Professor David Peimer
Albert Camus: His Life and Work (including his book, ‘The Plague’)

Professor David Peimer | Albert Camus; His Life and Work (including his book, ‘The Plague’) | 07.03.21

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• [Wendy] Exactly. So, I’m looking at the time. How are we doing? Two minutes off to the hour? I’m going to hand over to you David. Camus, today. Fantastic.

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So, today I’m going to be focusing on Albert Camus and a brief sense of his life and his context of the period that he lived in. And then focusing primarily on his remarkable novel, “The Plague” and its resonance for us today. And “The Outsider” and a little bit on his other remarkable book, “The Myth of Sisyphus.” He wrote plenty books, plays, philosophical tracts, journalist newspaper articles. Huge amounts. But that’s all I’m going to focus on today, for obvious reasons given time. And because I think, these are the most interesting of all the works. More interesting than the plays, in effect are his novels and how he captures his philosophy in the novels.

So, Camus lived. He’s born in Algeria, lives 1913, then he died in 1960 in a car crash. And as a result, he died in his early to mid 50s, which I’ll come onto to in a moment. These are some images of him. And what I like is it shows him with a kind of ironic detachment. And I think that’s the way he saw the world. He was passionate, but ironically engaged, able to, as he said, be inside the moment. We try to be, inside the moment of every experience. But also, a kind of stranger or outsider or witness to being in that moment, as well. That sort of double, I suppose, consciousness that many of us live with.

But together with an amazing writing talent, philosophical bent, and an extraordinary life. These are the pictures. And some of them also are likely the sense of humour and wit, which I think is very often underrated in terms of Camus. Because I see so much of the writing as having a certain stoicism, as having flashes of brilliance, beautiful writing, and also a kind of irony that comes with that double detachment, that I’m speaking about. An ironic awareness of people and situations. I’m going to link it to aspects of his life, as well. Whereas not all these great thinkers or writers or philosophers had that sense of, that double, that irony. Just to give you a sense here of some of his lovely phrases. And I’m going to come onto his life.

University of Algiers, where he went to study at this huge building. You can see this is a picture from the times that he was there in the early 1900s. Just a couple of phrases of Camus’, “Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.” You can see the ironic, the paradoxical, the playful, the wit. And I think he was hugely, and he acknowledges this, hugely influenced by Kafka and Kafka’s aphorisms. In the same way that Kafka used parables and irony, Camus used some parable, but more that sense of irony. “You know what charm is? A way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”

I think it’s a brilliant insight on charmed. And apparently he had good bundles of charm. Very good looking and very attractive, handsome man, Camus. “Don’t walk in front of me.” Don’t walk behind me. Sorry- “Don’t walk in front of me. I may not lead you. Don’t walk in front of me. I may not follow you. Don’t walk behind me. I may not lead you. Walk beside me, just be my friend.” He always brought his philosophy and ideas down to a very personal level in his life. And he would always link it to very concrete, personal examples, which is what I love about his work, as well. “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

I found it a stunning phrase within me, “There lay within in me an invincible summer”, no matter how tough or hard or ridiculous or absurd life was, inside their lay an invincible summer. It’s more than just a stoic, it’s an ironic awareness to be, to see some moments of passion, happiness, and enjoyment in life. Carpe Diem. You know, seize the day, enjoy what can be, find it with passion. For myself, I first began a love with Camus and his work growing up in Durban. And it just happened to be on my parents’ bookshelf and it was, some of Camus, there was “The Outsider”, and I happened to read it as a young kid, didn’t really understand much of it, but would come back to reading it again and again through my life as well as “The Plague” and some of, and “The Revolt” and the novels, and then his play later, “Caligula” and others.

But that first one I read, as a young little kid, in Durban, it stuck with me. Although I think I understood maybe, so dimly, if anything, but it obsessed me. And there was something about it that just kept grabbing me and later on to try and get to understand it much, much more. So there’s a personal connection for me. One of the first novelist I ever read, and I haven’t a clue how that short novel came to be in our family bookshelf , but there it was. So he’s a philosopher writer. He’s a journalist. In 1957, he wins the Nobel Prize for literature, the age of 44. He’s the second youngest recipient in the history of the Nobel Prize, to win it at that age. And this is in 1957.

So there have been quite a few Nobels given. “The Stranger”, “The Plague”, “The Myth of Sisyphus”, these have all been written by the time of 1957, when he already gets the Nobel. The context in which he’s living, is without a doubt, a couple of very important things. First of all, the second World War, absolutely crucial. And he’s living between Algeria and Paris and then France mainly. Second, he’s grown up in French colonised and French ruled Algeria. But he is part of a French immigrant family who’ve gone to Algeria, parents went to Algeria to try to make good, as many immigrants, the story of many immigrants all over the world, my family, and I’m sure many of you, listening to all the lectures. So his parents are French, who’ve gone there to make good, but he grows up French and Algerian.

But he’s part of the colonising group. He’s not a native Algerian, with an old history of Algeria. He’s part of immigrant culture and because he’s French, he’s seen as coloniser, but very, very poor family. His father was an agricultural worker who died very young in the first world war. He never knew his father. His father died when he was one. He died in World War I, in one of the terrible battles of First World War. And his mother was essentially a cleaning lady, trying to make a few bucks to make good. So he grows up very poor, although he’s the children of French immigrant colonisers, in Algeria. So he’s not part of their rich or the middle class French as it were, ruling elite who saw themselves as superior to the Algerian, so-called natives. It’s so he is born there in this context.

