Without here dwelling on the special problems raised by “The Renegade,” Mlle. Bree’s observation further suggests the conflicts with which Camus found himself embroiled as European leftists strove to make sense of their recent past and find a strategy by which to bring about greater social justice. It is here that the conflict with Sartre and his Temps Modernes group must be situated.
Our Philosophers
“The Fall involved in the beginning [of the process of conception] a series of attacks—or ironic counter-attacks—directed at those appropriately called ‘intellectuals of the left,’ designated .
. . [among others] by the formula: ‘our philosophers'” (TRN, 2206).
By “our philosophers,” Camus no doubt has in mind “our existentialists,” of whom he wrote: “When they accuse themselves, one can be certain that it is in order to overwhelm others: judge-penitents” (TRN, 2002). Faced with almost transcendent historical evils, but shorn of transcendent solutions, they long for a communal salvation. How to come to terms with the dilemmas of our era? Existentialism, for Camus, attests to a profound cultural malaise. “Their only excuse lies in this terrible epoque. Something in them ultimately aspires toward servitude.
They dreamed of arriving there by a noble pathway strewn with thoughts. But there is no royal road for servitude” (TRN, 2002).
Rather, existentialism bears witness to a profound withering of the human spirit, of its capacity for concrete values such as fraternity, loyalty, and love. Abstract brotherhood as compensation for abstract nausea has replaced the most immediate of sensuous attachments. Suggestive of their representative situation is this observation about “the men of today,”
which Camus offers in
“The Witness of Liberty”: “At least one thing which most among them will never be able to find again … is the strength of love which has been taken from them. That is why they are ashamed” (A/I, 262).
Camus feels a gaping personal lacuna generating an undercurrent of guilt directed toward an undefined but salvific brotherhood. This is but a very particular version of the pervasive metaphysical malady of the modern era whose theoretical development it was the task of The Rebel to explore.
Existentialism is in a theoretical bind here, for Camus, because its ontological defense of absolute freedom has made an analysis of our historical circumstances quite difficult and a practical strategy aiming toward the institutionalization of brotherhood seemingly inconceivable. Such, at least, is Camus’s suggestion and challenge to Sartre in his response to the Temps Modernes criticism of The Rebel. On a more personal note, he comments: “Temps Modernes. They admit sin and reject grace—Thirst for Martyrdom.”
Counterattack
Whatever the status of Camus’s evaluation of the existentialists, a deeply personal side of his response to them clearly pervades The Fall. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that The Fall is best understood as his belated counterattack to the public debacle he suffered at the hands—or pens—of the Temps Modernes group. Warren Tucker counterposes passages from The Fall with indictments from Sartre and Jeanson.He notes the way both Clamence and Camus are said to manipulate style, practice guilt by association, betray a haughty superiority, present themselves as exemplary, merge seriousness with frivolity, and claim a sincerity that their actions betray.4 Lottman, commenting on Tucker’s analysis, suggests the rationale for the volume: “No more than his hero, Camus could not accept a defeat. He chose to reply through art. He did it by exposing himself, thereby removing himself from the judgment of others. ‘I am like they, of course, we’re in the same soup. Nevertheless I have an advantage, that of knowing it, which gives me the right to speak'” (Lottman, 565).
Whatever be the truth of the claim, Lottman has succinctly stated the strategy of the judge-penitent. He may, at least in part, be right. Studies of Camus’s life suggest many themes that find echoes in Clamence’s confession. Camus’s epigram makes explicit reference to this when it notes “that the author had portrayed himself and his acquaintances” (F, v). Certainly there was much in Camus’s life and character of which he was far from completely proud. As early as A Happy Death we see signs of a Camus torn by the attraction of display—presenting a public pose other than his private self and then feeling perhaps a bit ashamed or even guilty about it. Like Patrice in the novel, he even dreamed of leaving society for the isolation and innocence of a direct relation with nature, where he might be himself. This tension-conflict seems only to have been augmented, even if different in form, by his finding himself a celebrated author in Paris. The country hick had made it; and although he did not value material wealth and possessions, he was sorely tempted by his new-found prestige and reputation. He tended to show it off—his office with a balcony at Gallimard, for example—while at the same time disliking both the pretensions of the literary establishment and his own inclinations to “play the game.”
