acknowledgetheabsurd

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

My dear love, I can see that the sun, the real sun, has not yet returned to Cabris. Ah! How he makes himself wait! When I receive one of your letters like the most recent one, I realize how helpless I am when I am away from you. What can I do to bring you life, joy, a certain peace, a taste of the good times? What can I do, if not run towards you, abandon everything, turn everything upside down, and try, in your arms to make you smile like you know how do when your heart is delighted? You know? 

I really need to lecture myself to stay there, wise, and wait. Ah, my darling, shake yourself up. I understand that sometimes, and even often, not to say always, you feel your heart in a vice. I know that he is good, that it is so and that you must have the courage to look well, to know well the vice and not to forget it; but I am very much afraid that there is a kind of lucidity that delights in fixation and thus ends up not being clear-sighted. I am expressing myself badly, but I hope you can hear me. Are you not forgetting the real life? Or, to say it better, an essential part of your life and of yourself? 

Ah! I’m worried. At first, I was wondering if this state where you found yourself was no more conducive than another creation, but I see that's not the case and this does not surprise me. That's why I didn't tell you about it earlier. What to do? Ah! Misery. I try to console myself by telling myself that your return to Paris will perhaps fix all this a little, but if I think about it, I don't see how or why you would change for the better in a city that sucks the life forces out of your body and heart. Finally, I'll be there, close to you and maybe I'll be able to give you back the taste you've lost; but I doubt it. 

Today I rehearsed in the morning, and the rest of the day I spent, alone, at home reading, writing, tinkering, daydreaming. This made me feel a bit blue towards the evening that I hastened to pour out on stage through Dora. But I came back tired and if it wasn't for my discomfort to go to bed without you, I would have fallen asleep right away. Then... I don't know what to tell you. From your letters, I can't imagine your state and put you back together and I have the awful impression that I don't know who I'm talking to. 

Ah! quickly the end of March! Quickly your eyes, your arms, your hands, your warmth! I am beginning to hate paper and pens. Darling, my love, love me, do not leave me, do not go away. It is awful. I've been lonely for two or three days. Come back to me. Warm me up. Keep me against you until you come back. Ah, what torture. I love you. I wait for you. I beg you, love me.

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Correspondance, March 2, 1950 [#227]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

I knew a man who gave a twenty years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life, and who one evening recognized that he had never loved her. He had been bored, that's all, bored like the most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen – and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen, even loveless slavery, even war or death. Hurray then for funerals!

Albert Camus ☆– The Fall

[photo: Albert Camus with his wife Francine Faure; Uppsala | January 1958]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Quickly the end of March! Quickly your eyes, your arms, your hands, your warmth! I am beginning to hate paper and pens. Darling, my love, love me, do not leave me, do not go away. It is awful. I've been lonely for two or three days. Come back to me. Warm me up. Keep me against you until you come back. Ah, what torture. I love you. I wait for you. I beg you, love me.

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Correspondance, March 2, 1950 [#227]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Rehearsal at the Angers festival. Albert Camus sitting in front of the stage. 1953.

Photo by Emile Muller

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

When I receive one of your letters like the most recent one, I realize how helpless I am when I am away from you. What can I do to bring you life, joy, a certain peace, a taste of the good times? What can I do, if not run towards you, abandon everything, turn everything upside down, and try, in your arms to make you smile like you know how do when your heart is delighted?

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Correspondance, March 2, 1950 [#227]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

“A man who has become conscious of the absurd is forever bound to it”

Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

No letter from you, my darling. It's very hard. But all I wish is that this silence does not mean that you are down. For the rest, I will wait, I'll wait as long as it takes. The day has been beautiful and sweet, the evening is falling now, I long for your tenderness, I long for one of those hours when life marks a truce. I feel a more relaxed heart today by the way. Yes, you are right, it's the evenings in Ermenonville that we have to think about. And I think about it, I always think about it to find the courage I need until the end of the month. 

Today, Vivet*, one of my Combat foals, came to lunch. You know him, we saw him at Ermenonville. He's a nice guy that I like. He told me stories about Combat**, the change of ownership, the ugly kitchen, etc. This is the end of a beautiful story. Because it was a beautiful story. And I was still attached to that newspaper - one of the few clean things I had been able to create. On the other hand, it's better that the liquidation is complete. Other than that, we laughed together, and I felt comforted by those few moments with a normal man. I usually benefit from the company of my sister-in-law. It is the kind that if, to better welcome her, one serves filet at the table, she only says: "At home, we only eat pot-au-feu." You can see it from here. But I smile imperturbably, for the sake of my good man of a brother. 

You know, I firmly hope to be canonized one day. I reek of virtue. My darling, my sweet love, what's become of you? Where are you? Are you not tired of my letters, of this man so distant and so disappointing. Do you still love me? Oh, I want so much to hear you say it. But it will come. And until then I expect nothing but the certainty that your heart breathes and lives. Take good care of yourself, at least. Think about the physical, about your health. For the moment, that's the most important. 

I count the days now, one by one, the last one will have your face. I worked badly today (Vivet). But last night, waking up, ideas came to me, which I wrote down and which gave a sharper form to what I want to do. I went back to sleep, thinking of you. Write, my dear heart, my beautiful love, if you can. Tell me the details, but also your heart. Don't forget the one who loves you and who is waiting for you, impatiently. Ah! I sometimes stomp with rage at the slowness of time. But here you are, aren't you? I feel you against me and the long exile is over. The kisses rain down on your dear face. See you tomorrow, my dearest love. I love you.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, March 2, 1950 [#226]

* Jean-Pierre Vivet (1920-1998), a former collaborator of Combat, who later led a career as a journalist and editor.

