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PARTISAN REVIEW
conscious: he has a responsibility to his art which compels him to be
withdrawn. And as for writing for one's contemporaries-well, perhaps
that brings us, at last, to the philosophical root of the doctrine.
Existentialism attempts to bring home to man the complete con–
sciousness of his mortality; but, given his other temptations, the conscious–
ness of death may be more than the writer can stand: in the face of an
already assured success, to sacrifice his life for his work begins to appear
a desperate folly; and death (as elsewhere in modem life) becomes
the agent of nihilism. What we have, then, to oppose to the doctrine of
engagement
is another modem parable for the situation of the writer:
Proust on the death of Bergotte.
WILLIAM BARRETT
THE MEANINGFULNESS OF ABSURDITY
LE MYTHE DE SISYPHE, EssAI SUR L'ABSURDE.
Par Albert Camus.
Gallimard.
LE MALENTENDU. PIECE EN TRois AcTES. CALIGULA. PIECE EN QuATRE
AcTES.
Par Albert Camus. Gallimard.
C
AMus' DOCTRINES have already been described so clearly by Hannah
.
Arendt in
The Nati·on
for February 23 that a quotation from her
essay will save time and space:
"For Camus man is essentially a stranger because the world
in general and man as man are not fitted for each other; that
the are together makes the human condition an absurdity."
"Man is essentially alone with his 'revolt' and his 'clairvoyance,'
that is, with his reason, which makes him ridiculous because the
gift of reason was bestowed upon him in a world 'where every–
thing is given and nothing ever explained'."
The tempation to split hairs and indulge
in
logic-chopping about
such doctrines is obvious. The important question is: what is the full
significance of Camus' doctrines and how do they enter into his plays?
The usual pitfall of the author who makes an explicit use of ideas or
who is inspired to composition by ideas is what Henry James called
"the platitude of mere statement," the direct declaration of the mean–
ings involved in his subject. The result at its most extreme is the morality
play, the allegory or the fable. When characters are given names like
Prudence or Vice, the texture of the work and the particulars of time,
place, and action are diminished, thin, or unrt'!al. In his two plays Camus
shows that he is well aware
of
this difficulty, although he does not always
escape it. And in his essay,
The Myth of Sisyphus,
after saying that "the
great novelists are philosophical novelists," he adds, "philosophical nov–
elists, that is
to
say, exactly the contrary of writers with a thesis," tht
authors of problem-plays.
