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In primary school, Camus was fortunate enough to cross paths
with a teacher, Louis Germain, who recognized the young boy's
intellectual potential and encouraged him in his studies. By
the time Camus received his baccalauréat in 1930, he was
reading the likes of Gide, Montherlant and Malraux.
After taking a short break necessitated by a bout with
tuberculosis, Camus continued his education at the University
of Algiers. During this period, he supported himself by a wide
variety of jobs which included giving private lessons, working
for the Meteorological Institute, and selling spare parts for
cars. It was also during this period that he, along with a
number of other young left-wing intellectuals, founded the
Théâtre du Travail in Algiers. Camus' first experience as a
playwright came when this group created a "collective play"
entitled Révolte dans les Asturies.
After earning a degree in philosophy, Camus relocated to
Metropolitan France and took up journalism. In 1938, he
accepted a post with the left-wing newspaper Alger-Républicain
where he served alternately as sub-editor, social and
political reporter, leader-writer, and book-reviewer. After
World War II broke out, Camus used his literary talents to
support the French Resistance, taking on the editorship of
Combat, an important underground paper. After the war,
however, he gave up politics and journalism and devoted
himself to writing. He soon established an international
reputation with such works as The Stranger (1946), The Plague
(1948), The Rebel (1954) and The Myth of Sisyphus (1955).
Although known primarily for his novels and philosophical
works, Camus was also a man of the theatre. He served at
various times as actor, director, playwright and translator
for the stage. The themes of Camus' dramatic works hinge
around man's realization of the "absurd" nature of the
universe, and the inevitable clash of this realization with
his desire for understanding. However, Camus' dramatizations
of the "absurd" are very different from the "theatre of the
absurd" of such playwrights as Ionesco or Beckett. Like
Sartre, Camus prefers characters who are capable not only of
perceiving their plight, but of articulating it clearly.
The two most important of Camus' plays are Caligula (performed
1945, written 1938) and Cross Purpose (1944). In Caligula, a
young Roman emperor comes face to face with the terrible lack
of meaning in the universe after the senseless death of his
beloved sister Drusilla. In order to teach the world the true
nature of life, Caligula goes on a murderous spree, killing
his subjects indiscriminately. After this act of rebellion
fails, he chooses to court his own assassination.
In Cross Purpose, Camus' second play, a man returns home after
travelling the world for 20 years. His mother and sister keep
an inn where, unbeknownst to him, they murder and rob rich
travellers so that they will one day be able to move to the
sea-shore. Unable to find the right words to reveal his
identity, the prodigal son decides to spend the night in his
family's inn posing as a stranger, thus becoming the next
victim. When his identity is discovered, a string of suicides
is set into motion--a theme which Camus would later explore in
his philosophical work, The Myth of Sisyphus.
Camus wrote two other original plays, State of Siege (1948)
and The Just Assassins (1949). After this, his work for the
stage consisted solely of translations and adaptations. The
most brilliant of these were adaptations of Faulkner's Requiem
for a Nun (1956) and Dostoevsky's The Possessed (1959). In
1957, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He
responded with characteristic humility, insisting that he
would have voted for Malraux.
On January 4, 1960, Camus was killed in an automobile accident
while returning to Paris with his friend and publisher Michel
Gallimard. He was only forty-six years old and had written as
recently as 1958, "I continue to be convinced that my work
hasn't even been begun." Adding to the tragedy was the fact
that Camus disliked cars and had intended to return to Paris
by train until Gallimard convinced him to change his mind. The
return half of a rail ticket was found unused in his pocket.
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