casarescamuscorrespondence

[casarescamuscorrespondence]

You know me well enough to imagine what you don’t know.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Les Correspondances, Letter #11

[casarescamuscorrespondence]

Lettre #10

10 - Albert Camus to Maria Casarès

Sunday 19 july 1944

My darling,

Pierre [Gallimard] who will give you this note come back thursday at Verdelot by a mean not too tiring which he will explain to you. I think that if you are still able to come in the middle of the week, it is the best occasion. I am writing to you from somewhere else, but I don’t need to tell you that I will wait for you thursday. For you return, if it is necessary, the same mean can take you back to Paris in half a day. See you thursday. I wait for you and kiss you.

AC

[casarescamuscorrespondence]

Lettre #9

9 - ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARES

Friday evening, 11 pm [7 july 1944]

Tonight I want to come to you because my heart is heavy and everything seems so hard to live. I worked a little this morning, not at all in the afternoon. It’s like I forgot my energy and what I have to do. There are like this some hours, some days, some weeks where it seems like everything dies between your hands. You know this too. Me, it’s been a long time since I know that those hours where I want to turn away from everything are the most dangerous - those where come to me the wish to flee and to live far away from everything that could help me. It is because I know of this that I come to you. If you were there everything would be easier. But tonight I have the certainty that you will not come. I have a sort of sentiment that I lost everything for a while. If you walked away from me, it would be total night. Meanwhile, I don’t have any hope of seeing you before a long time.

This evening I wonder about what you’re doing, where you are and what you imagine. I would like to have the certainty of your thought and of your love. I have it sometimes. But which love can we always be sure of. A move and everything can self-destruct, at least for a while. After all, it suffices to be a being that smiles to you and pleases you and, for a week at least, there is no more love in that heart to which I am so jealous of. What can be done expect admit and understand and wait. And who am I to require so much of a being. But it is maybe because I know all the weaknesses even a strong heart can have that I have so much apprehension in front of the absence and in front of this stupid separation where it is needed to feed a carnal love with shadows and souvenirs.

Everybody has gone to bed. I stay up with you but I feel my soul to be dry like all the deserts. Oh ! My darling, when will come back the gushing and the scream !

I feel so clumsy, so awkward, with this sort of unused love which stays on my chest and which oppresses me without giving me any joy. I feel like I’m no good. I should be inhabited by what I’m writing, full of this novel and of those characters where I entered again. But I look at them from outside, I work absentmindedly, with my intellect, and not an instant with this passion and this violence that I always brought to what I love.

I stop all of this suddenly. I notice that this is a letter of lamentations. And you and me have other things to do than to lament. When we feel our heart be dry, it is better to keep our mouths shut. You are the only being today to whom I want to write those sort of things. But it is not a reason. It is not a bad thing either. To this day you have loved the best in me. Maybe this is not love still. And maybe you will only truly love me only when you will love me with my weaknesses and my faults. But when and in how long ? It is a beautiful and terrible thing to have to love one another in danger, incertitude, in the middle of a scrambling world and in a world where the life of a man weighs so little. I won’t have any peace as long as your face will be parted away from me; If you don’t come, I will wait, but I will wait in distress and with dryness in the heart.

Good night, black and white. Do your best to stay close to me and forget so much requirement and bad mood. Life isn’t easy for me right now. I have reasons to no be joyful. But if your god exists, he knows I will give everything that I am and everything that I own to have your hand on my face again. I didn’t cease loving you and waiting for you -even in the middle of the desert. Don’t forget me.

Michel.

Saturday 9 hours [8 july 1944]

I read again this morning this letter and I hesitate to send it to you. But after all I suppose that it resembles me. We are forced to be who we are. This morning I don’t feel better or worse. We are leaving at the moment for a walk for a day and I have to decide to send it to you now if I want it to be with you monday.

It is dark, the sky is overcast. See you soon, small victory. Think, think a lot about me and love me as strongly and as fiercely as I do.

M.

[casarescamuscorrespondence]

Letter #8

8 - ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARES

Thursday 4 pm in the afternoon [6 july 1944]

Ma petite Maria,

I just received you letter from monday-tuesday. It has come at the right time. Since forty-eight hours, it was the slump. I was feeling alone, far from those who yet surrounded me, a bit like a bad dog. I live withdraw in my bedroom under the pretext of work, actually working only sometimes, with a sort of rage, the rest of the time walking back and forth and smoking the cigarettes I have left. No, it is going well at all. Though this land is beautiful and peaceful. But my heart doesn’t have its peace anymore, if it ever had one.

