The Stranger may constitute a bridge between these two worlds. As we have noted, the physical world commits the murder, thus encroaching upon and destroying the domain of the human—though it is true that Meursault has unwittingly allowed himself to become its agent as a result of his failure of lucidity. However, the social world insists on extracting from him an admission of his malevolent intentions; that is, it refuses to admit the possibility of his basic innocence and insists upon his premeditated guilt. It must, in short, find a malevolent motive behind all “evil” intrusions into the world of the human.
Innocence has become increasingly problematic, implying as it does the contingency of the social drama. The alternative seems to be the demand for a transcendent upon which to ground the values of immediate existence. Experience being felt inadequate, the socialized individual increasingly yearns to be freed from the limitations of natural existence. Free communion with other natural creatures on an immediate or direct level is made impossible by society’s (and the individual’s) insistence upon transcendent moral standards. From the lofty heights of such purity, the natural individual cannot help but be found guilty. We are reminded of the argument in “Caligula”: “A man dies because he is guilty. A man is guilty because he is one of Caligula’s subjects. Now all men are guilty and shall die. It is only a matter of time and patience” (CTOP, 29).
On this point, there is little distance from Caligula to Jean-Baptiste Clamence—justice has been separated from natural innocence and the individual is seen from the perspective of the truth,
from which all are equally guilty; all that remains is for the guilt to be distributed so that all may feel their unworthiness and may humble themselves before some master. For the guilty only a master-slave relation is ultimately possible. To live freely would be to bear the weight of being held accountable for our actions, responsible for our choices. We would have to accept being judged bv the principles we professed and said we live by. But how could we really bear on our own the
weight of such judgment? We must instead find a strategy by which to disarm the potentially judging other.
The program of the judge-penitent emerges. “Is not the great thing that stands in the way of our escaping [personal judgment],” he says, “the fact that we are the first to condemn ourselves? Therefore, it is essential to begin by extending the condemnation to all, without distinction, in order to thin it out at the start” (F, 131).
The psychology of dependence removed of its transcendent master insists upon universal guilt as the means to that self-abasement that is the only possible expression of the will to dominate of a person who cannot bear the burden of freedom in a world without gods. It expresses the attitude of the judge passing judgment on life from a nonexistent perspective that he seeks to reestablish through the actualization of universal guilt. With the possibility of innocence denied, revolt too becomes impossible. Camus thinks he has unmasked with Clamence a uniquely contemporary formulation of the spirit of enslavement. The purpose of The Fall is thus suggested: to reveal the roots that feed the metaphysical perversion of the intellect whose logic it has been the task of The Rebel to lay bare. Let us now furrow through that psychic subsoil in search of more fertile ground for the nurturing of human dignity.
11
The Fall: A Study in Metaphysical Pathology
Dialogue on a human level is less costly than the gospel preached by totalitarian religions in the form of a monologue dictated from the top of an isolated mountain. On the stage as in the city, monologue precedes death (L’HR, 350; R, 283-4).
IN THE VESTIBULE
“May I, monsieur, offer my services without running the risk of intruding?” (F, 3). Dripping with cynicism toward the establishment and with condescension toward the “worthy ape who presides over [its] fate,” Jean-Baptiste Clamence thus deferentially introduces himself to his interlocutor and to us. Self-effacingly he offers to plead our case to the authorities, into whose graces he has insinuated himself, in this world without transcendent appeal where the lawyer has replaced the priest.
The Mexico City is a disreputable bar in the red-light district of Amsterdam where travelers can indulge themselves in the comforts of anonymity. Lying in wait for us there is Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a seemingly distinguished professional who pretends to be above the dissipation that surrounds us in this no-man’s-land on the fringes of polite society. His presence and our interest suggest an openness to slightly shady adventures, as well as a susceptibility to feelings of guilt for past transgressions or present inclinations. All is probably not as it seems, nor are we as we would like publicly to present ourselves.
Of course, Clamence does not approach everyone. He is selective. Having “set up [his] office in a bar in the sailors’ quarter,” he attends to “the people of quality [who] always wind up
[there] at least once . . . [lying] in wait particularly for the bourgeois, and the straying bourgeois at that” (F, 138—9; TRN, 1545). Are they not likely to feel uncomfortable there, not to say guilty? But guilty before whom, one might ask? What are these services that he is offering? And what is his motive in being so accommodating? In any case, we may certainly assume that not all those he approaches avail
themselves of his generosity. Yet some are intrigued, and it is with them—or us—that he strikes up a conversation.
From Messieur to Mon Cher, slowly Jean-Baptiste insinuates himself into our confidence. Are we not made of the same stuff as he? Do we not share the same desires, anxieties, opinions, aspirations? What are we really like when we shed our cloak of respectability? Have we not dreamed “of being a complete man who managed to make himself respected . . . half Cerdan, half de Gaulle”?1 Have we never dreamed “of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone”? Have we not sometimes “felt vulnerable and open to public accusation,” thus hastening “to judge [others] in order not to be judged” ourselves? (F, 54, 55, 78, 80). Are we not thus imperceptibly drawn into the self-accusatory web woven by Clamence’s confession turned indictment?
But Mexico City is the vestibule, a sort of limbo where this modern-day Virgil lurks, ready to lead his prey along “Amsterdam’s concentric canals” spiraling deep into a “bourgeois hell . . .
peopled with bad dreams” (F, 14). For the journey through Amsterdam is a spiritual voyage into the depths of our soul, where outer surroundings help set an inner moral tone.
In the most obvious sense, the monologue recapitulates Clamence’s fall from the height of respectability in Parisian society, where he had made his name defending the unfortunate. What more noble calling! Yet a worm at the core of his character and lifestyle eats away at his self-confidence. Along the contrived pathways of his confession into the convoluted recesses of his mind we follow Clamence as he reawakens his memory, recapturing his past in order to construct a “portrait which is the image of all and of no one” (F, 139).
If the dramatic success of the “recit” lies in the subtle identification of reader with confidant, following upon the more explicit suggestions of identity between confidant and Clamence—
who prefers to “confess to those who are like [him] and who share [his] weaknesses” (F, 83)—the full import of the monologue consists in Clamence’s mirroring the essential inner dynamics of our (bourgeois) character, by whose previously hidden motives we are vitalized to succeed at the expense of others—motives that our ideology seeks to hide from us as well as from others. The Fall “is in fact a portrait, but not of an individual; it is the aggregate of the vices of our generation in their fullest expression” (F, v). A major step in understanding our era, according to Camus, lies in a grasp of the character of this noble Parisian lawyer.
LOST INNOCENCE
Coiled like a serpent at the heart of this modern confessional lies the person of Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a “false prophet for mediocre times” (F, 117; TRN, 1533). The enigma of the volume is the enigma of his character and of its contrived and devious confession, in which nothing is as it seems, not even his identity. Our judge-penitent, the quintessential Parisian bourgeois, the incarnation of respectability, specialized in noble cases. He defended the victims, railing at the injustices of daily life, often sacrificing obvious personal advantages in the process. He was truly above reproach in his professional life. While “the judges punished and the defendants expiated … I freely held sway bathed in a light of Eden” (F, 27). Having risen “to that supreme summit where virtue is its own reward,” he “enjoyed [his] own nature to the fullest” (F, 23, 20). Thus his “profession satisfied most happily that vocation for summits,” cleansing him “of all bitterness toward [his] neighbor, whom [he] always obligated without ever owing him anything” (F, 25). From “well above the human ants,” he