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Camus's L'Etranger Reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Ignace Feuerlicht
Ignace Feuerlicht*
Affiliation:
State University College, New Paltz, N.Y.
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Extract

Twenty years after its publication in 1942, Camus's short novel L'Etranger has preserved its wide appeal through its haunting intensity, strange simplicity, and virile freshness. However, the general overemphasis on the philosophical significance of the story, the failure to deal with certain literary aspects, and the obscure or ambiguous features of the novel seem to call for a new appraisal of Camus's masterpiece.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 78 , Issue 5 , December 1963 , pp. 606 - 621
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1963

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References

1 These page and line numbers refer to the edition of L'Etranger by G. Brée and C. Lynes, Jr. (New York, 1955), which has been used because of its convenient numbering of lines. Symbols used for Camus's works are: EE=L'ElS (Paris, 1954); EN = V Envers et I'endroit (Paris, 1958); HR = L'Homme revolte (Paris, 1951); MS = Le Mythe de Sisyphe (Paris, 1959); N = Noces (Paris, 1945).

2 A. W. Levi, Philosophy and the Modern World (Bloomington, Ind., 1959), p. 203.

3 Ernst Kahler, The Tower and the Abyss (New York, 1957), p. 203; cf. Leon S. Roudiez, “L'Etranger, La Chute, and the Aesthetic Legacy of Gide,” FR, xxxn (1959), 305.

4 St. Ullmann, The Image in the Modern French Novel (Cambridge, Eng., 1960), p. 245.

5 Gae'tan Picon, Panorama de la nouvelle litterature francaise (Paris, 1949), p. 115; Herb. S. Gershman, “On L'Etranger,” FR, xxix (1956), 303; Alb. Maquet, Albert Camus ou I'Invincible Ete (Paris, 1955), p. 40; Rachel Bespaloff, “The World of the Man Condemned to Death,” Camus, ed. G. Bre'e (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1962), p. 93.

6 J.-P. Sartre, Thidtre (Paris, 1947), pp. 61, 101.

7 The Portable Thoreau, ed. Carl Bode (New York, 1947), p. 386.

8 S. Freud, “Erne Schwierigkeit der Psychoanalyse,” Gesammelte Werke, xii (London, 1955), 9.

9 F. Kafka, Tagebiicher (New York, 1949), p. 350.

10 S. John, “Image and Symbol in the Work of Albert Camus,” FS, ix (1955), 47. Cf. also Gershman, p. 302, Th. Hanna, The Thought and Art of Albert Camus (Chicago, 1958), p. 40, and John K. Simon, “The Glance of Idiots: The Novel of the Absurd,” YFS,No.25 (Spring 1960), p. 118.

11 John Cruickshank, Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt (London, 1959), p. 166.

12 Germaine Bree, Camus (New Brunswick, N. J., 1959), p. 203; R. W. B. Lewis, The Picaresque Saint (Philadelphia, 1959), p. 60; Cruickshank, p. 63.

13 J.-P. Sartre, “Explication de L'Etranger,” Situations, I (Paris, 1947), 107; Picon, p. 114.

14 Robert Luppe“, Albert Camus (Paris, 1960), p. 76.

15 Cruickshank, p. 163; Simon, p. 111.

16 Murray Krieger, The Tragic Vision (New York, 1960), p. 148.

17 Bree, p. 24.

18 A. Camus, Lettres d un ami allemand (Paris, 1948), p. 87.

19 The “tendre indifference” is a somewhat stronger version of the “indifference bienveillante” in Camus's Le Malentendu (Paris, 1957), p. 42.

20 Situations, p. 109; Maquet, p. 40.

21 Picon, p. 114.

22 Cruickshank, p. 116.

23 Carl A. Viggiani, “Camus' L'Etranger,” PMLA, LXXI (1956), 870.

24 Lewis, p. 71; Viggiani, p. 870.

25 Bre'e, p. 203.

26 Viggiani, p. 887; Louis Hudon, “The Stranger and the Critics,” YFS, No. 25, p. 61; Henry Bonnier, Albert Camus ou La Force d'etre (Lyon, 1959), p. 117.

27 Lewis, p. 68.

28 Bree, p. 113; Gerald Kamber, “The Allegory of the Names in L'Etranger,” MLQ, xxii (1961), 295.

29 Pierre de Boisdeffre, Une Histoire vivante de la litterature d'aujourd'hui(Paris, 1959), p. 127.

30 A. Koestler—A. Camus, Reflexions sur la peine capitate (Paris, 1957), p. 171.

31 Maquet, p. 41.

32 Koestler—Camus, p. 162.

33 Viggiani, pp. 873–878.

34 Situations, p. 117.

35 Maquet, p. 44.

36 Armand Renaud, “Quelques remarques sur le style de L'Etranger,” FR, xxx (1957), 290, 295.

37 Cruickshank, p. 155.

38 Germaine Bree makes the sensitive observation that the brief, discontinuous sentences of his uneducated mother haunt Camus's books (Camus, p. 14).

