18/1/2007 - Book review - 'Camus at Combat'

When the Allied forces invaded North Africa in 1942, the Germans occupied the southern 'free zone' in France. This meant that Albert Camus was cut off from his wife and mother in Algeria, unable to return home. The publication of his first novel The Stranger and the long essay The myth of Sysiphus had granted him fame in literary circles. At the time he was working on what was to become his next big novel, The Pest, which would appear after the war in 1946. In Paris he started working as a proof reader for his publisher Gallimard, where he met Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

Camus often felt lonely and the sombre weather in occupied France made him miss Algeria even more. He found a solution for his loneliness by joining the Resistance movement Combat, which had been founded in 1941. Over the years, Camus' role in the resistance movement has grown into a myth as he only engaged in some illegal activities. This was partly due to the leaders of Combat themselves. They acknowledged the importance of the writer Camus and it was in this role that he would prove most valuable for Combat after they started publishing the underground newspaper.

The first article by Camus appeared in March 1944, even though he didn't sign the article with his own name for security reasons. However, most scholars attribute the article Against total war, Total resistance to Camus. In this article Camus referred to one of the issues that would soon become part of his recurrent themes: The fact that war affected us all. 'For even is there are those who would prefer to remain in the comfortable position of judges, that is not possible. You cannot say, "This doesn't concern me." Because it does concern you.'

To underline this idea, Camus wrote the article For three Hours they shot Frenchmen for the May issue of Combat. On April 1, 1944, an attack was launched on a railway line, leading to the derailment of two cars of a German troop train. Even though there were no casualties, the Germans killed eighty-six men from the nearby village of Ascq. 'Eighty-six men just like you, the readers of this newspaper, passed before the German guns. Eighty-six men: enough to fill three or four rooms the size of the room you're sitting in. Eighty-six faces, drawn or defiant, eighty-six faces overwhelmed by horror or by hatred.'

This early piece is one of the strongest, most emphatic articles Camus wrote for Combat. In his foreword David Carroll rightfully states that more than for their historical or literary value, the importance of these articles is above all a political one. The four years that span these articles see the optimistic tone in the last months of the war and in the first post-war articles change dramatically into a more bitter and resigned tone in the years that would follow. The naive idea that the horror of the occupation and especially the fate of so many of its victims, including many members of the resistance, might create an atmosphere of unity in which all parties would combine their forces proved to be an illusion. That may seem like an obvious statement in our times, it was nothing less than a bitter deception in the enthusiasm that permeated the first post-war months. Next to the three above mentioned values, I would like to add one more dimension this publication shows more than anything else: that of the disillusioned mind. After a few months Camus started to realise that the unity he longed and hoped for would not be achieved. Post-war France was united in its disgust for the occupiers and those collaborating with the enemy but the pre-war divisions would begin to show soon enough. Camus shifted his attention completely to what he considered his main task: to defend justice and to make sure that France would not completely return to the pre-war situation. He often mentions the word 'revolution', but to him this meant a society based on social-democratic values, with equality for everyone. 'We shall therefore define "justice" as a social state in which each individual is granted every opportunity at the outset and in which the majority of the country's population is not kept in a shameful condition by a privileged minority.'

These aims in themselves were difficult enough. France had to deal with some very strong and divisive issues. How to deal with the traitors? When and how to impose the death penalty, if it could be imposed at all? Camus' opposition to the death penalty would grow over the years. 'It is with this dreadful precedent still fresh in our minds that we must take a position. Will we approve of this sentence or won't we? That is the heart of the issue, and it is a terribly difficult one.' Once and for all Camus wanted to make clear that France owed it to itself to exert full justice, even and maybe especially if that involved its harshest collaborators. The fact that Camus signed a petition against the death penalty for collaborationist writer Robert Brasillach is illustrative enough. It didn't save Brasillach from execution.

The risk of turning into the embodiment of evil that would rival the crimes of the occupiers might seem far away, the new democracy would have to make sure that it would do anything possible to avoid excesses. 'The cowardly crimes of our adversaries do not excuse our becoming cowardly and criminal in turn.' This was extra hard considering the embarrassing and painful Vichy-legacy. The South of France was the domain of the so-called 'free zone' lead by General Pétain, a World War I veteran who turned into a collaborator when he became the head of the Vichy government in 1940. The Pétain government remained officially in power after the Germans occupied the free zone in 1942, but of course the new situation diminished their authority dramatically.

Camus' ideas definitely resonate in discussions on actual current affairs. In many of the articles that have been brought together in this volume, we read the stance that Camus would elaborate in his long essay The Rebel, to be published in 1951, in which Camus shows himself a strong advocate against the killing of innocent civilians, no matter what the final political aim might be. 'For terror can be legitimised only if one adopts the principle that the end justifies the means. And this principle can be embraced only if the efficacy of an action is taken to be an absolute end, as in nihilist ideologies (...) or philosophies that take history as an absolute.' As this statement implied a strong opposition to Stalin's gulags, it would result in Camus' definitive break with Sartre, who saw in Camus a traitor of the world revolution. Simone de Beauvoir would show herself even harsher in her judgement.

As stated above, these articles may at times seem flawed by the initial naiveté that was so overwhelming right after the liberation, and with the legacy of the horror of World War II and four years of occupation. But at the same time the articles are most interesting for the new light they shine on Camus' thoughts and work. It goes too far to mention every aspect, but it may suffice to quote the following remark, which is another echo of the actual situation: 'The Western nations must stop looking upon the Middle East as a closed preserve over which ownership is to be asserted. (...) Clearly the conflicts in the Middle East would not have turned this bitter is not for the presence of rich oil fields.'

The publication of Camus at Combat seems to be part of a renewed interest in his works. The exemplary translation by Arthur Goldhammer offers very interesting reading, for all the above mentioned reasons. It is a political and historical document, it shows the seeds of Camus' ideas about justice and judgement that would come to full bloom in The Rebel and in his last famous short novel The Fall (1957). At his best moments Camus shows why he was the compelling author that would grow to gain literary world fame.

KB

18/1/2007 - Thanks KC

19/1/2007 - Ditto