And the last thing, is that at a very young age, in his twenties, he gets tuberculosis. And of course in those days, there’s no cure. And I think it’s this combination of facts that made or forged his particular worldview. And the tuberculo- The getting TB, which was a killer obviously, as we all know in those days, but didn’t kill him, he managed to survive, but he had this disease all his life. And that I think is so fundamental for anybody who has a medical, serious, serious medical condition, at a pretty young age and has to live with it for years and decades afterwards. And I think that informed so much of his thinking and literature and the main novel I’m going to look at, “The Plague”.

The Germans invade, as we all know, France 1940, and by this time Camus, later in 41, he goes across to France, he joins the French resistance and he’s the editing chief of an underground newspaper called “Combat”. And he wrote a lot of things and was pretty threatened. The Nazis allowed this underground newspaper to exist, but it was underground primarily. But they didn’t go after because, he wasn’t part of the resistance, if you like, militaries. And the Nazis were first obsessed with going after them, then later, newspaper and journalists and so on, in France, anyway. As which I mentioned last week, the Germans played occupation in France, quite differently to the horror that they did in the east. In this fake polite and fake pretensions of civilised attitude to French, in Vichy in France. According to Sartre.

Then after the war, he became a celebrity figure, ‘cause he’d written these novels already. Quite a few had been, some had been translated to English. He gave lectures around the world. He travelled to America, to Britain, elsewhere. He married twice, he had many extra, quite a few, extramarital affairs. And in a way, similar to Sartre’s attitude, Sartre’s had a sense of an open relationship to, an openness I guess we would call it today, to having a monogamous relationships. His primary one was with Simone de Beauvoir, as we all know. But both Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre had quite a few other relationships. Camus was married twice, but had other affairs as well, some, which his wives knew, they didn’t. Basically, I guess, we could say both were womanisers in today’s language.

Camus was very much part of the left, same as such in the early days. But, and this is going to become important when I talk about more, a little bit more about the relationship with Sartre bit later. But he left the left and he was opposed, because he saw very early on in the forties, in the late forties, the totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and the totalitarian attitudes amongst the French Communist Party and the French left. And he hated it. He was very- And that’s where he had a big fallout with Sartre, was one of the main reasons. There were a couple of others later. He hated anything to do with totalitarianism. And Sartre refused to be blind to it, Sartre. Sartre would say he wasn’t blind to it, but he was obsessed with other things. During the Algerian war of 1954 to '62, he remained fairly silent. Was he neutral? Was he silent? Had he had enough of all the -isms?

Which he argued often about and focusing on his writing and his thinking, more personal stuff, unsure. Philosophically, his ideas contributed to the rise of existentialism, as we all know. And what he contributed was a profound, really profound understanding of absurdism, not just life was absurd. His mother was, as I said, French with Spanish ancestry. His father Lucien, as I mentioned. And they, huge difference with Sartre, is that because he grew up poor, because he had tuberculosis, very young, very poor.

And because he was part of this immigrant culture in Algeria, very different to Sartre, who grows up very French, goes to the elite French university, goes to an elite place to study in '33 and '34, upper middle class and middle to upper middle class home, Sartre. And very, very French in terms of, I guess, a large part of his identity, which is why, which I mentioned last week, when he spoke about Jews, he said, “I’m speaking about an anti-Semite”, said he speaking about France in particular.

Whereas Camus, was a French citizen, but living in Algeria and all the different superior, inferior, sort of hierarchies in the ladder of social and cultural existence and legal existence in front in Algeria. First is the French rulers, the French if you like, leaders, business class, class comes in, then the French immigrant poor, which he was. And then of course the inhabitants of Algeria at the inferior, so-called inferior bottom. 1930 was when he was diagnosed with TB, he was able to study part-time.

He had to work to earn money, he had other jobs. Sartre didn’t have to. He loved literature and philosophy and loved Kafka primarily, which Sartre did as well. Dostoevsky, which they all loved. And Melville, he read a lot. And of course, Kafka and Melville would’ve been, well Kafka certainly, would’ve been writing more or less, you know, just a few years before him. But Kafka influenced all of them, and for me remains the greatest influence of all. And one of the greatest writers of all.

His first wife, Simone, was addicted to morphine, because she had terrible menstrual pains and that’s what they gave for people in those days. Then he discovered that she was having a long relationship with her doctor, that led to their divorce. He was expelled from the communist party a number of times, because he refused to tow the party line, unlike Sartre. He was against French colonialism in Algeria, but had a conflicted relationship with France and Algeria, because he was caught in this paradigm of different identity focus points, if you like, that I’ve mentioned.

Then in Leon, during the war, he met and married a French mathematician, called Francine Faure, excuse my pronunciation. And because of his TB, he moved to the French Alps, in 1943. Returned to Paris after he felt a bit better and was part of the circle by then, with Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, the remarkable founder of the surrealist movement of poetry novels and literature of surrealism, and wrote the manifesto of surrealism, Andre Breton.

He rejects communism and this is part, this is after the war. He rejects communism, because of the totalitarian and the horror and the atrocities happening in the Soviet occupied countries and the Soviet Union itself. And this is part of the final split with Sartre. Camus at a very early age, after the war in the mid forties, is very pro-European integration. And is he’s one of his main focal, is about Europe and the absolute necessity for European integration to help prevent a possible third world war. Leaving after atomic bombs and that would be in a possible third world war lasting five minutes.

But he was very against, he was very pro-European integration, which is what he saw as the only future for a relative possibly hopeful way for peace to exist in Europe, including he hoped in the future, England. So he did quite a bit of writing journalism pro that. As I said, he’s the second youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize. He was 44, the youngest ever was Rudyard Kipling. He died in the car crash in 1960. There’s speculation, but no hard evidence, that the car crash was set up by the KGB. 'Cause let’s say, slightly fishy circumstances of his car crash, which I don’t want to go into, that it was a setup and that the KGB had set it up, because of his criticism of Soviet abuses and because he was such a well-known figure and an Nobel Prize winner, et cetera, literature, philosophy and so on, you can imagine. But there’s no hard evidence.

