Youthful Writings

by Albert Camus, Paul Viallaneix, Ellen Conroy (Translator)

1990 Marlowe & Co. trade paperback, Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus). A critical examination of Camus's youthful writings, relating them to his later published work, precedes the essays, verse, parables, and fairy tales written by him between 1932 and 1934 .- Amazon

Genres: Essays, Philosophy, Literature, Fiction, Classics, French Literature, Short Stories

279 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Works, such as the novels The Stranger (1942) and The Plague (1947), of Algerian-born French writer and philosopher Albert Camus concern the absurdity of the human condition; he won the Nobel Prize of 1957 for literature.

Origin and his experiences of this representative of non-metropolitan literature in the 1930s dominated influences in his thought and work.

He also adapted plays of Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Dino Buzzati, and Requiem for a Nun of William Faulkner. One may trace his enjoyment of the theater back to his membership in l'Equipe, an Algerian group, whose "collective creation" Révolte dans les Asturies (1934) was banned for political reasons.

Of semi-proletarian parents, early attached to intellectual circles of strongly revolutionary tendencies, with a deep interest, he came at the age of 25 years in 1938; only chance prevented him from pursuing a university career in that field. The man and the times met: Camus joined the resistance movement during the occupation and after the liberation served as a columnist for the newspaper Combat.

The essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), 1942, expounds notion of acceptance of the absurd of Camus with "the total absence of hope, which has nothing to do with despair, a continual refusal, which must not be confused with renouncement - and a conscious dissatisfaction."
Meursault, central character of L'Étranger (The Stranger), 1942, illustrates much of this essay: man as the nauseated victim of the absurd orthodoxy of habit, later - when the young killer faces execution - tempted by despair, hope, and salvation.

Besides his fiction and essays, Camus very actively produced plays in the theater (e.g., Caligula, 1944).

The time demanded his response, chiefly in his activities, but in 1947, Camus retired from political journalism.

Doctor Rieux of La Peste (The Plague), 1947, who tirelessly attends the plague-stricken citizens of Oran, enacts the revolt against a world of the absurd and of injustice, and confirms words: "We refuse to despair of mankind. Without having the unreasonable ambition to save men, we still want to serve them."

People also well know La Chute (The Fall), work of Camus in 1956.

Camus authored L'Exil et le royaume (Exile and the Kingdom) in 1957. His austere search for moral order found its aesthetic correlative in the classicism of his art. He styled of great purity, intense concentration, and rationality.

Camus died at the age of 46 years in a car accident near Sens in le Grand Fossard in the small town of Villeblevin.

Chinese 阿尔贝·加缪

Reviews

[allyson dunn-worthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skipped 70 pages of the 105 pages of introductory essays - let me just read the early works of husband Camus?!?

So fun to see the early machinations of the novels & Sisyphus. Clunky and immature obviously, but the frameworks and lassitude are already cropping up.

[Annie Chen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprise to me, and a little gift of affirmation from a very sweet old man

[Smiley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Left somewhere in one of my book stacks unread for years till its paper became brownish, this paperback was translated by the same translator, Ellen Conroy Kennedy, who later translated his "Lyrical and Critical Essays" (Vintage, 1970) in which I decided to keep going and finished reading after enjoying his two novels: "The Outsider" (Penguin, 1963) and "The Plague" (Vintage, 1991) as, I think, my reading foundation since reading Camus is not really like reading other novels in general; Camus as the recipient of the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 has since established his formidable literary stature as one of the world-class writers whose works are worth reading, studying and reflecting. Therefore, his literary outputs are simply not common; they need critical reading, at least.

[Maurizio Manco · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Ci sono delle verità che si scoprono subito dietro un'ansa della mente e da cui ci si distoglie con orrore per non scoprirle interamente." (Ritorno su me stesso, p. 170)