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Camus and Vigny

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2021

Charles G. Hill
Charles G. Hill*
Affiliation:
Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, N. Y.
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Extract

Although Albert Camus furnished us with only one rather vague acknowledgement of influence by Alfred de Vigny, I believe that their affinity goes beyond a recognized common distress in the face of certain aspects of the human predicament. I think further that superficial differences in the situation of the two authors mask attitudes which are fundamentally similar. In order to give this kinship the attention it deserves, I should like first to examine the relationship between the moral, social, and intellectual forces which formed the two men, and with this background to discuss two bases for affinity of metaphysical, social, and artistic points of view.

Camus's humble origins had much the same significance as the romantic's aristocratic attachment to the past had for him. Each writer tended to insist on his alienation from the dominant middle class, but both noted a relationship between the popular and aristocratic milieux. The 1957 Nobel Prize winner stated that in the nineteenth century official social values were attacked by revolutionaries and by aristocrats like Vigny. “Dans les deux cas, peuple et aristocratie, qui sont les deux sources de toute civilisation, s'inscrivent contre la société factice de leur temps.” And in recounting the realization that his classmates hated him for his aristocracy, Vigny added, “J'étais pareil à un jeune ouvrier qui part avant l'aube pour faire sa journée . . . ”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , 1962 , pp. 156 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1962

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References

Notes

1 I am indebted to Professor Germaine Brée for the following remark from Camus's notebooks, dated 3 July 1949: “Lis le journal de Vigny où beaucoup de choses m'enchantent.” Roger Quilliot, La Mer et les prisons (Paris, 1956), p. 16, mentions simply that Camus read Vigny's Journal in the summer of 1949. John Cruickshank, Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt (London, 1959), p. 16, gives the year 1941, and Pierre Moreau states in La Table ronde, No. 146 (Feb. 1960), p. 44, that Camus expressly counted Vigny among his masters, but does not indicate where. Camus refers briefly to Vigny in L'Homme révolté and in his Discours de Suède.

2 The relationship between Camus and Vigny is discussed by M. Mettra, “De l'inquiétude romantique à l'angoisse existentielle: Alfred de Vigny et Albert Camus,” Bulletin de l'institut français en Espagne, No. 57 (Mar. 1952), pp. 45-51; and is noted by Quilliot, passim, by Philip Thody, Albert Camus (London, 1957), pp. 135-136, and in many articles.

3 Discours de Suède (Paris, 1958), p. 38, hereafter referred to as DS. Parenthetical references to Camus's works (all published in Paris) are to the following editions: A and A ii: Actuelles i and ii (1950 and 1953); C: Caligula (1947); La Chute (1958); EE: L'Envers et l'endroit (1958); L'Étranger (1947); Eté: Eté (1957); HR: L'Homme révolté (1952); Le Malentendu (1947); MS: Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1948); N: Noces (1957); P: La Peste (1947); R: “Réflexions sur la guillotine,” in Arthur Koestler [et] Albert Camus, Réflexions sur la peine capitale (1957).

4 Mémoires inédits, Jean Sangnier, ed. (Paris, 1958), p. 56. Referred to hereafter as MI.

5 Œuvres complètes, 2 vols., “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade,” (Paris, 1948), ii, 678. Parenthetical references to Vigny's works are to this edition unless otherwise stated.

6 Cf. Camus's characterization of Nietzsche: “... aristocrate qui a su dire que l'aristocratie consiste à pratiquer la vertu sans se demander pourquoi, et qu'il faut douter d'un homme qui aurait besoin de raisons pour rester honnête. . . ” (HR, p. 100), and his assertion that he had never recognized but two aristocracies, “celle du travail et celle de l'intelligence,” both equally important, which “ne font qu'une seule noblesse” (A ii, p. 168-169). “L'aristocratie de l'intelligence” is a current running through Vigny's work (see ii, 1392).

7 This comparison points up the fact that while Camus took the more active part in the affairs of his time, Vigny's intention of serving society under arms was thwarted largely by the outward peacefulness of the Restoration.