Camus and the Jews. Now this is also what I find very interesting. At the beginning of the war, not the Algerian war, the the second World War, there are 111,000 Jews in Algeria. 111,000 Jews in Algeria. And because of Vichy primarily, obviously, acting under the orders of the Germans, most of the Jews are forced out of jobs. There’s a quantity, a quota on Jewish doctors and lawyers in particular. No more than 2% of the Algerian population can be doctors or lawyers, if they’re Jewish. They cannot have jobs in anything to do with government. Jewish children are stopped from going to school. Jewish teachers are banned. The classes for Jews are limited. They can only study in certain Jewish schools if they exist. Limited, again.

He is very friendly with a Dr. Cohen, who has tried to help him for many years with his tuberculosis and very friendly with many Jews living in Algeria. 'Cause remember they’re over 110,000. A lot of them are intellectuals, are university people and business as well, merchants, in many areas of cultural, social, and economic life in Algeria. But it’s not only through his friendship with jews he’s profoundly, and this is very powerful in his life, he’s profoundly anything that is, that’s that hints of prejudice. He hates the Vichy, he hates the Germans and the Nazis with a visceral hate because it all smacks him of authoritarianism, of totalitarianism. And of course, ultimately when word comes out, the horrors of the camps and extermination is completely enraged. And I used that word carefully.

He wrote at the time about Vichy. This is during the war. “The cowardice and senility, all they have to offer these people of Vichy. They’re pro German policies, they’re totalitarian regime. All of this is, to suck up to an enemy who has already pulverised us. And why? To salvage their own petty privileges.” Now he wrote this in that underground newspaper. It is pretty visceral, direct language, not hesitating. In the thirties, before he went to, to France in the early forties in the war, in the thirties, when Vichy is already, sorry. Apologies, this is when the thirties, leading up to the early forties. When he’s still in Algeria, just before in '39, '40, '41, before he goes to Paris.

He worked as a private tutor for Jewish children, because they were banned from going to any other school. So he taught them for virtually no money or very little, when they were forced out of school. And then in France, when I said that he had to go to the French Alps to help recuperate, to try and recuperate anyway, from the tuberculosis, that I mentioned, that plagued him all his life. He went to this town called Chambon, again, excuse my pronunciation, at a rural area in the French Alps for his TB. And he worked with a very close, French Algerian Jewish friend and the local priest, to help 3000 Jewish children. These 3000 were saved by the end of the war.

He worked in a very clandestine way to help with these other two that I mentioned. After the war, completely pro-Israel and Zionism, and against the French leftists, who had become anti-Zionist after the Suez crisis in the fifties. He was deeply pro-Israel. And in 1957, he publicly affirmed his support for Israel. And he wrote, “Not only must Europe accept Israel’s existence as the only possible response to the continent’s complicity in the final solution, but Israel must also exist as a counter example to the oppressive rule of Arab leaders.”

Now, this is a French Algerian, non-Jewish writer, Nobel Prize winner, very high on the intellectual and literary and artistic global cultural scale, if you like, coming out in this forceful way. Sartre as well, was completely pro-Israel. And that had never been a major issue. But Camus goes a couple of steps further, as one can see, this I only discovered much later. I didn’t know this as a kid, when I first read him. What else did they, Sartre and Camus, disagree about? I’m going to go into this a little bit before going into the novel. There’s an anecdote that because Camus was so good looking, that, he had many women admirers and everything, et cetera, and he had charisma charm, obviously, very high intelligence, literary, and that he quite a few times in the cafes, they used to frequent of the French intellectual and artistic scene in the left bank.

And he would say to Sartre, “Why are you trying so hard with women? Just play it cool.” And Sartre would often say to him, “Well, have you seen my face? I got to impress them.” Anecdote, true or not? I don’t know. I think there was always these little touchy moments between the two, plus, of course, the class difference I mentioned and the fact that he had tuberculosis and the fact that Sartre had gone to the elite schools, the universities, and the difference, and the poverty of his, Camus’ upbringing. When Sartre wrote his play “No Exit”, and he asked Camus to be the first person to direct it, in the theatre in Paris. And the anecdotes, it’s meant to be true, but can’t prove it. And Sartre, Camus arrives to direct it, and he says to Sartre, “Well, the armchair resistor is finally looking at the face of history on the stage of history.”

It’s his comment as he goes into the theatre and Sartre is sitting there in the audience, in the auditorium looking at the stage. Sartre didn’t like it. He was called “the armchair resistor” by Camus and got furious about it. And then later these comments came up again about being “the armchair resistor”. And in a way, I think it was part of a fatal insult to Sartre. Apparently, after quite a buildup of this, plus what I mentioned about the difference between an attitude to the Soviet oppression and Soviet abuse and horrors of the Stalinist and post Stalinist era. All of these things led to the two not speaking again.

Camus did keep mostly silent during the Algerian War of Independence. And it was an unbelievably brutal, cruel war between the French and the Algerians. The other important political and philosophical difference is that Sartre, saw the world’s crisis on a north south basis. Remember the context he’s living, they’re living in the late forties after the war and in the fifties, and that’s a crucial thing. And then Sartre into the sixties, but Camus dies young, through the car crash in 1960. So mainly, the fifties is the political context. McCarthyism in America, the Cold War is really heating up.

So Sartre, was more obsessed with the north, south, with French colonialism in Africa and elsewhere. He saw that as the primary task to dismantle colonisation and the French Empire. He saw that dominating French foreign policy in the fifties, the war in Indo-China, which finally leads to Vietnam. Then Algeria with a Suez crisis in between and so on. That was the central political story for Sartre, in the fifties. He attempted, as he saw it, by the fading European empires, to hold onto their overseas possessions, not as defending Western democracy or much less as that, rather. Whereas Camus was more obsessed with East, West, and the future of Europe, which is an irony because he came from Algeria.

