remained the same in Camus’ perception of poetry.

Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray: ‘Dada & Camus: Restructuring Existentialism Inclusively’

A paper that is NOT a paper, but rather a dialogue session about the nature and situation of existentialism today.  Anyone who attempts to google the term ‘existentialism’ or seeks to pick a textbook for students no doubt finds themselves deep in the mud of Sartrean dominance, and in fact a rather white, western male dominance (with the occasional sprinkle of lady bits and Pied-Noir Algerian seasoning).  It’s no wonder Camus famously said he was not an existentialist!  But we consider him to be so, if not the existentialist par excellence, and there are countless others that should also be included as well.  Thus, I demand we have a discussion about restricting existentialism, so that we open the floodgates to allow for inclusion, to the notion that this is a movement that has several waves including one rippling today, and it’s way more than Sartre’s “existence before essence” and “Hell is other people”.  Existentialism’s link to surrealism is well documented, but what is missing is its link to Dada - and the spirit of that immensely inspirational, rebel, refugee, avant-garde movement is where we find Camus, Fondane, Chestov, Wright, and so many others.  

Existentialism, like Dada, somehow means everything and nothing.   Both born of a need for independence, of a distrust for unity.

Ideal, ideal, ideal,

Knowledge, knowledge, knowledge,

boomboom, boomboom, boomboom

Eric Berg: ‘The Editorial, Personal, and Philosophical Relationship Between Simone Weil and Albert Camus’

In this paper, I will outline the literary and editorial connections between Simone Weil and Albert Camus, ultimately focusing on the role of Christianity and illuminating the relationship between the two through the character Monsieur Othon in The Plague.

Editorial:  It is clearly documented that Camus encountered Weil’s work in 1946, however, he may have encountered her work as early as 1939 while in Algeria.  Weil co-authored several articles Camus edited in 1939 and Weil wrote an article under the pen name Emile Novis in 1942 that Camus read and commented on. In the series Espoir that Camus edited, and some say controlled, the formal relationship between Albert Camus and Simone Weil is well documented.  By my count, she was published 12 times by Espoir, including some major works like La Condition Ouvriere- a collection from Esspoir edited by Camus and published by Gallimard in 1951. Camus read the text of another major work L’Enracinement  (The Need for Roots)  in early 1948 and edited this important text on post-war Europe, wrote a short introduction to it, and was, in turn, influenced by the text.  It is possible that Camus gave her life a voice through a character in The Plague in the person of Monsiour Othon- After Jacques (his young son) dies, Othon volunteers to stay in the isolation camp even after his own period of quarantine is up – because it makes him feel closer to his son.  The same way Weil starved herself to death in England to have solidarity with the French suffering in France.

Personal:  There were several personal connections such as tuberculosis and, in turn, being denied the opportunity for active service for France during the war. It is also well documented that Camus was in close contact with the Weil family after her death.  Key themes of separation also align these two thinkers.  Weil’s separation from France during the War and Camus’ separation from Algeria and Francine during the War bear remarkable resemblances.  There were also some important differences that Camus was apparently able to look past, her affluent family and upbringing, and Weil was a devote Roman Catholic. Despite these differences, in her, Camus saw “The one great spirit of our time”.    

Philosophical:  The conventional wisdom regarding the philosophical relationship that is portrayed between Camus and Weil is one of agreement on the rejection of abstraction with the exception of Christianity:  Weil embraces Christianity and Camus rejects Christianity.   In this paper, I will argue that there is not necessarily cognitive dissidence between Camus and Weil on the point of Christianity.  I argue that Camus can embrace the abstraction of certain forms of Christianity under specific conditions. That it must grow out of specific intellectual ground, under the right existential conditions, and yielding the right intentional consequences.  Weil’s Christianity satisfies several of the above conditions for Camus.

Peter Francev: ‘Early Literary Influences on Camus Through The Stranger’

The purpose of this paper is to briefly examine, in a chronological fashion, the earliest literary and philosophical influences on the early Albert Camus (through The Myth of Sisyphus). When analyzing Camus’s early philosophy, one can trace the influential lineage through Surrealism, Dada, the French Symbolist poets back to Charles Baudelaire. This work attempts to set the scene for Camus’s particular understanding of the absurd in his early work by a prior consideration of his French poetic ancestry. From his beginnings, Camus deals primarily with the individual’s attempt to confront and overcome the absurd. This is illustrated in his earliest works such as, La Mort heureuse (A Happy Death, 1971) and L’etranger (The Stranger, 1942). Throughout his literary development, Camus demonstrates a definite influence from André Gide, André Malraux, and Jean-Paul Sartre of which we will be able to illustrate.