I am far away from everything, from all of my man’s duties, from those of my job - deprived of the one I love. This is what unsaddled me. I was waiting your arrival. But apparently it’s for next week. So… ! Oh ! My darling, don’t believe I do not understand you. Everything is more difficult for you and now, I know you will do everything in your power. What I earned during those hard days we just spent together is my trust in you. I often doubted it, not confident that I was about this love that could mislead itself. Since then, I don’t know what happened, but there was a flash, something that ran between the two of us, a look maybe, and now I feel this thing, hard as the soul, that links us and ties us. But I spent too hard months, too tense, to not be used nervously. And I bear with difficulty what I would have ordinarly bear with calm. Anyway, this will pass. I am happy about the news you give me. Tell to Jean and to Marcel that I think about them and that they have my affectionate thought.

I am happy to know you brown and golden. Make yourself pretty, smile, don’t let yourself carried away. I want you to be content. You have never been more beautiful than that evening you told me you were happy (you remember it, my friend). I love you in many ways, but especially like this - with the face of happiness and this sparkle of life that always shake me. I am not made to love in the dream, but at least I can recognize life where it is -and I believe I recognize it that first day where in the costume of Deirdre you were talking, above my head, to any impossible lover.

Don’t think too much of my groans. I am unhappy that I have to wait for you another week. But it is no what matters -what matters… but I will say it too badly again. Let’s wait for a bit.

The sky is covered and it rains. I don’t hate it but I often think about the light which I can’t get enough of. It is in Provence that we will need to go to together, while waiting the other countries we hold dear in our hearts.

Goodbye, Maria -marvellous- living, I feel like I could thread so many adjectives like those. I think about you constantly and I love you with my whole heart. Come quick, don’t leave me alone too long with my thoughts. I need your living presence and your body that soften me so often.You see, I stretch my hands towards you ; come in front of me, as fast as it is possible.

I kiss you with all my strength.

Michel*

*Reminder that Albert Camus now signs his letter with this name.

[casarescamuscorrespondence]

Hi everyone !

Sorry for the unprompted hiatus. My routine has been thrown off rythm by an unstable situation, which makes it difficult for me to focus on the translations.

I will come back to it as soon as I can ; I can promise that I will finish this project even if I’ll need years.

Thank you all for your patience,

Admin.

[casarescamuscorrespondence]

7 - ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARES

Tuesday 4 pm [4 july 1944]

My darling,

I write in the middle of the garden, surrounded by the Gallimard’s little troop who is reading, sleeping, or baking in the sun. We are all in shorts and light shirts, it is hot as ink and the roses cower in the sun.

They wrote you yesterday, I suppose they have told you their trip and the essential of our installation here -we live a quiet little life, so quiet that I who comes from the noises and the furry I struggle to find my equilibrium. All of yesterday, I was tensed and unhappy, incapable of a move or a gentle word. So I worked, a lot and badly, refusing to go out. I was thinking of you with sadness, without the joy that I always find close to you. Only once, at 6 pm in the evening, did I make some steps in the garden (they had left to bath). The air was sweet, with a gentle wind, the church’s clock rang its six strikes. It is an hour I always loved and I loved it yesterday with you.

Your letter just came in, I don’t have words to thank you. And I finally have a true hope to see you come. I suppose you're going to abandon Palais-Royal. The war will end in september, we can’t do anything serious before then. Drop everything and come. I worry about your weariness too. Here, at least, you will rest. It’s important when we love to be able to do it with happy and rested bodies.

Oh ! it’s good that your theater isn’t in function anymore. Things will resume after. But for the time being, you can see that everything is being prepared for us to find the time to love each other. Me too, all yesterday, I walked this anguish you talk about. I didn’t dreamt of you, you weren’t in China, but I felt only this privation, this shadow, like a source [suddenly] lost. I feel dry and sterile, incapable of a move or a love. But in fact it’s your letter I was waiting for and now I found everything back, the presence and the source, your face finally. Oh ! my darling, come back quickly and that all of this end. I feel today all the strength I need to vanquish everything that can part us. But forestall me, give me your hand, don’t leave me alone. I wait for you, confident and happy for today and I love you with all my soul. Goodbye, Maria, I kiss your dear face.