But irony being often the essence of life, I think, perhaps not so surprising. So, whereas Camus was so angry about the Holocaust, what he saw happening to Jews in Algeria first, was so angry about Germany, about totalitarianism, which he hated in every form. And in any kind of democracy I ever bared, better than the alternative. So he saw more East, west, that was Camus’ obsession, and the absolute necessity for the unification of Europe, to be part of that western alliance as it were, against what he saw as the Soviet, obviously, this is in the fifties again, the Cold War. Then the last point difference between them was how to be free, how to live a life, which is the full philosophy of existentialism.

Not so far apart here, and I’m being very crude and apologise, but Sartre saw it more as, the ultimate phrase in his book, being a nothingness, is that “existence precedes essence”. In other words, we exist in life, in society, we have choices we can make, and we are condemned to be free. Yes, we are condemned because of how we brought up class, money, circumstance, race, religion, culture, et cetera, all of that. But we still have to find ways to be free, to make our own choices in whatever way in life and fight against whatever other tries to dictate our life. Camus saw that essence precedes existence.

The opposite to the great classic phrase of Sartre’s being a nothingness of existentialism. And what he meant by “essence precedes existence” is the essence of being born, knowing we will die, and therefore the ultimate absurdity of life in trying to make meaning, trying to make rational sense and knowing we can die at any moment again, yet tuberculosis from his early twenties, knowing the threat of life, the fragility is so fragile. Any moment we can be wiped out, whether by a virus of TB, a bullet, a car crash, whatever, anything in life. So for him, the essence of that is human nature, regardless of the social and the society we live in. And given that a certain amount of stoicism, the eternal human nature question, was what obsessed Camus.

And absurdism for him was the attempt to still make sense, given that one key question, How do we live free, strong, independent, assertive, knowing at any second we can be die or be killed? That’s a very different approach. The essence precedes existence to Sartre’s existence precedes essence, big fallout between the two. And that’s the essence of their relationship. When Camus died young, Sartre wrote this amazing speech and letter, completely eulogising praising him, saying he was absolutely on a par, if not better than Kafka and Hemingway, who were the other two greats, I guess, of their era, pre-war.

So he, Sartre, completely respected, understood the intellectual battles they had, the literary battles, ‘cause Sartre was a novelist as well, the literary battles they had and the philosophical battles. But in the end, praised after his death, went back to an amazing praise and understanding, and an emotional and as well as intellectual understanding of Camus and his remarkable contributions. Okay, this is the two of them, Sartre and Camus. watching the one play Picasso wrote, called, “Desire Caught by the Tail”, done in a small, little dingy theatre.

You’ve got to imagine these little theatres in Paris, in this kind of golden era in Paris. There’s Sartre on the left, young Sartre, young Camus watching together, Picasso, some audience standing, some sitting. It’s kind of prefigures, I guess, a lot of the sixties theatres done in little places, little cellars, little rooms, all from in New York and America and in Europe and in England and elsewhere, the sixties vibe, but being captured much earlier, kind of fringe theatre stuff. The books I primarily want to focus, the main one I’m going to look at is “The Plague”, and then a bit “The Stranger” and “The Myth of Sisyphus”. If the Plague is published in '47, the Stranger he writes in '42, and the Myth of Sisyphus in '42 as well.

This is while he was in the French Alps trying to recover or trying to hold his health rather, from the tuberculosis. And he had this interesting idea, there have been as many plagues as wars in history. He always plagues in wars, take people equally by surprise. Why? And he wondered why we know there are so many wars and so many plagues that there have been in history. Why did it take people by surprise? Why was it seen as something unusual, Something strange, bizarre out there? Whereas for him, wars and plagues are just part of the norm of human existence, of society, existence of history. And obviously, I’m linking it again to his tuberculosis and his own life.

But he then tried to understand the meaning of plague and war, what is the meaning that it had in human society if one sought more as norm? As Brecht once said, war is just politics- Sorry, “War is just business by another form of politics”, whether we agree or not, or politics by another form of war. So, if we see it more as part of human existence, part of human society, plagues and wars, smaller plague or pandemic, smaller, bigger, and even with us, there’s the AIDS pandemic there was before there’ve been, the SARS, so many in our own lifetimes, the Spanish flu, we all know in the early 20th century, after the first World War, killed between 50 and a hundred million, obviously, no vaccines in human history. This is our first time now with COVID.

But why are people so surprised? Was Camus’ question. And what does it mean to look at plague and war as an almost, as he would say, essence precedes existence, an essential part of human life, an essential part of human society and history, living. Why are we so surprised? Should we not plan for it? Prepare, know? And what does it mean to know this as part of human life? A hundred million corpses broadcast through history as no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination. What do we do when we think of the Spanish flu, 50 to a hundred million killed and it’s a hundred years ago after the first World War? Can we absorb it? Can we understand it?

The terrible phrase of Stalin, “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” The cynical, terrible phrase of Stalin. But in a way, is this part of human nature, to think like this? Can we comprehend it? How are the stories told, The Black Plague, The Black Death, you know, a quarter of the whole of European of Europe died. And we all know, you know, the Jews blamed for it, the bubonic, the black plague, so many other plagues. And he researches it all over. Okay, so I want to show this here, I’m going to go into it first.

This is the cover of the book, “The Plague”. And you can see the shadow, the human shadow on the concrete. I’m going to come in a moment, I’d like to just play a short clip from a very well written piece, and excuse some of the perhaps, the cartoons or the images, but it’s a serious attempt to give us a sense of the meaning of his novel.

