It is customary to think of Camus as the great apostle of life in this century, and to view his work as testimony to the acceptability, indeed the worthiness of the human condition. It is equally routine to regard Beckett as an exploiter of nihilism, and to brand his literary output as cadaveric, as one denoting a paralyzed, indeed a corpsed universe. Their concept of suicide, however,… precludes such simple conclusions and points instead to an unsuspected rapport between the two writers….
In Camus the persona discovered one of its most subtle and sophisticated advocates. The subtlety of Camus found that it was necessary to insist on the integrity of the absurd experience. The "integration" of the persona resulted from the insistence that "There is thus the will to live without rejecting anything of life, which is the virtue I honor most in this world."… Camus worked from the presupposition that life is acceptable, even though in the more cynical mood of The Fall he conceded: "But in certain cases carrying on, merely continuing, is superhuman." Nevertheless for Camus suicide constituted the avoidance of the absurd, rather than its confrontation, for which he opted. (p. 105)
This is a free excerpt of 195 words. There are 1,028 words (approx.
3 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Camus, Albert 1913–1960: Critical Essay by Alfred Cismaru and Theodore Klein Access Pass.