** After the departure of Pascal Pia, Albert Camus left Combat management himself on June 3, 1948, noting the commercial failure of the newspaper and the debates it aroused around its political position.

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

"[...] you are the only being in the world to whom I can turn to calm myself."

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus ☆– Correspondance; August 16th 1949 [#83]

[quote credit: @acknowledgetheabsurd ]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Don't forget the one who loves you and who is waiting for you, impatiently. Ah! I sometimes stomp with rage at the slowness of time. But here you are, aren't you? I feel you against me and the long exile is over. The kisses rain down on your dear face. See you tomorrow, my dearest love. I love you.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, March 2, 1950 [#226]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

"The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays," by Albert Camus, Vintage Books/Random House, 1955

Albert Camus, a French-Algierian philosopher, originally wrote The Myth of Sisyphus in 1945, a short treatise on the existential topic of the absurdity of the universe and reality. Camus discusses absurdity in reasoning, the absurd man, the absurd creation, and how the Greek myth of Sisyphus can be applied to our lives today.

Camus' other essays, Summer in Algiers, the Minotaur/the Stop in Oran, Helen's Exile, Return to Tipasa, and the Artist and His Time are autobiographical and philosophical based on his experiences and perceptions of life in Algiers and France. Camus' writing is in the same league as the prose of William S. Borroughs and Aldous Huxley. This compilation is an easy read at 151 pages.

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

My darling, my sweet love, what's become of you? Where are you? Are you not tired of my letters, of this man so distant and so disappointing. Do you still love me? Oh, I want so much to hear you say it. But it will come. And until then I expect nothing but the certainty that your heart breathes and lives.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, March 2, 1950 [#226]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

“Death gives its shape to love as it does to life — transforming it into fate. The one you love died while you loved her and now it is a love fixed forever — which, without such an end, would have fallen to pieces. What would the world be without death — a succession of forms evaporating and returning, an anguished flight, an unfinishable world. But fortunately here is death, the stable one.”

— Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1942-1951

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

You know, I firmly hope to be canonized one day. I reek of virtue.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, March 2, 1950 [#226]  

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

i was reading but it gave the bf a photographic idea

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

No letter from you, my darling. It's very hard. But all I wish is that this silence does not mean that you are down. For the rest, I will wait, I'll wait as long as it takes.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, March 2, 1950 [#226]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

“December. This heart full of tears and of night.”

-Albert Camus, Notebooks

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

[Today] we went down to walk a little in the forest. Ah! the right time. It was a dry cold. The air was transparent. Behind the green and golden trees, the red and a little silly globe of a good sun. Dom Juan and Feli held me, tightly between them and I was warm in heart. You were everywhere. I had not left Paris since our little walks, and in the middle of that forest path you came back fully alive in me, mobile, present, so terribly present that I was suddenly seized with an unbearable impatience at the impossibility of not being able to curl up in your arms immediately. Ah, my darling, what happiness to tell me that soon you will be here, and that I will caress your forehead, your lips, your nose! Is it possible!

At 7:15 a.m. I was at the theater and I received a young woman who came to ask me to put her in touch with you. She is a member of a company from Clermont-Ferrand, whose young dramatic director I know and hold in high regard Françoise Adam. They would like to mount The Misunderstanding for two performances, they have rehearsed it and they already have the sets. Only, it seems that you have refused them your agreement. Why did you do this? Do you really think it would be wrong to let them play it? I don't want to influence you, but they look so nice and so serious. Poor things! They sent me a huge box of snails made of chocolate. God knows what it cost them! And then, Françoise has a lot of talent! Finally, do as you wish, but if your heart is softened, if you smile at me with your beautiful, clear smile, tell me to whom I should address them and how, so that they may have the joy they are waiting for. But I don't want to influence you. 

Ah, but let's move on to your letter of Monday which I received this morning. I don't know if "my efforts to write to you are sometimes felt", but it can't be said that you are brilliant either. It's normal. Words have no meaning now. We've reached the point where we should be holding each other, without saying anything. Be patient! It will come. Let's wait a little longer with patience. From now on, you will have a little more peace around you. Finally, it will be rest, because lately it was no longer "the Spaniard reigning over his fallen house", but Madame Récamier, receiving in her living room. With the help of the sun, I hope that the taste and ease of work will return, and then everything will be saved. Breathe in Nietzsche and Delacroix and from time to time, take a glance at War and Peace. 

As for my mail, don't think that I had fun writing more than two hundred and fifty letters. I had printed cards made to which I added a few words of my own. I only wrote at length to those with whom I could not do otherwise. Marcel H[errand] called me to cheer me up. He invited me to come to his house in Montfort, specifying that he spent his nights there thinking about the vanity of life and the approach of death, and announcing to me the inevitable war for next year. I told him that I would go to see him in April, I would like to avoid suicide. My love, my life, my soul, my heart, the man of my loins, my heaven, my dearest angel, I love you tonight with the strength of life and love of twenty years and with all the hope in the world. Don't leave me. Don't go away. Don't freeze yourself. Don't harden yourself. I'm waiting for you. I'm waiting for you with my whole life on my lips.

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Correspondance, March 1, 1950 [#225]