• [Narrator] In January, 1941, the 28 year old French writer, Albert Camus, began work on a novel about a virus that spreads uncontrollably from animals to humans and ends up destroying half the population of a representative modern town.

It was called, “La Peste”, “The Plague”, eventually published in 1947, and frequently described as the greatest European novel of the second half of the 20th century. The book, written in sparse haunting prose, takes us through a catastrophic outbreak of a disease in the lightly fictionalised town of Oran, on the Algerian coast. As seen through the eyes of the novels hero, a Dr. Rieux, a version of Camus himself.

As the novel opens, an air of eerie normality reigns. Oran is an ordinary town, writes Camus, nothing more than a French perfect juror on the coast of Algeria. The inhabitants lead busy, money centred and denatured lives. They barely notice that they are alive. Then with the pacing of a thriller, the horror begins. Dr. Rieux comes across a dead rat, then another and another. Soon the town is overrun with the mysterious deaths of thousands of rats, who stumble out of their hiding places in a daze, let out a drop of blood from their noses and expire.

The inhabitants accuse the authorities of not acting fast enough. So the rats are removed and the town heaves a sigh of relief. But Dr. Rieux suspects that this is not the end. He has read enough about the history of plagues and transmissions from animals to humans to know that something is afoot. Soon, an epidemic seizes Oran, the disease transmitting itself from citizen to citizen, spreading panic and horror in every street. In order to write the book, Camus immersed himself in the history of plagues.

He’d read books on the Black Death, that killed 50 million people in Europe in the 14th century, the Italian plague of 1629, that killed 280,000 people across northern Italy, the great plague of London of 1665, as well as plagues that ravaged cities on China’s eastern seaboard, during the 18th and 19th centuries. In March, 1942, Camus told the writer Andre Malraux, that he wanted to understand what plague meant for humanity. “Said like that, it might sound strange,” he added, “But this subject seems so natural to me.”

Camus was not writing about one plague in particular, nor was this narrowly, as has sometimes been suggested, a metaphoric tale about the recent Nazi occupation of France. Camus was drawn to his theme, because in his philosophy, we are all unbeknownst to us already living through a plague that is a widespread, silent, invisible disease that may kill any of us at any time and destroy the lives we assumed was solid. The actual historical incidents we call plagues are merely concentrations of a universal precondition.

They are dramatic instances of a perpetual rule that we are vulnerable to being randomly exterminated by a bacillus, an accident, or the actions of our fellow humans. Our exposure to plague is at the heart of Camus’ view that our lives are fundamentally on the edge of what he termed, “the absurd”, proper recognition of this absurdity, should not lead us to despair pure and simple. It should rightly understood be the start of a redemptive, tragic comic perspective.

Like the people of Oran before the plague, we assume that we’ve been granted immortality and with this naivety come behaviours that Camus abhorred, a hardness of heart, an obsession with status, a refusal of joy and gratitude, a tendency to moralise and judge. The people of Oran associate plague with something backward that belongs to another age.

They are in their eyes, modern people with phones, trams, aeroplanes and newspapers. They are surely not going to die like the wretches of 17th century London or 18th century Canton. “It’s impossible, it should be the plague. Everyone knows that has vanished from the West”, says one character. “Yes, everyone knew that.” Camus adds, adonicly, “Except the dead.”

• Okay, I want to hold us there, because this just gives us an idea of the novel and the meaning behind it. And some of the ideas are fairly obvious and clear. What Camus means by “The Plague” is, in terms of the absurd, the absurd, as he put it, is the result of the confrontation between the human need for reason and for meaning to our life. And the unreasonable silence of the world. This is the absurdity which we have to- We need to accept part of our lives and get on with it. So it’s a confrontation between the human need for a reason and happiness for life. And the unreasonable indifference or silence of the world.

That is the actual meaning of the absurd. Not just that life was absurd and those cliches. And he links it to the Book of, Job, where Job demands, “Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I’m not heard. I cry aloud, but there’s no judgement .” You know, come on, God, help me. Gimme me a clue what’s going on, why, where? And the profound idea, I think in the book that Camus gives us, is that what if we understand this, not as something belonging to the 14th century, 15, 16, mediaeval, et cetera times, but it’s actually part of life? Whether it’s a virus, whether it’s a war, it’s part of human history, society, it’s part of, as much as violence, may be abhorred, but it’s part of life.

What do we do? How can it change our understanding, this essential human quality of human nature? How might it change the way we live day to day? That’s the key understanding, how might we live in a way which can give us happiness, some happiness, moments of happiness, moments of meaning in a silent world, a silent universe? That’s why the plague is the shadow that we cannot and should not ignore or be in denial about. And it’s not a question of despair. He would say, this is just reality. It’s reality. So he would say, given that it’s real, we accept it with an ironic stoicism and an ironic awareness. And seize the day, not just in a simple, cliched, naive, you know, silly way. ‘Cause of course there’s joys and sorrows, there’s horror and terror and fear, then happiness and compassion and love in life. But how do we embrace?

This is the true meaning of what he means, essence precedes existence. The essence of human nature, as opposed to Sartre, the existence precedes any sense of human nature. Sartre doesn’t believe, believes that we can change all the time as much as we want. But Camus believes this question is fundamental. And the metaphor of “The Plague”, written in 19- Published in 1947 and how contemporary it is, I mean, it sold so many copies globally, obviously, you know, due the whole COVID crisis, but Penguin actually ran out of being able to print enough. But it that he could foresee and use this as a metaphor for a way, a vision of life, concrete vision of how to live. And that’s what I think this remarkable novel gives us.

