acknowledgetheabsurd

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

If I had been able, at your feet, calm and free, to make me little by little an artist - yes, I believe that I would have quickly reached what I aspire to in the suffering of my heart, and which often fills it in broad daylight with a mute despair. To be deprived of the joy that we could give ourselves - this justifies well all the tears we have cried for years, but what's revolting is to tell ourselves that we risk perishing with the best in us because one is missing the other. And you see it is precisely that which sometimes makes me so silent, because I have to flee from such thoughts. 

I would like to become insensitive and forget everything, but your illness and your letter have made me clearly understand that it is you who is always suffering, always, while I, the child that I am, only know how to cry about it! Tell me what I must do: should we keep silent about what is in our hearts or tell each other? I've always played the coward, out of respect for you. I've always pretended that I could live with anything, as if I were really made to be the plaything of men and circumstances, as if I did not have a firm heart within me which, faithful and free in its right, beats for that which is highest, you, my beloved! 

Often I have deprived myself, I have denied my dearest love and even my thoughts for you, simply to live this destiny for you, as gently as possible - and you, you struggled to have peace, you opposed a heroic strength against suffering, keeping silent about what could not be changed, hidden, buried in you, the eternal choice of your heart, and that's why sometimes everything becomes darkness in our eyes and we no longer know who we are or what belongs to us, we hardly recognize ourselves anymore. This eternal struggle, these contradictions of your inner being must slowly end you if no god comes to soften them - then all that remains for me is to perish from your fate and of mine, or to consider nothing but you and to seek with you a way that will put an end to our fight...

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, February 1950? [#222]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Albert Camus

[x]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Often I have deprived myself, I have denied my dearest love and even my thoughts for you, simply to live this destiny for you, as gently as possible - and you, you struggled to have peace, you opposed a heroic strength against suffering, keeping silent about what could not be changed, hidden, buried in you, the eternal choice of your heart, and that's why sometimes everything becomes darkness in our eyes and we no longer know who we are or what belongs to us, we hardly recognize ourselves anymore. This eternal struggle, these contradictions of your inner being must slowly end you if no god comes to soften them - then all that remains for me is to perish from your fate and of mine, or to consider nothing but you and to seek with you a way that will put an end to our fight...

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, February 1950? [#222]  

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Maria Casarès ~•~ November 21st 1922 – November 22nd 1996

"You have never been heavy to carry, it's life without you that would be an exhausting burden. You are my light, my flame, burning or sweet, of course, but my rest in this world."

Albert Camus

[quote credit @acknowledgetheabsurd ]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

hey!

tumblr

who kissed my book?

I got it for very cheap and second hand so I expected it to be dirty or ripped.. but not this

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Should we keep silent about what is in our hearts or tell each other? I've always played the coward, out of respect for you. I've always pretended that I could live with anything, as if I were really made to be the plaything of men and circumstances, as if I did not have a firm heart within me which, faithful and free in its right, beats for that which is highest, you, my beloved!

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, February 1950? [#222]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

“Wait for me as I wait for you. Do not withdraw unless you cannot do otherwise. Live, be bright and curious, seek what is beautiful, read what you like, and when the break comes, turn to me, who will always be turned to you."

— Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, [July 1], 1949 [#66]

“Espérame como yo te espero. No te repliegues salvo si no te queda más remedio. Vive, sé deslumbradora y curiosa, busca lo hermoso, lee lo que te guste y, cuando llegue la pausa, vuélvete hacia mí, que estaré siempre vuelto hacia ti”.

Albert Camus a María Casares, 1º de julio de 1949.

