Paris and Albert Camus

Dec 17th, 2010 by apartmentblogger

Paris, Ville Lumière and indisputable city of art, was home for some of the most influential artists of the postwar period, including the rebellious Albert Camus, author of international fame and known for his firm political stance. The Café de Flores, in particular, was a meeting point and discussion center for many intellectuals during the Second World War, who gathered in this small bar at the corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue St. Benoit, in the sixth arrondissement to share their ideas and knowledge.

paris albert camus
Camus loved to spend his time with his friend Jean-Paul Sartre (author of the famous novel “Nausea”, among others) and while both are considered literary philosophers associated with existentialism, the pair always found it curious that their names were associated. In fact, although he is known as the existentialist philosopher, Camus always rejected this label. In an interview in 1945 he rejected any ideological association, stating “No, I’m not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised when we see our names together. ” Camus’ philosophy can be described more aptly as “Absurdism”, which refers to the conflict between the human tendency and desire to find meaning in life, and our apparent inability to find it.

Albert Camus was born on November 7, 1913 in Algeria. He was a leftist activist, and was active in the field of human rights from 1950. In 1952, he left his job at UNESCO when Spain was admitted as a member of the United Nations under the dictatorship of General Franco. It was in 1957 that Albert Camus received the Nobel Prize for Literature “for his important literary production, which illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.” The prize was not awarded for his novel “La Chute (The Fall), but for his writings on capital punishment in the essay” Réflexions sur la Guillotine “(Reflections on the Guillotine).

Camus was the first African writer to receive the Nobel Prize, and the second youngest after Rudyard Kipling. Camus was one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, thanks to his famous novel “L’Etranger” (The Stranger) which describes the “malaise” (discomfort) felt by Meursault, an apparently”normal” man , but whose attitudes generate continuous amazement and indignation at his environment. Camus wants to show is the relative depth of the concept of “normality” and also the absurdity of certain social customs and “common sense.” In this novel, the author discusses, first, the codes of contemporary society as a whole and, secondly, the practice of death by guillotine, still common in France at the time.

Camus died at the age of 46 years, the January 4, 1960, in a car accident near the town of Villeblevin. He traveled with his publisher Gallimard, who also died in the accident, and was found with an unused train ticket in his pocket, a sad final proof of the absurdity of life and death.

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