And you know, as this little clip I showed, it doesn’t mean despair, and this whole, the cliched idea of existentialism and the absurd is despair and oh me and angst and anxiety. That’s not the meaning at all. It’s living with a conscious awareness of the shadow, that anything can happen at any moment. Okay? That is a given of human nature and human society. Now, how do we live? Even with all the trappings of modernity, modern society, and that we are much more civilised than in the past. We are still haunted with, we have the shadow of our true human reality all the time. That for me is “The Plague”.

In the novel, in addition, and Oran itself, the city in Algeria that he talks about, had had a bubonic plague in 1556, 1678, more outbreaks and others, et cetera, the city that he uses. The other meaning for me in “The Plague”, is that when we explore the characters in the novel, when we lift this thin veil of civilization, at the time, at a time of a plague, see how people act, to see a kind of truth in human nature, even more. Some opportunists can make money out of supplying whatever, get the contracts from government or wherever. Some are politicians, some are helpers who are trying to help other people. Some are kind and caring, some are selfish. Some discover the meaning of love. Some want to make money. Some become more political or less.

So how does, when the kind of thin veil is lifted, of modernity, and ways of living, how do we all act? Brecht has a fantastic scene about theatre, which talks about the street accident scene. How do we all act in the moment of a street accident? Some will call the ambulance, some will call the police, some will be passive bystanders, some will go and try and help the injured. Some might be opportunistic or some will just walk on and ignore, whatever. As a way of- He’s using it as an image for theatre and human behaviour in a social setting, and therefore human conflict. And Camus is using the plague, to see what really drives humans in these moments.

And then of course, for me, as I think Stephen Hawking understood, time is the gold in life. This fragility of this life/death question, at any moment, plague and war remind us to live. Time is the golden life. Procrastination, the thief of time. Not only carpe diem, but this is how to live concretely daily. And I think in his life, he tried to live it as much as possible. And it’s the meaning inside this novel and his others. The Dr. Rieux character, he urges the authorities to deal with the plague, take action, stop the spread of the epidemic, in Oran. They don’t realise the gravity of the situation. He grasps it. He warns the authorities that this plague can kill half the town population of 200,000 in a couple of months. That’s him.

But he does it as a doctor, because he believes he wants to help suffering people. Not as a even religious or high minded moral purpose in the novel, but just because that’s who he is. Just trying to be decent, as the French translation into English, that’s the word that’s used. Then there’s Jean, Jean, immediately he’s active, man of action, organises teams of volunteers to fight the plague. He takes action. He feels the plague is everyone’s responsibility and everyone should do their duty to help fight it. Then there’s Raymond, when the plague strikes, he’s a visitor from France to the Oran in Algeria. And he’s trapped in the city, but he doesn’t feel a connection to the city, 'cause he is from France and he misses his girlfriend in Paris. But he decides, he chooses to stay in the city and try and help fight the plague, 'cause he said he’d feel guilty if he only pursued his private happiness and go back to his girlfriend in Paris, and not try and help people there.

Cottard, who is rich, but he undergoes a personality change, doesn’t need work, doesn’t need a job. After the outbreak of plague, he was very mistrustful and detached from people before. But now he suddenly becomes very sociable and tries to make as many friends. Later, he kills people in the street after the plague is finished and goes nuts. His father, Paneloux, who’s a learned, respected Jesuit priest. And during the plague he preaches at the cathedral, insisting that plague is a scourge sent by God, to those who have hardened their hearts against God. And he doesn’t believe it’s a virus or it’s a plague. He believes in his own God. And he refuses to call for a doctor when he gets sick, God will save him.

He dies a few days later in the novel. There’s the Prefect, I guess like the mayor who represents the politicians of, of the town. And he first, he believes all the talk of the plague. It’s a false alarm, it’s nonsense, or yeah, it’s a minor thing. Then he gets advice from the medical, the scientists, he organises some limited measures to sort of help combat it a little bit. I mean, they don’t work. Well, he tries to, as a politician, character, avoid responsibility. He says, well, he’ll find out, he’ll look research a bit more, look elsewhere, calls in some business, calls in some others, but there’s not really much we can do. So he tries to put the blame elsewhere and he says not much, let’s get on with life.

Let’s get on with business. You know, not much we can do anyway, there’s not even talk at the time, obviously, of a vaccine. Then there’s Dr. Richard, who doesn’t even want to admit there’s a disease, is the plague. He refers to a special type of fever. Then the ordinary townspeople, who wrap themselves in denial, what we would call conspiracy theory today. In those days he used other phrases, Camus. They don’t want to recognise it, there’s even a plague. It’s either you know, from God or from something else, or it’s just something that the politicians have stirred up or, and so on. I think, the metaphor is obvious. The authorities are slow to accept that it’s a serious situation. So they keep debating what action to take and they keep minimising it, denial.

They put official notice, control measures, quarantine the language optimistic, downplays the seriousness. As the death toll rises, then more desperate measures become more quarantine. Burials are strictly supervised. There’s a supply of plague serum that arrives, but there’s only enough to treat certain people. And the rulers, the town is sealed off. The town gates are shut and it’s becomes like a thriller now, the novel. Travel is prohibited by train, by car. Communication with friends or family outside the town, prohibited, minimised. The separation starts to depress people. They feel very isolated. And so we see how the characters really react in the situation. And it gets worse.

Some people try to escape the town, then some are shot by armed centuries. Violence, looting breaks out, the authorities respond. Declare martial law. The politicians who are hovering, if they wanted to declare martial law, declare it. And there’s a curfew. Funerals conducted with high speed. There can’t be a ceremony, concerned for the feelings of the families of the deceased, minimised. Inhabitants passively endure their feeling of separation once they have already been so separated. And then the town remains at the mercy of the plague, and the few rulers. Dr. Rieux hears that his wife has died from the plague and he realises he has to harden his heart to a degree, so he can try and help keep being a doctor, continue his work.

