Albert Camus at 100: The Algerian Chronicles To learn how Camus came to become villified equally by the left and the right it is important to absorb the lessons of The Algerian Chronicles, recently reissued by Harvard/Belknap in a new translation by Arthur Goldhammer. More than likely Albert Camus was murdered in 1960 by the KGB under orders from Soviet Foreign Minister Dmitri Trofimovic Shepilov. Shepilov was denounced by Camus, and by name, in an article he wrote denouncing Moscows crushing of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. Camus was steadfast in his commitment to justice and human rights, regardless of ideological stripe. Camus was the only member of the Parisian intelligentsia who supported the poet Czeslaw Milosz when he defected from his native Poland in 1951. This may explain why he stopped to meditate in the apartment of the late Simone Weil on his way to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. She, too -- the Red Virgin -- denounced sectarian politics in favor of a different vision of humanity, community and justice. To witness the progression of his responses is to recognize above all the remarkable consistency of Camus’s moral conviction, the dogged optimism of his outlook, and his unfailing ability, even in the complex turmoil of emotional involvement with the issue, to cleave to his own principles of justice. nybooks/articles/archives/2013/nov/07/camus-and-algeria-moral-question/
Posted on: Sat, 09 Nov 2013 05:05:43 +0000
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