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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
Albert Camus' initial visceral hostility to the Christian faith was submitted to the test by his personal acquaintance with Christians in the underground Resistance to the Nazis. As a result, though never tempted to become a Christian himself, Camus' appraisal of Christianity underwent a profound transformation. As the re-evaluation of his Christian faith, though exceptionally detailed and perceptive, found only novelistic form, it has not been the object of the careful critical analysis it richly deserves. The present article explores what may justly be called Camus' meditation on the Christian faith in The Plague.
1 Le Mythe of Sisyphe was written between September 1940 and February 1941. It was published in 1942 by Gallimard, Paris.
2 Camus, Albert, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. O'Brien, Justin (New York: Vintage, 1955), 24.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., 31.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., 28.
6 La Peste was published in 1947 by Gallimard, Paris, but it was long in the making.
7 ”But after all, you can also write about incest without necessarily having hurled yourself on your unfortunate sister, and I have nowhere read that Sophocles ever thought of killing his father and dishonoring his mother. The idea that every writer necessarily writes about himself and depicts himself in his books is one of the puerile notions that we have inherited from Romanticism …. A man's works often retrace the story of his nostalgias or his temptations, practically never his own history …. But the modern mania of identifying the author with his subject matter will not allow him this relative creative liberty” (Camus, Albert, Lyrical and Critical Essays, ed. Thody, Philip, trans. Kennedy, Ellen Conroy [New York: Vintage, 1967], 158–59).Google Scholar
8 “Letter to Roland Barthes on The Plague” in Lyrical and Critical Essays, 339.Google Scholar As for the authorial voice in this novel, Camus explained: “Under the shape of an objective chronicle written in the third person, The Plague is a confession. Everything therein is disposed in such a way as to make this confession all the more complete the more indirect it is” (Camus, Albert, “Lettre au ‘Libertaire’“ in Actuelles II: Chroniques 1948-1953 [Paris: Gallimard, 1953], 93;Google Scholar my translation).
9 Camus, Albert, Actuelles: Chroniques 1944-1948 (Paris: Gallimard, 1950), 247;Google Scholar my translation.
10 Ibid., 212-13; my translation.
11 Camus, Albert, The Plague, trans. Gilbert, Stuart (New York: Vintage, 1972), 16.Google Scholar
12 Ibid., 118-19.
13 Ibid., 142.
14 Ibid., 198-99.
15 Ibid., 201.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., 202.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., 202-3.
20 Ibid., 203.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., 203-4.
23 Ibid., 204.
24 Ibid., 206.
25 Ibid., 207.
26 Ibid., 207-8.
27 Ibid., 213.
28 Ibid., 208.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., 209.
31 Ibid., 208.
32 Ibid., 209-10.
33 Ibid., 210.
34 Ibid., 211.
35 Ibid., 207.
36 Ibid., 204.
37 Ibid., 212.
38 Ibid., 204.
39 Ibid., 214-17.
40 Ibid., 213.
41 Ibid.; my italics.
42 Ibid., 212.
43 Ibid., 121.
44 Ibid., 208.
45 Ibid., 217.