In that early novel there are also indications of his ambiguous attitude toward women, his inclination to use them for display or conquest, and his difficulty in dealing with his own jealousy.
These attitudes reappear in The Fall. In fact, they merge with a tendency to debauchery, which itself is presented as a logical development of “egoic” individualism. Here we can see how personal traits can become generalized for Camus, taking on larger theoretical significance.
The analysis of the logical and psychological—perhaps I should say, existential—roots of this character trait serve to develop a significant cultural critique. For what is debauchery but the
refusal to put limits on the ego? How different is this from Sartre’s doctrine of the absolute freedom of the “For Itself”? Of course, Sartre recommends authenticity, but the moral imperative seems gratuitous. Values bind me, according to Being and Nothingness, only to the extent that I allow them to do so. Previous decisions have only the force that my present commitments give them. Authentic self-activity acknowledges both the nonbindingness of previous commitments and the threat posed by The Other to my freedom. It is thus that love, for Sartre, reduces to the unstable balance of masochism and sadism. In short, The Other is always threatening to rob me of my freedom, while I am not bound to keep previous commitments. Here is an ontology of the absolute or atomic individual whose relations with others are essentially power struggles for domination—efforts to reduce The Other to objects in my world before they do the same to me. How far is this from true debauchery, which “is liberating because it creates no obligations?” (F, 103). Clamence, commenting on the continuity between his debauchery and his previous respectable existence —and suggesting its deeper ontological roots—observes, “In a sense, I had always lived in debauchery, never having ceased wanting to be immortal.
Wasn’t this the key to my nature and also a result of the great self-love I have told you about? Yes, I was too much in love with myself not to want the precious object of my love never to disappear” (F, 102).
The link between this abstract individualism and the desire for immortality is suggested by the development of Sartre’s first major theoretical work. Being and Nothingness, which begins with the doctrine of ontological freedom and concludes with the uselessness of man’s desire to be God. Nietzsche grasped the deeper historico-religious origins of the modern bourgeois deification of the self when he observed, “The Christian doctrine of’the salvation of the soul’ [means] in plain language: ‘the world revolves around me'” (PN, 619). But if the desire for immortality is the final expression of the doctrine of abstract individualism, debauchery is its ever present temptation. While Sartre’s philosophy comments extensively on the social relations that such an orientation inevitably brings in its wake, bourgeois society develops a complex network of contrived and hypocritical forms with which to hide and legitimize its essentially manipulative and destructive foundation.
The point of this excursus from the consideration of Camus’s use of The Fall as confessional is to make clear the danger of reading that work too narrowly as essentially a personal confession. Camus’s secretary noted, as reported in Lottman, “that the changes he was giving her regularly [in the manuscript] went in the direction of making La Chute less personal and more universal” (Lottman, 564). And that was not, I am arguing, simply to camouflage its personal content. Rather he was deeply interested in the profound theoretical questions reverberating through his personal life and his social quarrels as well as in the wider cultural and political conflicts that were threatening to drown European civilization in destructive wars and oppressive social orders.
What might be as fair to say—if not more so—was that the portrait here presented is very close to the image of Camus “as he was seen by” others, by bourgeois society, and especially by the “intellectuals of the left.” Perhaps, even more subtly to the point, it is the portrait of Camus as Camus comes to see them seeing him.5 By ironically presenting himself as they saw him, he is subtly presenting the world and others as they appear to them. Thus the hidden dynamics of their world is laid open to view. The question then becomes, Why does the world—and secondarily Camus—appear thus to them? What hidden dynamics of their character undergird their perception of others? Thus die narrative by which Camus presents himself in the guise of Clamence becomes a mirror through which bourgeois professionals can finally come face to face with themselves.