Michel [Albert]

[casarescamuscorrespondence]

There are like this some hours, some days, some weeks where it seems like everything dies between your hands.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Les Correspondances, Letter #9

[casarescamuscorrespondence]

Letter #6

6 - ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARES

Saturday 4 pm in the afternoon (1st july 1944)

Ma petite Maria,

The trip has been good and without troubles. Left at 7:20 in the morning we drove till 9 am, then walked seven kilometers to go by a marshalling yard that was bombed the day before ; at 11 o’clock, we took another train till noon. We waited two hours at Meaux waiting for them to give us another train. Forty five minutes after, new change of train and at 5 pm, we arrived. I was exhausted like a black dog, but glad to be finished with it. They have offered me a house to which a wing had been bombed in 1940; but the rest was habitable. But it’s covered in dust and I’ll need 48 hours to turn this decent with the help of a brave women from the country.

Let’s go to the description. The country, it’s a small valley to which the two slopes are covered with cultures and average trees. It’s fresh here, there are water sounds and grass’ smells, cows, some beautiful children and birds’ songs. By climbing up a little, we reach plateau more cleared where we can breath better. The town : some houses and brave people. As for the house it is buried in the middle of a quite big garden full of trees and behind the last roses of summer (they are not red). It is in the shadow of the old church and the upper part of the garden is a sunlit meadow just under the flying buttresses of the church. We can take sunbath there. I am settling in a bedroom and an office on the first floor. When it will be done, I will describe it to you.

I think that Michel [Gallimard] could move with me at least. Pierre and Janine will without doubt be sleeping elsewhere. I wait impatiently their arrival to decide all of that and mostly because I hope they will give news about you.

I write you all of this as clearly as I can because I think what you want first is precise information. But my thinking is very different : since thursday night it is with you that I live. I felt like I had badly left you and this separation, in the middle of so much uncertainties, under a sky so full of dangers, is difficult for me to bear. My hope is that you will come. If you can do it by car, do it, it will be easier. Or else, you will have to do that very long trip I did. There’s the bike too and there I could come to you. Don’t forget your promise, my darling, I live for it at the moment. I believe I could find peace in this country. With some trees, the wind, a river, I could redo that interior silent I lost so long ago. But this isn’t possible if I have to bear your absence and run after your image and its souvenir. I don’t have the intention to play the desperate at all, nor to make myself go. Now on from Monday, I will put myself to work and I will work, that is certain. But I want you to help me and to come -that you come above all ! You and me we met here and loved in the fever, the impatience or the danger. I don’t regret anything and the days I just lived seemed to me sufficient to justify a life. But there is another way to love, a fullness more secret and more harmonious, which is not less beautiful and which I know that we will be capable of too. It is here where we will find the time. Don’t forget this, ma petite Maria and make sure that we still have a chance for our love.

In a few hours you will play. Today and tomorrow my thought will be with you. I will wait that moment when you sit down while saying that this is marvelous, I will wait for the third act with that scream I loved so much. Oh ! my darling, how hard it is to be far from what we love. I am deprived from your face and there is nothing else in the world I cherished more.

Write to me a lot and often, don’t leave me alone. I will wait as long as I have to, I feel an infinite patient in everything that concerns you. But at the same time I have an impatience in the blood that hurts me, a will to burn everything and to devore everything, it is my love for you. Goodbye, small victory. Stay close to me in thought and come, come quick, I beg of you. I kiss you with all my passion.

You can write as agreed at Mme Parain, in Verdelot, Seine-et-Marne.

Michel*

*Feeling threatened because of his clandestins activities as the director of the newspaper Combat, Albert Camus has to leave Paris to take shelter. He joins on a bicycle and on train the house of his friend the philosophe Brice Parain, head of the editorial secretariat of Gaston Gallimard, in Verdelot (Seine-et-marne), in the company of two nephews of Gaston Gallimard, Pierre (son of Jacques) and Michel (son of Raymond), and the wife of the first, Janine (born Jeanne Thomesset) -who will go on to marry in a second marriage, in october 1946, Michel. Albert Camus will now sign his letter with the name Michel.

[casarescamuscorrespondence]

I felt like I had badly left you and this separation, in the middle of so much uncertainties, under a sky so full of dangers, is difficult for me to bear.

Les correspondances, Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Letter #6

[casarescamuscorrespondence]

Letter #4

ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARES

    one o’clock [morning] [june 1944]

Ma petite Maria,

I just came back home, I don’t want to sleep at all, and I have such a great desire to have you close to me that I have to sit at my table to talk to you the only way I can. I didn’t dare say to Marcel [Herrand] that I didn’t want to go drink his champagne. And you were with so much people ! But after a half hour, I had enough, I only needed you. I loved you so much, Maria, this whole night, seeing you, hearing your voice that became for me irreplaceable while on my way up to Marcel, I found a piece of text for the play. I can’t read it anymore without hearing you, it’s my way to be happy with you.

