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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Close examination of the interlocutor's reflected reactions provides a method for a reading of La Chute which is more consistent with Camus's basic outlook. As he takes part in sporadic although important exchanges with Clamence, the interlocutor is first led generally to see resemblances to the generous lawyer. Later, however, he displays increasingly unfavorable reactions until he finally laughs aloud when Clamence states that he will listen fraternally to the other's confession. By creating an interlocutor who rejects the speaker's views and purposes, Camus affords the reader the pleasure of ridiculing Clamence and of reasserting his own interpretation of life rather than being intimidated into accepting Clamence's degrading portrait as characteristic of modern man.
1. Albert Camus, Essais (Paris: Pléiade, 1965), p. 1094. Quilliot fails to mention that Camus's Upsala speech is merely a shortened and polished repetition of one he read before the Associazione Culturale Italiana at the beginning of the 1954 season. Published in their review, Quaderni A ci, it was reprinted by Germaine Brée in her Albert Camus: De L'Envers et l'endroit à L'Exile et le royaume (New York: Dell Laurel Library, 1963). Except for a new first paragraph, the changes consist in omissions, revisions within paragraphs, and minor variants.
2. The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago, 1961), p. 294. As an Aristotelian, Booth grounds his quarrel with modern fiction on his belief that the reader will identify himself with flawed characters who are presented without authorial control (see also p. 283 or p. 391); and he implies that Clamence is representative of unreliable narrators in literature from Gide to the present.
3. “Présentation” to La Chute, in Theatre, récits, nouvelles (Paris: Pléiade, 1962), p. 2003.
4. Sanford Ames, “La Chute: From Summitry to Speleology,” FR, XXXIX (Feb. 1966), 560.
5. Essais, p. 743.
6. Reprinted in Essais, p. 1927. The technique is, of course, by no means new in poetry or prose. See, e.g., Roger Martin du Gard's passage: “Le Docteur.—‘La langue … Bon … As-tu bien dormi, cette semaine? Pas trop? Tu t'agites toujours dans ton lit? Tu te réveilles parce que tu as trop chaud? Ah… .‘ ” (Jean Barois, Paris: Gallimard, 1960, p. 18). For Camus's comments on the novel, see Essais, pp. 1140–41. See also Quilliot's “Présentation” to La Chute, p. 2004.
7. Carina Gadourek's analysis of the interlocutor's reactions seems unsatisfactory because, as she reads La Chute, she feels that the interlocutor falls under Clamence's spell to the point of according to the judge-penitent an unqualified triumph: “Vaincu, celui-ci [l'Autre] commence ses aveux” (Les Innocents et les coupables, The Hague: Mouton, 1963, p. 189). Germaine Brée, too, noted the possibility of a dialogue. Mentioning the work's “devastating humor,” she added: “A dramatic monologue, obviously, is not the same thing as a personal confession… . [Unlike] Diderot's Rameau's Nephew no ‘philosopher,‘ unless it be the reader himself, is there to maintain the dialogue.” Introduction to Camus: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 9. I should like to acknowledge here Miss Brée's helpful suggestions for organizing this article.
8. La Chute(Paris, 1956), p. 90. Subsequent references are to this edition.
9. A further complication is caused by an apparent omission in the Pléiade text (p. 1478).
10. Les Innocents et les coupables, p. 180.
11. Theologically oriented critics who have confused Cla-mence with Camus may have a rewarding study in the probability of Clamence's future conversion, despite the indication that the direction of the journey up to Limbo is the opposite from Dante's.
12. The problems in the passage are numerous. By the turn of the phrase in the first sentence, Clamence seems to be asserting that the interlocutor spares nothing either, despite indications to the contrary. In the second sentence the apparently false premise, “nous sommes tous juges,” leads to the logically invalid and false conclusion that we are all guilty. This would seem to have little to do with our all being “christs” crucified “sans savoir.” And what we do not know is left to the reader to supply. Moreover, there is a contradiction with other passages: “Quand nous serons tous coupables, ce sera la démocracie” (p. 157).
13. In view of the interlocutor's implicit statement that he is leaving the next day, it would be tempting to consider, if impossible to demonstrate, that Clamence had been right in his first impression and that the interlocutor was driven to the Mexico-City by problems of the kind that had wrenched Clamence's life awry; but that a few hours with Clamence cured him. This interpretation would give added ironic significance to Clamence's statement that he was the end of the interlocutor's old attitudes, the beginning of the new, and that he revealed a new law under which the interlocutor could live in relative peace with himself.
14. At one point, however, as Clamence describes bis preaching to his “flock” the virtues of servitude, an unsympathetic comment may have elicited the reply: “Mais je ne suis pas fou” (p. 158).
15. Clamence states that he occasionally triumphs, “l'alcool aidant” (p. 165). But a drunken convert would sober up in the morning, and even Clamence must realize that these conquests are temporary and illusory.
16. Théâtre, pp. 2026–27. 17 Théâtre, p. 2028.
17. Théâtre, p. 2028.
18. Théâtre, p. 2007.
19. Cf. W. D. Redfern, “Camus and Confusion,” Symposium, xx (Winter 1966), 329–342.