George Heffernan: ‘Beyond Victims and Executioners: Camus and Daoud on Progressive Violence and Genuine Humanism (Or What Harun Learned from Meursault)’

Kamel Daoud’s internationally acclaimed novel The Meursault Investigation (2013/14) has quickly established itself as the post-colonial continuation of Albert Camus’s classic roman noir The Stranger (1942). Given that Daoud’s narrative contains powerful anti-colonial commentaries on the plot, themes, characters, and setting of Camus’s novel, it seems natural to interpret it as a passionate expression of the view that progressive violence is justified in rectifying the regressive violence that Camus’s European-Algerian perpetrators inflicted on their Arab-Algerian victims. After all, Daoud’s narrator, Harun, the younger brother of Musa, the Arab who was murdered by Meursault (and who finally receives a name and a face from his surviving brother), experiences a kind of catharsis by murdering a Frenchman, Joseph Larquais. A careful study of The Meursault Investigation shows, however, that with his level of self-critical reflection, which is one that Meursault never comes close to reaching in The Stranger, Harun moves far beyond the allegedly progressive violence that lies at the foundation of post-colonial Algeria. This paper explores the full force of Daoud’s novel and suggests that, contrary to what the readers might expect, his character Harun does not support progressive violence as a legitimate response to Meursault’s regressive violence, but rather regards it as a serious obstacle to the achievement of genuine humanism. In the end, Harun’s sense of solidarity, empathy, and humanity overcomes Meursault’s preference for solitude, apathy, and indifference. Thus Daoud makes a substantial contribution not only to the Wirkungsgeschichte of Camus’s The Stranger but also to the debate about the vexed relation between humanism and violence that split the French Left during the period of decolonization and that still rages with contemporary attempts to justify terrorism as a viable means to political ends.

Maciej Kaluźa: The Descent of the Doves: From the Absence of Grace in J.B. Clamence’s World to Harun’s Confrontation with Faith in Decolonized Algeria

Shortly after the death of Albert Camus, a polish poet, Czesław Miłosz observed, that the essential element of Camus’s the Fall, is in fact, the problem of the absence of grace, symbolized in the novel by doves over Amsterdam, that do not descend onto anyone’s head.  Hardly any review of K. Daoud’s Meursault investigation did omit the clear and intended relation, which binds the recent novel with Camus’s The Stranger. Fewer, however, have remarked upon the structural and stylistic relations of the book to Camus’s last published novel, The Fall. In my presentation, I would like to refer to formal, rather than contextual references of Musa’s narrative, specifically, using Clamence’s expressed monologue as a tool, adapted by Daoud’s main character.

In the second part of the presentation, I will relate to the problem of faith and the desire for grace of the human being: implicit in Clamence’s confession, as Czesław Miłosz remarked in 1960. This problem, as I am convinced: the relations of human being towards faith, religion and, especially: guilt will be closely contrasted and compared, and proposed to be seen as a significant motive, bringing Daoud’s novel into dialogue with Camus’s reflection of the 1950’s.

Simon Lea: ‘The Condemned Man in Stendhal, Hugo and Camus’

In this paper I compare and contrast three political novels that are at the same time remarkably different and similiar. Stendhal's "The Red and the Black", Hugo's "The Last Day of a Condemned Man" and Camus's "The Stranger". The central characters of each work are sentenced to death by guillotine but only Hugo has the abolition of the death penalty as his primary goal. What all three authors tackle is the 'theatrically' of their societies and in this paper I take a special interest in how the authors approach their readers, an audience already deeply enmeshed in this 'theatre'.

Luke Richardson: ‘Camus the Athenian II’

This paper is a follow up to a paper I gave at the Camus Society in 2011 which explored the nature of Camus' allusions to Greek thought in his essays, particularly L'Homme révolté. A self-professed lover of ancient culture, the role Greek antiquity plays in Camus' literature and imagination is a complex and varied one. Understanding the movement away from the mythic figures of Sisyphus and Prometheus towards an increasing interest in "the Greeks" as a historical entity is significant to understanding the movement of this later thought.

This paper will continue from the conclusions to the first 'Camus the Athenian' to look in more detail at Camus' specific engagements with Greek philosophy, and philosophers like Socrates and Plato, and establish what these can tell us. What function do these voices play in L'Homme révolté? What can it tell us about his relationship to more contemporary philosophers like Nietzche, Hegel and Marx? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, how far can we understand Camus' Hellenism as a political gesture, intended to reconcile and explore aspects of his own sense of identity and the political climate in which he wrote?

Grace Whistler: Blood and Sand: Fragmented Selves in Daoud and Camus

Since publication in 2013, Daoud’s Meursault, Contre-Enquête has received considerable attention among scholars and general readers alike. It has been approached from a variety of angles – predominantly postcolonialist readings (though naturally Camus scholars in general have taken an interest) but thus far the nuanced and visceral dialogue that Daoud has created between the colonised and the coloniser has yet to be situated among contemporary philosophical debates – something which Camus’ work couldn’t have escaped. Meursault, Contre-Enquête is in conversation with Camus, not only his works, but the man himself. The novel explores notions of borders relating to identity, religion, nationality and race, and what is key to my approach, it demonstrates the power of narrative praxis when it comes to constructing and comprehending our notions of the self and other. Not only is this the story of a man learning to understand his supposed enemy through engagement with his writings, it is also the story of a man learning to understand himself through the activity of writing. The current interdisciplinary paper draws on recent research from philosophy of religion (Stump, Wandering in Darkness), philosophy of literature (Denham, Metaphor and Moral Experience, postcolonial literature and 20th century French theory, in order to analyse the movements and implications of this dialogue between the inseparable and irreconcilable elements of postcolonial identity.