Albert Camus: [1948 Modern Library Edition] The Plague by Albert Camus; Translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert (1948, ML)
Hardcover, 288 pages
English language
Published Aug. 8, 1948 by ML.
The Plague (French: La Peste) is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947, that tells the story of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. It asks a number of questions relating to the nature of destiny and the human condition. The characters in the book, ranging from doctors to vacationers to fugitives, all help to show the effects the plague has on a populace.
Just finished this. Quite hard work, and obviously now we've all lived through COVID, it's less "amazing thing that will never happen" and more "a bit like 2020". I'm glad I ploughed through it, but I didn't really gel with any of the characters, and the storytelling device was a bit strange.
La vida en una ciudad confinada, nos hace recordar en muchos aspectos a lo que vivimos en la crisis del Covid, conteniendo todo lo bueno y lo malo de la naturaleza humana. Bajo el velo gris del tedio, cuando la situación parece eterna, o del miedo y de la esperanza, cuando los acontecimientos parece que se precipitan. Escrito a modo de crónica, no tanto periodística, sino levantando acta metódica y dando fe de lo ocurrido. Solo al final se desvela la identidad del cronista, que quiso dejar escrito "para testimoniar a favor de los apestados, para dejar por lo menos un recuerdo de la injusticia y de la violencia que les había sido hecha y para decir simplemente algo que se aprende en medio de las plagas: que hay en los hombres más cosas dignas de admiración que de desprecio". Uno de esos libros que todo el mundo debería leer.
"He wanted to do what all those around him were doing, apparently believing that the plague can come and go without the hearts of men being changed"
I had to slow way down for this read. It is concise, dark, and, if I'm honest, it left me more than a little hopeless. Camus is a masterful writer and an exquisite buzz kill.
Perhaps out of a sense of morbidity, I decided that now - in the midst of a pandemic which has exiled almost all of us to the confines of our homes - would be as good a time as any to return, and finally to finish, Camus' The Plague. I had started the book a couple of years ago, but alas the writing of my Masters' thesis tore me away, and from then other distractions thrust themselves upon me.
I absolutely adored it. The strange, occasionally detached style of narration makes the experience slightly rough going at the start, but as the narrative begins to unfurl and the characters involved in this story more fully develop, the narrator allows himself to talk somewhat more 'subjectively' about these experiences. I found myself in love with the richness of these characters - particularly Jean Tarrou, who becomes Rieux's closest friend and …
Perhaps out of a sense of morbidity, I decided that now - in the midst of a pandemic which has exiled almost all of us to the confines of our homes - would be as good a time as any to return, and finally to finish, Camus' The Plague. I had started the book a couple of years ago, but alas the writing of my Masters' thesis tore me away, and from then other distractions thrust themselves upon me.
I absolutely adored it. The strange, occasionally detached style of narration makes the experience slightly rough going at the start, but as the narrative begins to unfurl and the characters involved in this story more fully develop, the narrator allows himself to talk somewhat more 'subjectively' about these experiences. I found myself in love with the richness of these characters - particularly Jean Tarrou, who becomes Rieux's closest friend and confidant in this book.
The parallels with France under Nazi occupation are clear, but we can nevertheless take much from it today. This is a bleak, tragic book but not without optimism or hope. The danger we face today, at a time when Fascism is returning to us again, is that we lose our 'sense' of the true cost of Fascism. Like the plague, it will always be with us as long as the will-to-fascism within us is not driven out. In a powerful and moving speech by Tarrou, he says that "Yes, indeed, Rieux, it is very tiring to be a plague victim. But it is still more tiring not to want to be one. This is why everyone appears tired, because nowadays everyone is a little infected. But this is why a few, who want to cease to be victims, experience an extreme form of tiredness from which nothing except death will deliver them."
Only eight years after Camus' untimely and tragic death, the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the psychoanalyst and activist Félix Guattari published [b: Anti-Oedipus|118317|Anti-Oedipus Capitalism and Schizophrenia|Gilles Deleuze|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347698453l/118317.SY75.jpg|113899] (1968). In a now-famous preface to the book, their friend Michel Foucault wrote that their book should be understood as a 'guide to anti-fascist life', and that "the major enemy [of the book] is fascism. And not only historical fascism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini—which was able to mobilize and use the desire of the masses so effectively—but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us."
This is the plague which Camus believes infects us and which, without constant struggle against it, will always risk re-emerging from the sewers of society. It is not enough merely to oppose Fascism in its historical form, we must oppose and root out those elements of fascism - the love of power, of violence, of superiority - in our own minds which give birth to it. "I know that we must constantly keep a watch on ourselves to avoid being distracted for a moment and find ourselves breathing in another person's face and infecting him." If not, then "perhaps the day will come when, for the instruction or misfortune of mankind, the plague will rouse its rats and send them to die in some well-contented city." This book speaks profoundly and beautifully to the universal desire for peace on this earth and what it might take to make it a reality.
"That is why this epidemic has taught me nothing except that it must be fought at your side. I have absolute knowledge of this - yes Rieux, I know everything about life, as you can see - that everyone has inside it himself, this plague, because no one in the world, no one, is immune. [...] All I can say is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims - and as far as possible one must refuse to be on the side of the pestilence."
Unglaublich gute Beschreibung der Atmosphäre, ich spüre immer noch dieses Wind, der durch die Gassen streift. Verschlungen.
A great and relevant read about what happens when we are complacent in the face of great danger.
It is always difficult to review a book of collected works and this one is more difficult than most. I loved The Plague and would give it four stars for sure. But a couple of the stories in here were extremely problematic (Camus was not known for being an anti-racist, feminist.) Some of it was just rather boring. That said, reading The Plague was exactly the kind of dark meditation on life that I needed right now. Yes. We are all on a losing battle with death. There is often not much we as individuals can do about the worst that happens - war, disease, sociopaths. But we can struggle and fight and find joy and commiserate with all the other poor fools in this same mess that we are in.
My favorite of Camus' novels (which is a very hard superlative to give)
A great book. Perfect successor to the Stranger and the Myth of Sisyphus. Only four stars because there are no women.
I never could finish this book. I tried and tried, and years later I finally pulled it from the shelf, the bookmark still in place, and chucked it in the trade box. The Stranger was so good, and the Plague was supposed to be his best work, but it was dreadful. I couldn't do it. wish I felt differently.