8 This nostalgia is most evident in the Clamence of La Chute, whose life was a veritable “Eden” before his fall (p. 34). But the guilt which is part of the human condition is made clear in L'Étranger when Meursault admits, “De toute façon, on est toujours un peu fautif” (p. 33). And in Le Mythe de Sisyphe the absurd is “le péché sans Dieu” (p. 60). See on this point R.-M. Albérès, “Albert Camus ou la nostalgie de l'Eden,” in Les Hommes traqués (Paris, 1953), and Louis R. Rossi, “Albert Camus: The Plague of Absurdity,” Kenyon Rev., xx (1958), 399-422.

9 Cf. Georges Bonnefoy, La Pensée religieuse et morale d'Alfred de Vigny (Paris, 1944), with an early chapter entitled “Révolte et Volupté.”

10 An unpublished text quoted by Quilliot, p. 78. This critic draws an even stronger parallel between Caligula and Eloa.

11 Jean du Rostu, “Un Pascal sans Christ, Albert Camus,” Études, No. 247 (Oct.-Dec. 1945), pp. 48-65, 165-177; and more recently Jean Conilh, “Albert Camus, l'exil sans royaume,” Esprit, Nos. 260, 261 (April, May 1958), pp. 529-543, 673-692, have justly pointed out that this refusal to accept the irrational is also a form of leap. Camus himself concurred that the Pascalian wager can be made in various directions. In discussing Nietzsche he stated, “La Volonté de Puissance s'achève ainsi, comme les Pensées de Pascal, à quoi elle fait si souvent penser, par un pari. L'homme n'obtient pas encore la certitude, mais la volonté de certitude, ce qui n'est pas la même chose” (HR, p. 99). This is the same distinction made by Vigny in his rejection of Pascal's “certainty” in Stello (i, 639-640). Even the rational refusal, then, has emotional overtones.

12 This has been pointed out by Robert Champigny, “Camus's Fictional Work,” American Society Legion of Honor Magazine, xxviii, No. 2 (Summer 1957), 173-182; and John Cruickshank, “The Art of Allegory in La Peste,” Symposium, xi, No. 1 (Spring 1957), 61-74. We might ask if the evil to which the judge's son succumbs in La Peste is metaphysical or human in origin. Is his situation more similar to that in Vigny's poem “La Fille de Jephté,” where a wrathful God requires the sacrifice of the victor's daughter, or to that of the fourteen-year-old Russian “officer” killed by Captain Renaud in Servitude? The latter's anguished cry, “Etait-ce là un ennemi?” (ii, 662), is echoed almost exactly by Doctor Rieux at the death of the child. He shouts at Father Paneloux, “Ah! celui-là, au moins, était innocent, vous le savez bien!” (P, p. 239).

13 This entire discussion substantiates Simone Fraisse's contention that Camus's distinction between the “blasphemous” revolt of the romantics and his own is not valid. “... la révolte suppose un adversaire. . . . Mais dans un monde vidé du sacré, de quel nom appeler l'ennemi?” “De Lucrèce à Camus ou les contradictions de la révolte,” Esprit, No. 271 (Mar. 1959), pp. 438-439. Both Meursault and Rieux revolt against the vestigial role of the divine in society, and this tendency is most evident in the Clamence of La Chute.

14 Vigny's strong characters included both poets and political figures (the Maréchale d'Ancre and Cinq-Mars) condemned by a hostile world, all “condamnés à mort” as Camus meant it when he said that “le contraire du suicide, précisément, c'est le condamné à mort” (MS, p. 78). The dramatist praised the leading actor in Chatterton because “il a fait comprendre la fierté de Chatterton dans sa lutte perpétuelle” (i, 899).

15 This love of life and light is linked to an attachment to the earth, different from their reaction to the hostility of Nature or “the world.” Guy Michaud, Connaissance de la littérature: L'Œuvre et ses techniques (Paris, 1957), pp. 99-100, points out Vigny's marked predilection for images and comparisons involving minerals and the earth. See for example “Moïse” and “La Dryade,” whose epigraph is taken from Aeschylus: “Honorons d'abord la Terre ...” (i, 104). Michaud adds that in most of Vigny's poems the horizon “limite ... le paysage intérieur du poète comme le rationalisme limite sa pensée.” Camus's Noces is full of indications that we may become a part of “la grandeur minérale” (p. 75) and concludes with this affirmation: “Comment consacrer l'accord de l'amour et de la révolte? La terre!” (p. 92).

