“For anyone who pursues the quantity of pleasures, only efficacy matters,” Camus had written (MS, 71; E, 153). “The absurd teaches that all experiences are unimportant, and … it urges toward the greatest quantity of experiences” (MS, 62). “The present and the succession of presents before a constantly conscious soul is the ideal of the absurd man” (MS, 63—4). “No depth, no emotion, no passion, and no sacrifice could render equal … a conscious life of forty years and a lucidity spread over sixty years” (MS, 63). “Being aware of one’s life, one’s revolt, one’s freedom, and to the maximum, is living, and to the maximum. Where lucidity rules, the scale of values becomes useless” (MS, 63-4; E, 144).
Having thus “lost the sense of hierarchy” (MS, 56), values can only be rooted in the experiential soil fertilized by a lucid consciousness. Lacking such transcendent standards, however, how is one to choose among actions?
On what grounds? By what criteria or standards? For what goals? Ultimately, there are no justifications. An ethic of quantity thus replaces one of quality: “What counts is not living the best, but living the most” (MS, 61; E, 143). No wonder that Ivan Karamazov was so tormented by the absurd; or that Camus’s “German friend” confronted him with such a profound ethico-metaphysical challenge.
It would seem that we have been freed of the illusion of hope only to be plunged into a maelstrom in which everything is permitted and moral standards no longer have a leg to stand on.
Experiences are equivalent so long as consciousness is present. Consciousness is, of course, the presupposition, because it is from consciousness alone that human experience comes to be and that the quality of finitude gives the moment its irreplaceable urgency. Beyond that, however, who is to judge? Are we not reduced to the multiplication of experiences and their reflective description? What other rule of conduct can one draw from the absurd?
Is this not the import of Camus’s descriptions of his heroes of the absurd? Clearly not models to emulate—for that would imply a principle of selection among lifestyles. Camus simply offers descriptions of modes of living that draw forth and illustrate the lessons of the absurd. Their common presupposition is the lucid consciousness that refuses transcendent consolation and devotes itself to “obeying the flame” (MS, 62).
But then, so does Caligula, not to speak of his German friend. And there’s the rub. Camus seeks a rule of conduct by which life can be found to be worth living, and he must confront the fact that a reason for living can also be a reason for dying—or for having others die. This poses the problem central to the rest of his work. But its roots are clearly here in the struggle to legitimate a revolt against the gods that justifies individual and collective efforts to take control over our lives without having recourse to those eternal values that are absent or distorted in contemporary Europe.
5
Caligula
For the dramatist the passion for the impossible is just as valid a subject for study as avarice or adultery (CTOP, vi).
LOCATING THE WORK
Caligula’s place within the developing corpus of Camus’s work is unique. Begun with the fiery exuberance of youth, it underwent periodic revision almost to the year of his death, testifying to the subtle transformations of sensitivity and perspective that his work reveals.
Four stages are worthy of note. The initial inspiration to dramatize the life of the Roman emperor flowered in the climate that gave birth to Nuptials and A Happy Death. The latter work certainly seems to be Caligula’s twin. Both express a passionate will to live and a contempt for the hypocrisy of the everyday, torn as they are between celebrating life and coming to terms with death. Struggling to emerge from the habitual, the daily routine and social ritual, the individual stands forth in hard-won uniqueness, only to come face-to-face with a reality of death made more poignant by that singular achievement. The intrinsic tension seems almost to invite repose. Its ambiguous legacy haunts all three works—as it does The Minotaur of 1939. This
legacy invites the emergent individual to merge with nature, to become one with it and to resemble nothing. Much here is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s brilliant study of the Dionysian, which impressed Camus in those years.1
This initial period is submerged and somewhat hidden by Camus’s increasing preoccupation with the absurd, which surfaces in 1938 and 1939. As A Happy Death gives way to The Stranger, so Caligula is put aside, only to be taken up again after The Stranger is completed and The Myth of Sisyphus nears final form. The version that first appeared in public resulted from this radical rethinking. Here we begin with the emperor’s realization that “men die and they are not happy.” No attention is paid to Caligula’s life before the death of his sister and mistress, Drusilla. Rather, the focus is upon his rebellion against what he feels to be a metaphysical injustice. “Really, this world of ours, this scheme of things as they call it, is quite intolerable. That’s
why I want the moon, or happiness, or eternal life—something, in fact, that may sound crazy, but which isn’t of this world” (CTOP, 8).
As this initial version achieves published form, the related problems posed by the absurd and by rebellion intermingle, thus placing Caligula at a transition point in the development of Camus’s writing. More explicitly than in The Stranger or The Myth, and conjointly with “The Misunderstanding,” with which its publication was at first joined, this version directs us toward the emerging problems posed by revolt. Yet we are still dealing with a work primarily focused upon individual attempts to come to terms with the dawning sense that this world may have no transcendent significance. In short, it remains essentially a study in the problems of the absurd.
The last two major revisions, those of 1947 and 1958, do not radically alter the structure and dynamics of the play. Insofar as they bear upon its content—as opposed to Camus’s effort to polish the work stylistically— these modifications seek to sharpen the conceptual focus concerning possible alternative responses to the absurd. Most particularly, the revisions of 1947
develop in detail the rationales for the divergent paths taken by the protagonists, while those of 1958 essentially humanize and contextualize, thus making more credible, the character of the cynical bureaucrat Helicon. But of this, more later.
Clearly, therefore, this work was essentially completed in the early 1940s, contemporaneously with The Myth and The Stranger, and properly forms an integral part of Camus’s “first series”
on the absurd. The previous dionysian themes constitute its prehistory, feeding that underground source that, like the stream drawing Meursault toward his confrontation with the Arab, offers the possibly illusory promise of refreshment, serving both as a potentially fertilizing resource and as a dangerous temptation, but that nevertheless, continually recedes into the background of Camus’s explicit preoccupations. Rather the axis of the published work revolves around the struggles, on the one hand, of the 29-year-old emperor to come to terms with the twin problems of the inevitability of death and the hypocrisy of social conventions, and, on the other, those confronting “the others” who must come to terms with the reality with which he confronts them. These were also the central preoccupations of the 29-year-old Camus during the war years.
A METAPHYSICAL REBEL
Caligula’s Project
“Men weep because . . . the world’s all wrong,” complains Caligula ((‘TOP, 15). The Spiritual twin of Scipio, possessed of a profound sensitivity and passion for life, he realized upon Drusilla’s death that life unfolds in time, is of limited duration, and is without guarantees or transcendent significance.
To love someone means to be willing to age with that person. I am not capable of such love. Drusilla old would have been far worse than Drusilla dead. People believe that a man suffers because the being he loves one day dies. But his true suffering is less futile; it comes from realizing that not even grief lasts. Even sadness is deprived of meaning (TRN, 105; CTOP, 71).
Sobering indeed is the realization of time’s inexorable flow, which, like the winds of Djemila, erodes even the objects of our most precious cares. That, of course, is the source of “the absurd,” the encounter with which literally sets the stage for the drama.
Caligula finds this state of affairs intolerable. He is a rebel against an absurd world. Either the world must be changed fundamentally, or people must stop acting as if it had a meaning that it does not have. In a sense, he is an idealistic youth who has been disabused of his ideals. Having been brought up to believe this world has a transcendent meaning that can justify life, he feels cheated and disgusted. If life has no ultimate meaning, how can people continue to live as if it did? Either they are fools or hypocrites, conditions that, as emperor, he can and will rectify. “Of what use to me is this amazing power which is mine if I cannot change the order of things, if I cannot make the sun set in the cast, decrease suffering, and put an end to death?” (TRN, 27; CTOP, 16).2