The plague finally starts to diminish, the townspeople celebrate, the opening of the town gates celebrated. People are reunited with each other. They forget, the thousands and thousands and thousands that have been killed or murdered or died rather. And Dr. Rieux writes, “Well, at the end of it all, what can I say?” This is in the novel. “To simply say, I have learned one thing, that in the midst of the plague, there are more things to admire in men than to despise in humanity.”

So, it’s a sense of, as I said, how all the characters in the novel respond in different ways. A sense of the denialism, how it’s used by opportunist politicians, some in business and some who are in business, don’t use it like that. Some in the medical fraternity have different opinions, you know, et cetera. Just as we’ve seen, I guess play out. Remarkable, how he understood it, obviously from researching previous plagues, but understood how this really, really worked in society. But I think it’s like others have written about war in a similar way. So the real meaning that we can never forget, that the plague is our shadow like in the image here. And to live knowing that in an ironic way, find the beauty of being a life in little moments, it sounds like terrible cliches and perhaps naivety I mentioned.

But you know the moments that we can enjoy and will enjoy of reprieve, of happiness, of enjoyment. Some of the phrases from it, “There are more things to admire in men and to despise.” That’s what the Dr. Rieux says at the end. “Townsfolk people were like everyone else, wrapped up in themselves. They disbelieved in pestilence. We tell ourselves the pestilence is a mere bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn’t pass away. It’s men who pass away.” Then, “The interesting idea that the evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance.” And he linked this to a much earlier piece on antisemitism. Ignorance, that’s the appalling vice.

For Elie Wiesel, interestingly, the opposite of love was indifference. For Camus, it’s ignorance that is the true evil. I don’t want to get into the (audio cuts out) here and that’s a fascinating idea of Camus’, ignorance and how do we counter that and authorises itself to kill? Ignorance means what we would call conspiracy theories, all these things today, what does it mean “The Plague? It’s life, that’s all.” In this way, I’ve tried to describe, it’s part of human life, part of human history and society. Rather try and be on that side that refuses to be on the side of the pestilence. What’s true of all evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men rise above themselves. "Thus each of us had to be content to live only for the day. Alone under the vast indifference of the sky.” “We’re all born mad, some remains so.”

One of the influenced by Kafka phrases. I’m going to hold on looking at Sisyphus, and “The Outsider” and just show, just a couple of quick phrases, if I may. From “The Sisyphus”, sorry, “The Stranger”. “I looked up at the massive signs and scars in the sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign difference of the world.” Once we accept that, that it is indifferent, we then find ways to exist, to live rather, with all these other things that I mentioned. And this is the absurd, “Man stands face to face with the irrational, he feels within him, longing for happiness and reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need for reason and happiness and the unreasonable silence of the world.”

Beautiful way of writing this. This is the image of Titian, from 1549, of “The Myth of Sisyphus”, carrying the rock up. But I can get into that at another time. And then a couple of lovely phrases from him, from Camus, “Blessed other hearts that can bend, they shall never be broken.” “Don’t walk in front of me. I may not follow, don’t walk behind me. I may not lead. Just walk beside me. Just be my friend.” It’s not a naive optimism. It’s born of understanding his own tuberculosis, his own poverty upbringing, his own life. The what he saw happening to Jews during the, the early part of Vichy. What he saw happening in the war, before the war, after the war, during it. What he saw as trying to understand, there’s one question in life.

We are born knowing death will happen, not only at the end of a certain age, but anytime. Anytime it can happen, that shadow is there. So how do we live? People expend tremendous energy, merely trying to be normal. They’re ironic always. And that’s where the wit comes in. It’s like with Kafka, I find so much ironic wit, there’s the absurd tragedy and there’s the fos or the comic or the ironic if you like, of life. That is our reality. And I think that’s all that Kafka and Camus and these guys are trying to say in their novels. And I think there’s a certain, I guess, profundity and understanding.

And I’d like to leave us with this last thought. Even with Sisyphus, with his meaningless job of pushing the rock up and down, pushing the rock up, the ancient Greek myth, that he’s sentenced by the gods, ‘cause he’s revolted, done horrible things to the gods. The gods say, every day you’ve got to push this rock up Sisyphus, push it up the hill, it will roll down. You walk down, you pick it up again and you push it up. Sisyphus is sentenced in ancient Greek myth, sentenced to that eternity. And even if you have that meaningless, boring, stupid task, you know of the horrors of sometimes office jobs, factories, whatever, all kinds of work jobs in our lives, there are still moments of reprieve, moments where we can find to enjoy it.

And “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me, there lay an invincible summer that cannot be killed.” And he says, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy”. Not just trying to be a clever witty comment, but trying to say this is a way to live, even at times or feeling meaningless tasks. One must imagine and try and the struggle itself towards the heights, like in Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill, the struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart. It is in the struggle to do this, to find the invincible summer in our heart. That is the struggle of life. Sorry, I’ve gone over a few minutes and thanks very much.

Q&A and Comments

• [Judi] David, have you got some time to go with the questions?

• Yeah, sure.

Q: “What car was Camus driving?” A: Very great question. I’m not sure I’ll check it.

Love in the depth of water, yep. John, I believe his mother was Spanish. Yes. Spanish, originally of Spanish origin.

Yeah. Ah, hi, hi. Okay Ralph, thank you very much. Lovely to hear.

Adrian, “Perhaps he shared a similar attitude, to the extreme with Orwell.” Absolutely. Great- I don’t know. Great question, if they had contact, I’ll find out.