16 René Canat, L'Hellénisme des romantiques, 3 vols. (Paris, 1951-55), i, 289. That Vigny's admiration for Homer was apparently heightened by Ingres' “Apothéose d'Homère” (Canat, ii, 241) is borne out by this letter to Auguste Brizeux, quoted by Léon Séché, Alfred de Vigny (Paris, 1913), i, 198: “Eh! quand donc verrai-je Ingres dans son atelier? Je suis fatigué de moi à en mourir. Je pense et repense aux formes pures de ce grand dessinateur.”

17 See Marc Citoleux, Alfred de Vigny: persistences classiques et affinités étrangères (Paris, 1924), pp. 504-507, and Maurice Lebel, “Alfred de Vigny et l'antiquité grecque,” Revue de l'Université Laval, xi, No. 2 (Oct. 1956), 132-143.

18 Germaine Brée, Camus (New Brunswick, N. J., 1959), pp. 101, 82. Cf. Henri Peyre, The Contemporary French Novel (New York, 1955), p. 247: “La Peste is like a classical tragedy ...” This also recalls the Pascalian concept of the prison discussed above, and Quilliot reminds us that the city of Oran in La Peste “ressemblait ... au réfectoire de la prison de Saint-Lazare pendant la Terreur, tel que Vigny nous l'a décrit dans Stello” (p. 166).

19 That the poet possessed this equilibrium was also a contemporary opinion. Brizeux wrote in Mercure de France au XIXe siècle, xxv (1829) : “Bien que ... [M. de Vigny] ait mis quelques prétensions à cette mélancolie rêveuse . . . qui nous est venue du Nord, la trempe tout expansive de son esprit donnait un continuel démenti à cette affectation, dont au surplus la mode en changeant a déjà fait justice. M. de Vigny est un homme du Midi; nous dirons plus, il est poète antique et le fond comme le style de ses ouvrages, tout révèle en lui . . . cette double origine” (p. 181). Again, he found in Vigny “tout ce qui se révélerait dans une statue de Phidias inondée de la lumière de l'Attique” (p. 309). Sainte-Beuve, Portraits contemporains (Paris, 1882), ii, 65, discussing Vigny's heroines, spoke of “les dédales d'ivoire que le père de Stello aime à construire et où il dépose ses blanches figures.”

20 Cf. Théophile Gautier: “Je suis un homme des temps homériques ... Le Christ n'est pas venu pour moi, je suis aussi païen qu'Alcibiade et Phidias. ... Je trouve la terre aussi belle que le ciel; la spiritualité n'est pas mon fait ... Je conçois parfaitement le fol enthousiasme des Grecs pour la beauté” (Canat, iii, 120). Although it reflects the bravado of Satanic revolt, this declaration seems to voice Camus's attitude rather than Vigny's. Paganism and Greek enthusiasm for beauty were not in Camus, however, a reaction against something else, but native to his soul. Moreover, Camus explicitly accepted the sacred, if not the participation in it. Charles Moeller, “Une œuvre qui exalte la pauvreté et la lumière,” La Table ronde, No. 146 (Feb. 1960), p. 112, quotes Camus: “Je n'ai que respect et vénération devant la personne du Christ et devant son histoire: je ne crois pas à sa résurrexion.” Once again he expressed Vigny's attempt at balance rather than allegiance to any absolute.

21 Vigny also admired the perfectionist in Racine, who left only “ces belles tragédies et pas une platitude de circonstance ...” (ii, 1222).

22 See Henri Potez, “Chamfort et Alfred de Vigny,” Mercure de France, lxxvii (16 Jan. 1909), 264-270.

23 For a recent evaluation of Vigny's creative process, see J. Parmentier, “La création poétique chez Alfred de Vigny d'après le ‘Journal d'un poète’,” Les Lettres romanes, xii, No. 2 (1 May 1958), 161-181, and No. 3 (1 Aug. 1958), 269-285.

24 See Albert J. George, The Development of French Romanticism (Syracuse, 1955), who documents Vigny's sense of the poet's separation from the general reading public, more receptive to prose.