been, for the most part, retained.
In this typescript the divisions into chapters are indicated by a blank. We have nonetheless restored the
numerals which existed in the first typescript, and which are to be found, as well, in The Stranger.
There also exist preparatory dossiers and notes for A Happy Death, to which must be added the fragments in the Notebooks. These, in manuscript form, but generally in very disjunct fragments, constitute nearly the entire novel, for which there exists no manuscript version except for the third chapter of the second
part.
In order to show how the various fragments of the novel have been assembled, a choice of the variants
has
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been made. Those taken from the preparatory dossiers and notes are designated by Ms., those taken from the first typescript by T. When the Notebooks have been drawn on, the fact has been indicated. In the case of some chapters, we have been able to compare several manuscript texts, which have been carefully
distinguished.
Words or phrases scratched out on the typescript or the manuscript have been put in parentheses in the
Notes. Words and phrases in italics indicate variant readings.
The establishment of these notes and variants, as of the text itself, owes a great deal to Mme Camus,
whom we herewith thank.
Jean Sarocchi
Notes and Variants
Part One
Natural Death
The significance of this title relates to “The Wind at Dejemila” in Noces (Nuptials) and to a manuscript fragment of “Entre oui et non” (“Between Yes and No”).
Chapter 1
A series of manuscript pages gives successively chapters 4 and 1. As we know, Chapter 1 was originally
Chapter 5.
page 3, line 1
The name Mersault may be regarded as a combination
of mer (sea) and soleil (sun).
page 3, line 2
What is the source of the name Zagreus? Was Camus thinking of Orphism’s Dionysos-Zagreus, victim of
the Titans, whose heart gave birth to the Theban Dionysos of popular legend? In which case Zagreus
would be a Promethean figure, belonging to the type of sacrificial being who affords liberation. This is
merely a conjecture.
page 3, line 4
Ms.: deserted. This was two days after his conversation
with Roland.
page 3, line 8
Ms.: hillside, like the proud laughter of the golden earth.
page 3, line 21
Ms.: his gloves. Everything depended on knowing if the
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chest was unlocked and the revolver loaded.
page 3, line 24
knocked. (“You can come in, Mersault,” Zagreus
said.)
page 3, line 25
Ms.: Zagreus was there in his study by the fire.
T.: Zagreus was there in his study of course, sitting in
an armchair with a blanket over the stumps of his legs.
page 4, line 7
Ms.: rejoiced, showing all its blue and gleaming teeth,
page 4, line 8
Ms.: A great icy joy, a classical dance of the world over
the little valley
page 6, line 19
Ms.: an expression that combined the child and the mandarin. It was the very aspect of truth which smiled at Mersault out of the sky.
page 7, line 19
The manuscript text includes another paragraph, beginning “That evening, still in bed, he sent for the
neighborhood doctor,” which is now to be found at the end of Chapter 5.
Chapter 2
This is the most laboriously and the least skillfully composed chapter in the novel. It consists of several
fragments, all intended to create the impression of a prosaic and routine existence. In all the sketches and
outlines for The Right Death where it figures, it is located in Part One. In the Notebooks for August 1937, we read: “Part One. His life hitherto.” Or: “Part One. Al. M. Mersault’s day seen from outside. Bl.
Workingmen’s neighborhood of Paris (word illegible). Horse butcher’s. Patrice and his family. The mute.
The grand-
mother.” Some of these elements will be transferred to Chapter 5.
Considerably later an outline specifies: “Part One: 1 the workingmen’s neighborhood; 2 Patrice Mersault .
. .” and at about the same date, two plans for Part One are given as follows on the same page:
Part One.
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Mersault goes home. Detail . . . Sunday. His dead mother (the butcher shop across the street To Man’s Noblest Conquest). Sign: to rent. (His office. His neighbor the barrelmaker. Knock at the door. The
barrelmaker asking him to come with him to the graveyard.) The filthy street.
