(Source: chloethunders)
This week in The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik writes about Albert Camus. On Wednesday, April 4th, at 3 P.M. E.T., Gopnik will answer readers’ questions in a live chat. Sign up for an e-mail reminder below.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/ask/2012/04/adam-gopnik-camus.html
(Source: phredology)
The famous ‘going beyond’ Marxism in an idealistic and humanitarian direction is a joke and an idle dream. It is impossible to ‘go beyond’ Marx, for he himself carried his thought to its extreme logical consequences. The Communists have a solid logical basis for using lies and violence. …
All I ask is that, in the midst of a murderous world, we agree to reflect on murder and to make a choice. After that, we can distinguish those who accept the consequences of being murderers themselves or the accomplices of murderers, and those who refuse to do so with all their force and being.
Since this terrible dividing line does actually exist, it will be a gain if it be clearly marked. Over the expanse of five continents throughout the coming years an endless struggle is going to be pursued between violence and friendly persuasion, a struggle in which, granted, the former has a thousand times the chances of success than that of the latter. But I have always held that, if he who bases his hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of circumstances is a coward. And henceforth, the only honorable course will be to stake everything on one formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than munitions.
(Source: whakatikatika)
Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful.
-Albert Camus, “Three Interviews” in Lyrical and Critical Essays
The whole visible world is perhaps nothing more than than the rationalization of a man who wants to find peace for a moment. An attempt to falsify the actuality of knowledge, to regard knowledge as a goal still to be reached.
- Franz Kafka, Parables and Paradoxes
Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people’s deaths or a mother’s love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we’re all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn’t he see, couldn’t he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too.
- Albert Camus, The Stranger
You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.
- Franz Kafka, The Collected Aphorisms
(Source: substancem)
Our New Electrical Morals, “Greet Me With Cries of Hate”
http://vectorbelly.com/electrical38.html
Nov. 7, 1913 is the date of birth of French writer and Nobel Laureate, Albert Camus. Born in Algeria, Camus originally studied at (and played soccer for) the University of Algiers. However tuberculosis set back the completion of his degree (and killed his goalkeeping career), but eventually he completed his philosophy studies and relocated to Paris.
In 1957 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature “for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times…”
Camus was killed in a strange automobile accident in January 1960, along with his publisher, Gallimard, who drove the car…
“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” ― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
(Source: i12bent)
Translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy
(Source: ruggedintellect)
Albert Camus, “Reflections on the Guillotine”
Troy Davis Execution Stay Denied—ABC NEWS
(via ataxiwardance)
(Source: nerbles)
![Albert Camus by Cecil Beaton
Albert Camus (French pronunciation: [albɛʁ kamy] (listen); 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French Algerian author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th-century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.
Camus was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature “for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times”. He was the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, after Rudyard Kipling, and the first African-born writer to receive the award. He is the shortest-lived of any Nobel literature laureate to date, having died in an automobile accident just over two years after receiving the award.
Although often cited as a proponent of existentialism, the philosophy with which Camus was associated during his own lifetime, he rejected this particular label. In an interview in 1945, Camus rejected any ideological associations: “No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked…”
Specifically, his views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay “The Rebel” that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism while still delving deeply into individual freedom.
Albert Camus on In Our Time at the BBC. (listen now)
Many books of Albert Camus available, in French, in Les Classiques des sciences sociales.
Albert Camus’ Week: Excerpts, articles, interviews and videos on the website of the Prague Writers’ Festival
“Accidental Friends” the story of the Camus-Sartre friendship and very public breakup
Interview with daughter Catherine – 3AM
Another interview with daughter Catherine – Spike
The Logic of Existential Meaning
Université McGill: le roman selon les romanciers (French) Inventory and analysis of Albert Camus’ non-novelistic writings
Lesjustes.co.uk : English synopsis of “Les Justes” for students
Camus ‘Bookweb’ on literary website The Ledge, with suggestions for further reading.
Camus Interview with Prof. Jean-Marie Apostolides, from the radio program Entitled Opinions
Works by Albert Camus on Open Library at the Internet Archive
(French) Pierre Michel, Albert Camus et Octave MirbeauPDF (640 KB)]( http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljids2hEY31qz6gkjo1_500.jpg)
Albert Camus by Cecil Beaton
Albert Camus (French pronunciation: [albɛʁ kamy] (
listen); 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French Algerian author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th-century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.
Camus was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature “for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times”. He was the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, after Rudyard Kipling, and the first African-born writer to receive the award. He is the shortest-lived of any Nobel literature laureate to date, having died in an automobile accident just over two years after receiving the award.
Although often cited as a proponent of existentialism, the philosophy with which Camus was associated during his own lifetime, he rejected this particular label. In an interview in 1945, Camus rejected any ideological associations: “No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked…”
Specifically, his views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay “The Rebel” that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism while still delving deeply into individual freedom.
- Albert Camus on In Our Time at the BBC. (listen now)
- Many books of Albert Camus available, in French, in Les Classiques des sciences sociales.
- Albert Camus’ Week: Excerpts, articles, interviews and videos on the website of the Prague Writers’ Festival
- “Accidental Friends” the story of the Camus-Sartre friendship and very public breakup
- Interview with daughter Catherine – 3AM
- Another interview with daughter Catherine – Spike
- The Logic of Existential Meaning
- Université McGill: le roman selon les romanciers (French) Inventory and analysis of Albert Camus’ non-novelistic writings
- Lesjustes.co.uk : English synopsis of “Les Justes” for students
- Camus ‘Bookweb’ on literary website The Ledge, with suggestions for further reading.
- Camus Interview with Prof. Jean-Marie Apostolides, from the radio program Entitled Opinions
- Works by Albert Camus on Open Library at the Internet Archive
- (French) Pierre Michel, Albert Camus et Octave MirbeauPDF (640 KB)
