Do we not find here the root of the scandal that is Caligula’s behavior? For is he not right, when he admonishes Scipio for complaining about the human cost of his actions, that “if you knew how to count, you would know that the smallest war undertaken by a reasonable tyrant would be a thousand times more costly than the caprices of my fantasies”? (TRN, 69; CTOP, 44). No, he-is not a tyrant in the usual sense, for he docs not believe in any realizable ideal for which he is willing to sacrifice human lives. Rather, he chooses to “play the part of fate,” having
“adopted the foolish and incomprehensible appearance
of the gods” (CTOP, 44). By so doing, he threatens, even more than death, the meaning of our lives. “At least,” says Scipio, the actions of a normal tyrant “would be reasonable, and the important thing is to comprehend” (TRN, 69; CTOP, 44) .5
Not only is his behavior not constrained by rational or moral principles, nor by practical political realities, but, even more, no values or goals hold any sway over his felt preferences. On what grounds can one challenge an assertion of value in an absurd world? Do not all such claims reduce to matters of felt preference and actual political power? It is to address these very questions that Camus, struggling with the horrors of the Second World War and seeking to shed light on the “blind battle” that he and his comrades of the Resistance were then waging, wrote his poignant “Letters to a German Friend.”
“I wish men to live by the light of truth” (CTOP, 9), he says. But that light when emitted by an absolutistic sun reveals everything to be “on an equal footing: the grandeur of Rome and your attacks of arthritis” (CTOP, 11). From the perspective of the all or nothing, the relative values of daily life are insignificant. Even worse, they are a cruel delusion. “What I most admire,”
Caligula likes to observe after an execution, “is my indifference” (TRN, 86; CTOP, 58).
While Caligula is thus free to express his whims, the rest are subject to them. A momentary disposition, a chance encounter, a slip of the tongue may suffice for him to put an end to a life.
Even more, he may have no reason at all, or simply think it would be amusing.
Because of our needs, we will have these people put to death in accordance with an arbitrarily established list. On occasion we will modify that order, entirely arbitrarily. … In reality, the order of executions has no importance. Or rather, these executions have an equal importance, from which it follows that none has any. Moreover, each of these people is as guilty as the other (TRN, 22; CTOP, 12).
There need be no reason for being put to death, nor any right time. “Judges, witnesses, accused—[we are] all sentenced to death in advance” (TRN, 28; CTOP, 17). And there is no appeal.
Life is a death sentence; the truth of which it is the aim of Caligula’s divinity to bring home to his subjects. “Kill him slowly, so that he may experience dying” (TRN, 86; CTOP, 58).
Execution relieves and liberates. It is universal, fortifying, and fair in both precept and practice. One dies because one is guilty. One is guilty because one is Caligula’s subject. Now everyone is a subject of Caligula. Therefore, everyone is guilty. From which it follows that everyone dies. It’s only a matter of time and patience (TRN, 46-7; (TOP, 29).
In an absurd world, life is a gift ever on loan. We should not take it for granted nor act as if our success or our future is assured. Such is the sublime wisdom that Caligula teaches. As for Caligula himself, “who would dare to condemn [him], in this world without a judge in which no one is innocent!” (TRN, 107; CTOP, 72).6
THE OTHERS
To be one of Caligula’s subjects is to have your world undermined, to have your values and beliefs mocked and discarded, and to face the possibility that at any moment whatever you hold dear may be taken from you—your life included.7 For the subjects of Caligula, the reality of their situation confronts them at every turn.
The existential parameters of an absurd world arc dramatized by Cherea, Scipio, and Caesonia, those alter egos of Caligula, who carry the burden of the dramatic action precisely because they so deeply share aspects of Caligula’s experience. Helicon, the Patricians, and the servants, on the other hand, like the chorus in a Greek tragedy, represent ordinary humanity. Their fate is no less affected by Caligula’s metaphysical revolution, but their preoccupations and deliberations are more sketched than developed.
Caesonia speaks for the body and for love. She has “never had any other god than her body” (TRN, 19; CTOP, 10). She is of the moment, the immediate. She expresses the joys and sufferings of life without reflective overlay or grand design. Reminiscent of Meursault, she is prototypical of Camus’s feminine literary characters, having appeared as Marie Cardona in The Stranger and as Martha and Lucianne in A Happy Death, and reappearing as Maria in “The Misunderstanding,” Victoria in “The State of Siege,” and perhaps even Rieux’s mother in The Plague.8 Like these characters, her attitudes and values are simple and direct. “There is good and bad, high and low, justice and injustice.” “At my age one knows that life is not good. But if
suffering is on the earth, why wish to add to it?” (TRN, 27, 26; CTOP, 15, 14). Similarly, with her advice. What Caligula needs in order to come to terms with Drusilla’s death, she tells him, “is a good, long sleep. Let yourself relax and, above all, stop thinking. I’ll stay by you while you sleep. And when you wake, you’ll find the world’s got back its savor” (CTOP, 16). No great adventures or flights of the spirit; but a naturalness and simplicity, pervaded by a maternal care that nurtures and an acceptance of aging that consoles.
Scipio too embodies a commitment to nature, but it is a poet’s nature, not a woman’s. It is the natural world, whose expression is embodied in literature. With Wordsworth, he seems to believe that “One impulse from a vernal wood / May teach you more of man, / Of moral evil and of good / Than
all the sages can.” He writes of “a certain harmony . . . between one’s feet and the earth,” and observes that “everything . . . takes on the appearance of love.” But, unlike Caesonia, this is an emotion to be dreamed of and written about, speaking more to the imagination than to the body.
In wandering and reverie, Scipio believes that nature soothes the spirit, revives the body, and frees the mind from concern for recognition and advancement. He advises Caligula to trust in nature, which “has cured wounds more serious” than those from which the emperor suffers (TRN, 55; CTOP, 35). But, though “the same fire burns in both our hearts” (CTOP, 56), Caligula has been forever cast out of the edenic relation to nature that he had once shared with Scipio, by his encounter with the absurd. He has left Scipio, “following him as usual,” but incapable of sharing that insight by which he has been sundered in two. Caligula had “wanted to be a just man.” He had told Scipio “that life is not easy, but that there was religion, art, love to carry us along” (TRN 19; CTOP 10). And Scipio continues to embody the vision they once shared—so much so that, in the latest editions of the play (where Camus has Scipio’s character assume a more mature aspect), Scipio finds that he “cannot be against him” (TRN, 83), even though Caligula had had Scipio’s father put to death. Scipio thus refuses to participate in the assassination of one “who so greatly ressembles” him, and whom he now believes he understands (TRN, 101 ).9 All he can do is absent himself from the collective decision whose necessity he recognizes, while retreating to a restorative nature that is unable to counter Caligula’s passion.10
Cherea is less poetic, more practical. His focus is on how people can live together. He shares some of the metaphysical concerns of Caligula, but tempers them with a feel for others, and for the conditions that make social relations possible. Having wished, perhaps like Camus himself, to have been “left to [his] books” (CTOP, 6)” he was forced by the emperor’s actions to become involved with politics. “I desire and need security,” he tells Caligula. “Most men are like me. They are incapable of living in a universe in which the most bizarre thought can become a reality at any moment. … I feel like living and being happy, [and] I believe that by pushing the absurd to its logical conclusions one can be neither of them” (TRN, 77, 78; CTOP, 51).
Cherea thus focuses the metaphysical and moral challenge posed by Caligula.