1 Marthe waits for him impatiently (her jealousies)
2 Marthe and her infidelities; jealousy; her first lover Zagreus
3 Zagreus and conversation.
This outline is crossed out and replaced by the following one:
a) Mersault goes home. Detail. Sunday.
b) His house. Horse butcher’s. His neighbor the barrelmaker and his sister. (Today M.’s mother died.
Story of the . . . word illegible)
At the restaurant: M. Lopez who eats at his table . . . several words eligible
c) Marthe
d) Zagreus.
We may note that if the chapter’s place is ascertained—it is still the first—its substance as well as its
composition is indeterminate; for example, the restaurant scene, initially to come after the description of
Mer-sault’s house and Sunday, will be moved to an earlier
place in the final version. The barrelmaker’s story will be isolated and transferred to Chapter 5.
No complete manuscript exists of this chapter, composed of various fragments, some of which are taken
from the first version of “Voix du quartier pauvre” in L’Envers et I’Endroit (“The Wrong Side and the Right Side” in Lyrical and Critical Essays)
A. The harbor, the injured man, racing for the truck with Emmanuel. This part of the text was added
much later to the chapter, and in the manuscript ends with “When they reached Belcourt, Mersault got off.
Emmanuel went on . . .” Sketches for this text are to be found in the Notebooks, I, pp. 23-4.
B. For the rest of the chapter, after the arrival at Belcourt, a series of manuscript pages forms an arrangement.
a) Up to the restaurant. Mersault’s actions are the subject of a fragment which has been added to the typescript. On the manuscript pages, Emmanuel is named Marcel.
page 10, line 17
Ms.: young and vigorous, under the anonymous jacket
page 10, line 18 Ms.: joy, discovery
page 10, line 21
Ms.: from sports. And if this knowledge overemphasized the “handsome fellow” aspect in Mersault, at the same time his body inspired an instructive self-confidence.
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b) Celeste’s anecdote.
This is left blank on the manuscript pages, which merely note, as a transition, the following episode:
“Good for him,” Mersault said, in order to say
something. “Oh you can’t be a bastard in life. All the
same . . .” This anecdote exists in three manuscript versions, one inserted in the hospital conversations. It was not, therefore, in a cafe that it was taken from life.
page 10, line 30
The earliest manuscript version contains this sentence: “Something in this man expressed the intelligence and frankness inseparable from a simple heart.”
page 11, line 15
Ms.: Fine with me.’ ” Louis fiddled with the tassels of a
rep cushion . . .
The name Louis, which preceded that of Mersault, designates Camus in the hospital fragments.
page 11, line 30
Ms.: the wind was blowing. He laughed self-indul-gently. But just when Louis stood up to leave, he
suddenly said to him: “You always have to look at life from the right side, and walk straight ahead.”
Louis was already out in the street. He walked very fast, avoided a shoeshine boy, pushed another away,
then stopped short and yielded his foot to a third.
c) Emmanuel’s anecdote.
This is sketched in the manuscript pages. It is obviously another anecdote taken from life, but it does not
exist in extenso in manuscript. Another hospital recollection? In any case, Emmanuel is too young to have participated in the battle of the Marne.
d) the owner and his son.
e) the anecdote about Jean Perez, left blank in the
manuscript pages. It is taken from the pages of the text “l’Hopital du quartier pauvre.”
f) Mersault’s reflections, his return home (up to “he had kept the best room for himself”).
page 12, line 1 Ms.: ate his banana
page 12, line 19
Ms.: on his back. His arms did the rest.
g) the mother’s death; the burial.
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Blank on the manuscript pages. This text, developed in the first chapter of The Stranger, reveals one of Camus’s obsessions: death of the mother, the wife, or even of the mistress. Camus is never tired of writing
on this theme.
In what appears to be the earliest text from which this one proceeds, the bereaved is not Mer-sault
(Camus), but a trucker—”inhabitant of the workingmen’s neighborhood”—who loses his wife. The text in extenso follows:
A young man must have a powerful imagination to believe he can grow old. And were it not for death,
few would ever believe they had. Thus this man’s life had been surprised by old age. His family’s