CAMUS AND PASTERNAK
197
Boris Pasternak to Albert Camus
June 28, 1958
Dear Mr. Camus,
I can hardly believe my eyes, writing to you, Camus. A new page
has opened in my life, that of having acquired the pretext, the right,the
chance to tell you my delight and my gratitude for the special nuance
in the play of today 's universal thought, [to tell you] that it is owing to
you. A man without principles,3 whose tip of the hat I returned only
because of the dark glasses which made him unrecognizable, who,
having taken them off and staggered me with regrets when I recognized
him, told me, if one wants to believe him, that he was lucky enough to
make your acquaintance and to speak
to
you, among others, of me. Oh
how I regret it! I prefer to be the victim of baseness openly than to seem
to
be its ally.
I rarely have the time
to
read what I like and what interests me.
Kafka , Faulkner, still not read, wait for me
to
take them from the
library shelf. "Remembrance of Things Past" is broken off at the end of
"Sodom and Gomorrah." I exult, I congratulate you for writing a
prose whose reading becomes a true journey: one visits the places you
describe, one experiences the situations related, one feels them for the
main characters.
In
"The Stranger," above and beyond all the rest, one
idea struck me. How, in a naked and unlimited sensualism, sensuality
itself becomes obtuse and weak!
As
if in the interests of its own strength
it needed its opposite, that which is the eternal presence of the sou l:
pity.
I have your "Fall. " I shall read it. My new friendship, if I dare say
so, with you, with R.G,4
A.
de B.,s his wife, with P.S.,6 is an unspeak–
able happiness, an enchantment, a fairy tale. I catch the inconceivable
breath of the garden at dawn , I want to surprise the mystery of the
green eclipse of the dense foliage, and I think of Rene Char, who is all
that. Or else I meditate on the absolute originality of art and on what is
the task of art, rather than philosophy-seizing the essence of life and
saying it palpably, and I think of du Bouchet and the domain of his
unfathomable perspicacity. And the state of mind of his wife, magical,
enchanted! And you are anxious about what can happen to me and you
forget that no price is enough for this new kinship which is infinitely
3. Valentin Kalayev, Soviel novelisl. Kalayev had been againsl publicalion
of
Doctor Zhivago
in the Soviel Un ion.
4. Rene Char.
S. Andre du Bouchel, French poet.
6. Pierre Souvlchinski.