Correspondencia

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

girls dont want teenage boys girls want french philosopher and author Albert Camus

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

To be deprived of the joy that we could give ourselves - this justifies well all the tears we have cried for years, but what's revolting is to tell ourselves that we risk perishing with the best in us because one is missing the other. And you see it is precisely that which sometimes makes me so silent, because I have to flee from such thoughts.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, February 1950? [#222] 

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Things are getting worse and worse here and the atmosphere is less and less breathable. That's why I sometimes hesitate and recoil from the overwhelming fatigue that a silent dinner represents, some evenings. This is also why I wait for other words than those of midday, when I finally come near you. Hearing you talk like this makes me despair, closes my mouth, makes me doubt everything, of your heart and of our love. Then begins the absurd hours, empty of everything, where I no longer feel capable of any control, nor of any will. I only have an insane desire to see you without delay while at the same time I hate you sometimes. That's how I am right now and the only choice that would save me would be to find you and your love again. So I come close to you, once again, more desperate than usual, maybe, today. Don't push me away, I want to live in my heart, don't doubt my love. Measure it on the contrary to all that it crosses, to the interminable sorrow where it puts me. Yes, I love you and I wish you knew how nothing could sadden you for a single second during your whole life.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, February 1950? [#221] 

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Albert Camus book recs and the order to read them in please???

Here's the rough written order of the majority of his work. As far as personal recs, I love his Personal Writings, A Happy Death, and The First Man but everything he's written is worth reading at some point :)

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

This morning, the day dawned on a landscape full of snow. It had fallen during the whole night. But the sun rose and everything melted quickly. I spent the morning in bed, at first inactive and in total disarray, then working with Nietzsche, which lifted me up a bit. He is the only man whose writings have exerted, in the past, an influence on me. And then I had detached from him. At the moment, he's just right. He is learning to love what is, to make himself a support of everything, and of pain first of all. All of this in a marvelous light which helps to take its distance. No creator, it seems to me, can do without. He is truly a force. "What makes the great style, he says: "to feel master of one's happiness as well as of one's misfortune."* 

At noon I got your letter, I try to "reconstruct" you with these quick and nervous notes. But one should not think about it and besides it doesn't matter, the return is near. You ask me to tell you, but it's not easy either. There is nothing to say except that I wear out the days, that my heart is tight and that I'm trying to overcome this kind of asphyxia that I've been sinking in for two months. All this is inhuman and yet it is necessary, indeed, to rely on this hard, tense world, torn... so we have to grit our teeth and wait. At 4 o'clock I went to Cannes to pick up my sister-in-law whom I brought back here with a heartache. So she went to bed. She and my brother live in the hotel which preserves the peace of the house. And I went up to my room to write to you. 

I am enjoying this room very much, which is literally in the sky. The Moors and the Esterel Mountains stretch to the horizon, and I still have a respite until the terrible hour, when the night falls, icy, and the desire to flee to some brightly lit and noisy place, to drink, to argue, to make something burst... Ah my dear love, to live at last... You will help me and I will help you. You will help me to accomplish all that I have in me, to fructify the thousand contradictory forces that I feel. I will help you to feel alive, to find the friendship of things, your strength, your coquetry, your taste to overcome. Finally being fulfilled! instead of these perpetual mutilations... 

The evening falls. The bad hour arrives. I'm going to close the blinds, turn on the light, read, force myself to work. The day will pass and tomorrow we will enter into March. March at last! It has been sixty interminable days since I lost the taste of a certain life. And you, you too, and finally, confronted with the horror... My darling love, how could I not sometimes feel my heart in a vice! I love you, my darling child, my little girl, my brave one. And I kiss you madly without being able to detach myself from you.

*Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (1901).

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, February 28, 1950 [#220]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Above: my two copies of Albert Camus's L'Étranger. Top left: The Outsider, published by The Folio Society. Top right: The Stranger, published by Vintage Books. Not pictured: the deary missed tattered blue and yellow Vintage International copy that I read and reread in high school and had to return to the library of Brent International School, Manila. Below: Looking for The Stranger by Alice Kaplan, published by The University of Chicago Press, ordered weeks ago and just arrived in my mailbox. Kaplan traces the history of The Stranger to provide a better picture of the novel and how Camus came to write and publish it while he was only in his twenties.

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

It has been sixty interminable days since I lost the taste of a certain life. And you, you too, and finally, confronted with the horror... My darling love, how could I not sometimes feel my heart in a vice! I love you, my darling child, my little girl, my brave one. And I kiss you madly without being able to detach myself from you.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, February 28, 1950 [#220]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

"For violence and hatred dry up the heart itself; the long fight for justice exhausts the love that nevertheless gave birth to it....

In the middle of winter, I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer."

What a beautiful little piece. I had always wondered where that second quote originated.