Description
In the speech he gave upon accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, Albert Camus said that a writer "cannot serve today those who make history; he must serve those who are subject to it." And in these twenty-three political essays, he demonstrates his commitment to history's victims, from the fallen maquis of the French Resistance to the casualties of the Cold War. Resistance, Rebellion and Death displays Camus' rigorous moral intelligence addressing issues that range from colonial warfare in Algeria to the social cancer of capital punishment. But this stirring book is above all a reflection on the problem of freedom, and, as such, belongs in the same tradition as the works that gave Camus his reputation as the conscience of our century: The Stranger, The Rebel, and The Myth of Sisyphus.
About the Author
Works, such as the novelsThe Stranger(1942) andThe Plague(1947), of Algerian-born French writer and philosopherAlbert Camusconcern 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 ofPedro Calderón de la Barca,Lope de Vega,Dino Buzzati, andRequiem for a NunofWilliam 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 newspaperCombat.The essayLe 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 ofL'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 ofLa 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 knowLa Chute(The Fall), work of Camus in 1956.Camus authoredL'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
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