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- By Gamini Akmeemana
Having been introduced to French literature early on because of my French language studies, I began reading French authors avidly. Among modern works, The Plague by Albert Camus gripped me like none other, and has remained a firm favourite to this day, remaining eminently readable.
The photogenic Albert Camus was easier to like as a person than any of his contemporaries. Almost every photograph of Camus I’d seen showed him with a cigarette on his lips, adding a cinematic touch to his good looks. You knew, too, that he had once been goalkeeper to the French football team. Then there was the fact that he had died relatively young in a car accident, after winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957.
That was a different image from the familiar gallery, from Dickens, Tolstoi and Balzac to Lawrence and Sartre, people whom you didn’t associate with football. Nor were they ever painted or photographed while smoking (unless it was a pipe, which is again symbol of high society). Therefore, one could say that I was already heavily biased towards Camus when I started reading him.
But I know I’d find him equally readable if the image showed a man who looked stern, wizened, stooping and peering at the world through thick lenses. But then, I doubt if someone fitting that image could have written books such as The Plague and The Stranger, because they exude a physical, almost animal vitality which is characteristic of the author.
Camus’ name is associated with French existentialism. Danish Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1978) was the founder of existentialism, while German Philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) became a major exponent. The principal exponents of this school of thought (in fiction writing) were Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.
As an adolescent reading their works, I found the idea to be alien, because I had developed within a very different cultural mould steeped in tradition. But the dominant and related idea of absurdism, that people looking for meaning in life could end up not finding anything (a very nihilistic idea) struck a chord in me even then.
Today, having seen a lot more of life and having personally witnessed political terror (both by the state and its enemies), having experienced mayhem and personal loss along with all the absurdities and vagaries of life in the third world, and having freed myself from the shackles of culture, tradition and political belief, I can now relate more wholeheartedly to these once alien ideas. Life does look absurd, and you don’t kid yourself any more that people have control over their lives.
" Today, having seen a lot more of life and having personally witnessed political terror (both by the state and its enemies), having experienced mayhem and personal loss along with all the absurdities and vagaries of life in the third world, and having freed myself from the shackles of culture, tradition and political belief, I can now relate more wholeheartedly to these once alien ideas " |