I try to picture what you do, and I ask myself with wonder why you’re not here. I tell myself that what would be in the rule, in the only rule that I know, which is that of passion and life, it’s that you come back home tomorrow and that we finish together an evening that we would have started together. But I also know that this is vain and there is everything else.

But at least don’t forget me when you leave me. Don’t forget either what I told you extensively at my place, one day, before everything rushes. That day I told you with the deepest part of my heart and I would like, I would like so much that we be to each other like I told you we should be. Don’t leave me, I can’t phantom anything worse than losing you. What would I do now without that face where everything shakes me, this voice and also this body pressed against me ?

Besides it’s not what I wanted to tell you today. But only your presence here, the need I have of you, my thought of this evening. Goodnight, my dear. I hope that tomorrow will come quickly and all the other days where you will be more mine than this cursed play. I kiss you with all my strength.

AC

[casarescamuscorrespondence]

It’s important when we love to be able to do it with contented and rested bodies.

Les Correspondances, Albert Camus to Maria Casares, Letter #7

[casarescamuscorrespondence]

Letter #5

ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARES

4 pm in the afternoon [june 1944]

Ma petite Maria,

I don’t know if you will think about calling me. And at this hour, I don’t know how to reach you. I don’t have anything specific to tell you, anyway, if not this wave that carries me since yesterday and this need of trust and love that I have in you. It’s been a long time since I last wrote to you !

If you find this note while coming back tonight, call me. Don’t forget me before saturday. Think about me during those days. Tell yourself that I am close to you, every waking minutes. Goodbye, my love, my dear love ; I kiss you like yesterday.

Albert

[casarescamuscorrespondence]

Letter #3

ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARES

Thursday at ten o’clock [evening] [june 1944]

I’ve just read your dedicace, my darling, and there is something in me that shivers. As much as I tell myself that sometimes we write those things in a drift, without being there whole -I think at the same time that there are things you wouldn’t write, without feeling them.

I am so happy, Maria. Is this possible ? What shivers in me, it is a sort of mad joy. But at the same time there is this bitterness of your departure and the sadness of your eyes the moment you left me. It is true that all I have of you always has a mixed taste of happiness and worry. But if you love me like you write it, we need to gain something else. This is the time to love each other and we have to want it strongly enough and long enough to surpass everything.

I don’t like that clear view you pretended to have tonight. When we have some soul, we have a tendency to call lucidity what frustrates us and truth everything that serves. But this lucidity is as blind as anything else. There is only one clear-sightedness, the one that wants happiness. And I know that as short as it is, as threatened or as fragile, there is a happiness ready for us both if we extend the hand. But it is necessary to extend the hand.

I wait for tomorrow, for you, your dear face. Tonight, I was too tired to talk to you about this spilling heart you make me. There is something that is only our own and where I always meet you without effort. Those are the hours where I don’t speak and thus you doubt of me. But it doesn’t matter, my heart is full of you. Goodbye, darling. Thank you for those words which gave me so much joy -thank you for this soul that loves and which I love. I kiss you with all my strength.

AC

[casarescamuscorrespondence]

sorry ! ;u;

i’m here ! I actually bought the e-book ^^

people who want to help for the translation can DM me. rn I just have a google doc, i can give the link to those who’ll DM me and they’ll be able to put their translations directly on the doc and then they’ll be posted on this blog :3

Hey, I'm a native french speaker and I would love to translate the correspondence between Albert Camus and María Casares in english for you all. I don't have the book into my hand yet but, it would be great if maybe one of your follower has it in e-book form, by any chance ? Or if some want to help me translate it, they can DM me at the blog casarescamuscorrespondance :)

Great! Thank you so, so much. There is a kindle version on Amazon as far as I know. I’m posting this in case someone who owns the e-book version is willing to contact you on your main blog and make arrangements from there :)

[casarescamuscorrespondence]

Letter #2

ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARES

4 pm [june 1944]

Ma petite Maria,

I hoped I could have met you right away by calling at your place. But I don’t even have that time. So, between two appointments, I send you that note. It doesn’t mean anything, naturally. But I suppose that you will find it tonight and that you will think of me. I am worn, I need you. But of course we can’t say it to each other like that, you should be pressed against me.

Good night, my darling. Sleep plenty, think of me intensely. I kiss you till tomorrow.

AC

___________________

If you want to help me translate the letters, don’t hesitate to DM me. If you think of a better way to translate the text than how I did, you can send an ask or DM me, I am perfectly open to suggestions !