39 Ullmann, p. 244.

40 Situations, p. 118.

41 Cruickshank, p. 155.

42 Lewis, p. 69. Similar statements are made by Ullmann (“short, disjointed sentences, unconnected by any causal link,” p. 254), Thody (“a prose style that systematically avoids causal expressions like ‘because’ and ‘since,‘” Philip Thody, Albert Camus, London, 1961, p. 44), S. John (“Camus deliberately suppressed all causal connections,” Camus, ed. G. Bree, p. 88; “casual” in the book is an apparent misprint for “causal”), John K. Simon (“non-causal conjunctions,” YFS, No. 25, p. 113), and Brian T. Fitch (“ne sent pas la necessitd d'e'tablir un lien logique entre ses phrases qui correspondrait a un lien causal entre ses actions,” Narrateur et narration dans L'Elranger d'Albert Camus, Paris, 1960, p. 31).

43 Sartre, Situations, I, 124. A rapid, perhaps too rapid check of novels by Stendhal, Flaubert, Gide, Proust, Duhamel, Mauriac, Colette, Giono, Robbe-Grillet, and Sartre would indicate that Meursault's story is second only to Proust as far as the frequency of causal conjunctions is concerned.

44 Robert Champigny, Sur un héros païen (Paris, 1959), p. 87.

45 Situations, i, 120.

46 Situations, i, 117 f.; Ullmann, p. 246; Roger Quilliot, La Iter et les prisons (Paris, 1956), p. 85.

47 Cruickshank, p. 160.

48 Situations, I, 120.

49 E. Robles, “Jeunesse d'Albert Camus,” NRF, viii (March 1960), 413 f.

50 W. M. Frohock, “Camus: Image, Influence, and Sensibility,” YFS, No. 4, p. 99.

51 Viggiani, p. 882.

52 Cruickshank, pp. 157–158; Ullmann, p. 273.

53 Cruickshank, p. 158.

54 Frohock, pp. 93–94.

55 Cruicksnank, p. 156.

56 Viggiani, p. 882; Ullmann, p. 246.

57 The difference in the points of view between Parts I and II, however, is not expressed by the fact that the passi compose“ of Part I is replaced by the imparfait in Part ii (Quilliot, p. 86); there is no such replacement.

58 Some critics ignore it altogether: Quilliot, p. 85, sees the imparfait and the passe compose only; Bonnier, p. 109, denies Meursault's usage of the present and the future.

59 Champigny, pp. 146–147.

60 Brian T. Fitch, pp. 29 ff.

61 The trial does not necessarily “begin during the latter part of June” (Viggiani, p. 868); Meursault only says that the sessions of the court end at that time (101/4).

62 Certainly not in August, despite Viggiani, p. 867.

63 Cruickshank, p. 158; see also Lewis, p. 69, and Bree, p. 105.

64 Viggiani, pp. 868–869.

65 Jean-Paul Weber, “Decouverte de Meursault,” NRF, viii (March 1960), 577; cf. Luppe“, p. 70.

66 Luppg, p. 70.

67 Maurice Blanchot, “Le Detour vers la simplicity,” NRF, viii (May 1960), 933.

68 Situations, i, 107.

69 Quilliot, pp. 85, 90.

70 Situations, I, 120.

71 Luppe, p. 70; Ullmann, p. 245.

72 Blanchot, p. 933; Cruickshank, p. 159.

73 This together with 63/12 is more than just “two or three times,” Viggiani, p. 880.

74 J.-C. Brisville, Camus (Paris, 1959), p. 53.

75 Situations, I, 104; Maquet, p. 41; Brisville, p. 54; Champigny, p. 139; Luppe, p. 75.

76 Gershman, p. 304; Hudon, p. 61.

77 The opposite view is held by G. Bree in Albert Camus, 1913–1960, ed. Cultural Services of the French Embassy (New York, n.d.), p. 4.

78 Gershman, p. 303.

79 Maquet, p. 39; Viggiani, p. 870; Luppe, p. 75.

80 Viggiani, p. 887.

81 Cruickshank, p. 181; Simon, p. 117.

82 Bree, Camus, p. 113.

83 Thody, p. 40.

84 The manner of Josef K.'s execution and his last words, “like a dog,” are mentioned in Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 172. The identification of a man with a dog is probably foreshadowed by two passages: one in which Salamano and his dog are said to look as if they belonged to the same race (46/9), and one in which Meursault likens his breath to that of a dog (130/17). Furthermore, the dog, who lives on the same floor as Meursault, dies the way Meursault—in his death cell—wants to die (126/10 f.): He escapes (his collar corresponds to the prison as well as to the blade of the guillotine) only to be killed after a few moments of freedom. It may be worth-while adding that the rue de Lyon—the only street named in L'Etranger—which is mentioned only in connection with the dog whom Salamano walked there for eight years (46/13), is the street where Camus himself used to live as a youngster.

85 G. Bree, “A Grain of Salt,” YFS, No. 25, p. 41. I am indebted to Professors Germaine Bree and Donald Frame for valuable criticisms of this article.