Q: “Was Bradley Harris part of your family?” A: The Harris family were linked, yes. Thank you. Thelma,

Q: “Was Camus Jewish?” A: No.

John, “One of his closest collaborators, admirers, was Jean Danielle, also Jewish and Algerian.” Yes.

“Went on to edit the French post war.” Thank you.

Marion, “Coming from such a poor background. Little educated parents. Apparently the mother raised him.

Q: “Where and how did he acquire his literary sensibility and talent?” A: Great question. He, I guess, I don’t know. Might have been from the parents, we don’t really know. Might have been he mixed in,

• [Wendy] Yeah, we did last night, amazing.

• Great question. Simon, he certainly was friendly with a lot of Jews and he makes, he talks a lot about that. “Camus had a minimal role.” We don’t know exactly the role, Simon. The fact that he was very friendly with the French Algerian Jews, who was central in that town and that pastor, they were central but he was very friendly. He must have known about it. And I don’t know exactly the minimal or the maximum role or if it was peripheral or central or a mix of the two roles that he had, Simon, you’re right. Also, we can’t forget, that he did go there to- He had terrible tuberculosis at the time. Certainly it had flared up.

Romaine,

Q: “Who either do you perceive as having a romantic soul?” A: Great, great question. I think Camus, if romanticism is the last refuge of the cynic, maybe Sartre, but I think Camus probably more romantic.

Q: “Was von Clausewitz who said, 'War is politics by other means.’” A: Thank you, Stephan, yes.

Abed, thank you again. Okay, Sheila, thank you very much. I dunno if it’s more rewarding than we’re built in and the football’s coming.

Stephen, “Camus’ a bit like Buddhism” Very interesting, Stephen. Yeah, I would say it’s fairly close, but he is very much living in a western and colonial context and he linked it to that, I guess, and the traditions of Western philosophy in his way of thinking. But yes, is close to a kind of Buddhism, but he would say the role of passion and the needs of the body and the flesh, important and live it out.

Thanks Ruth. Julius, certain translation, they are excellent. Excellent contemporary translations. The Penguin one, really good. Eva, thanks again. Okay, Yvonne. Thank you Steven. Thank you.

Q: “Camus despair of improving the world’s human nature?” A: I dunno if we can improve human nature, we have education, I think you believe that through metaphor, art, literature, et cetera, we can understand and hopefully increase understanding, at least nowadays we do talk about pandemic, not so much plague, at least nowadays we have incredible advances in medicine and science.

John, “If I have to choose between Algeria and my mother, I shall choose my mother. An expression site could not understand.” Brilliant, thank you, John. And I was going to link that to a brief talk on the, on “The Stranger”, on his novel, “The Stranger”, which is absolutely about the mother figure. And Sartre could never understand that. You’re absolutely right, you always linked the personal with the philosophical or the political, which I think is what made him a great novelist, as well.

Thanks Adele. Thank you Eileen, Colleen, thank you. Josie, thanks.

Q: “Did he believe mankind had progressed?” A: No, I don’t think so. Especially not after the Holocaust and what he saw going on. I think that’s part of the reason why he wrote, you’re trying to understand it all in this post-war context, in the late forties and and into the fifties.

Okay, also, it was, okay, thanks Elsa. That’s the car he had a crash in.

Sharon, “Camus had the most modest tombstone in the south of France.” He’s honoured hugely in French and global circumstance. In literature, he is read, he is taught. And I mean he has, he’s a huge, huge figure, and in a way, I mean, he’s right up there with Sartre. In very different ways. Him more as a literary figure, Sartre, as a philosophical figure. He is really one of the intellectual artistic giants of the 20th century. Thank you.

Thinks about walking down the Sisyphus, of walking down the hill. Well that’s what he goes into in the novel, which, I dunno if I have time for now, but, the walk down the hill after the stone, and actually Camus writes about that. In those moments of pause, walking down the hill to pick up the stone, in those moments of reflection and understanding, could come to understand his situation, using the metaphor of Sisyphus, and that can lead to change.

Thanks Lana, thanks Kaya. Buddhist here, Denise. Thanks. Okay, thank you. Joan. Thanks.

Okay, Shlomo. “I’m the son of Sydney.” Yes, thanks, Shlomo. Sydney was my father and his sister was called Paulica, who lived in Port Elizabeth. Absolutely. Ah, amazing, thank you. Great, please email me.

Sue, thank you. “The school master persuaded his grandmother that Camus-” Ah, thanks very much. Camus said it was his headmaster, that led to him winning the Nobel Prize. Thank you, I didn’t know that. Ian, that’s great. Okay, Paula. Okay, Michael. The clip you can find on YouTube. I actually just found out late last night. It’s on YouTube. You can find it on “The Plague”.

• [Wendy] David?

• [David] Yes, thank you.

• Sorry, it’s me, I’m jumping in. If you’re able to send us we can send it out, because all the time.

• Absolutely, yeah. Actually, Judi, I think you have it, yeah?

• [Judi] Yes-

• [David] Should I send it again?

• [Judi] No, don’t worry, I’ve got it.

• [David] Okay.

• [Judi] So share with me.

• David, that’s an presentation. I’m going to carry this invincible summer

• In your heart always.

• [Wendy] With me wherever I go. I relate to this, in a funny kind of way.

• Exactly.

• [Wendy] It feels like one has to be one has to be .

• The invincible summer in your heart, Wendy and Judi and everybody, never forget and it’s invincible. I love that word of his.

• Okay, thanks so much everybody. Enjoy the football or Wimbledon or whatever and take care. Okay-

• Very good, thanks David.

• [David] Lovely to see you all. Ciao, ciao.

• [Wendy] Thanks everybody.

• [Judi] Thanks everybody.

• [Wendy] Bye-bye.

• [Judi] Bye.