CAMUS B E T W E E N YES AND NO: A FRESH LOOK AT THE MURDER IN

I ' E T R A N G E R

In an interview whichhe gave on December 20, 1959, shortly before his death, Camus was asked whether he could indicate any aspect of his work which he felt had been neglected by French critics. He replied: "La part obscure, ce qu'il y a d'aveugle et d'instinctif en moi. La critique frangaise s'int6resse d'abord aux id6es. ''1 Much earlier, in the section o f L e Mythe

de Sisyphe (1942) devoted to la creation absurde, he had suggested certain salient features of his technique as a novelist and adumbrated a possible critical approach to his work. The creative writer, as he presented him in this work, shunned ratiocination: his rational faculty was essentially engaged only in the control and organisation of the raw material of personal experience, predominantly irrational in character: "L'oeuvre absurde illustre le renoncement de la pens6e ~t ses prestiges et sa r6signation h n'6tre plus que l'intelligence qui met en oeuvre les apparences et couvre d'images ce qui n'apas de raison." (E. 177) The emphasis which Camus here places upon mere description of physical appearances in no way implies the demotion of meaning. On the contrary, for him "6crire en images plut6t qu'en raisonnements" (E.178) clearly means deploying descriptions which are heavily charged with symbolic significance. The "message enseignant de l'apparence sensible" (E.178) has great impor- tance in an authentic work of art which, is "un morceau taill6 dans l'exp6rience, une facette du diamant oO l'6clat int6rieur se r6sume sans se l imi te r . . , oeuvre f6conde ~ cause de tout un sous-entendu d'exp6rience dont on devine la richesse." (E. 176) In his own work the substratum of personal experience underlying the imagistic and symbolic surface- patterns is to a great extent made up of memories of childhood and adolescence. It would seem that a small number of images of seminal importance in his creative life had engraved themselves upon his memory with peculiar vividness, and that part of the exercise of his craft as a novelist consisted in transposing them into a variety of fictional contexts. These images are referred to in the preface which he wrote for the 1954 edition of l 'Envers et l'endroit: . . . "je sais cela, de science certaine, qu'une oeuvre d'homme n'est rien d'autre que ce long cheminement pour retrouver par les d6tours de l'art les deux ou trois images simples et grandes sur lesquelles le coeur, une premi6re fois, s'est ouvert." (E. 13) The restriction in the number of these images, their simplicity and their recurrence in Camus's work contributes towards that impression of uniformity and consistency, "une r6p6tition monotone et passionn6e" (E.174), which he himself distinguished as one of the hall-marks of classical art. 2 The deeply subjective origin of these images in a repetition- compulsion in Camus's psyche is balanced by the high degree of conscious stylisation which characterises his use of them. The term he uses,

5 24 Dennis Fletcher- A Fresh Look at the Murder in "L'Etranger"

"re-cr6ation", adequately conveys both these aspects of his novelistic technique. The essential aesthetic distance is maintained, but the" correc- tion" or "re-cr6ation" of reality is given an orientation dictated by the artist's constant fixation upon certain specific incidents and scenes recaptured from the past: "l'essence du roman est dans cette correction perp6tuelle, toujours dirig6e dans le m6me sens, que l'artiste effectue sur son exp6rience" (L 'Homme rdvoltde: E.668).

If Camus's work is considered as "l'histoire de ses nostalgies et de ses tentations", as he described it in L'Etd (E.864), this element of spiritual autobiography might be expected to take the form of recurrent evocation of his past in mental pictures, the concrete details of which have been adjusted so as to meet the needs of his fiction and to veil their source in his personal experience. This "redistribution d'616ments puis6s dans le r6el" invites critical speculation on the original form and pattern of these elements before the creative act of redistribution took place. If the exponents of la crdation absurde "s'essaient h mimer, h r6p6ter et ~t recr6er la r6alit6 qui est la leur (E. 174), a valid approach to L'Etranger would be to view it in this critical perspective. Indeed, the novel might well be taken as an allegory of the emergence of Camus's artistic vocation. The murder episode, which has proved notoriously unamenable to interpreta- tion on a realistic or naturalistic level, would then appear as a symbolic representation of a crucially important aspect of this process and the drama enacted upon the beach might be considered as the re-creation of a stage in the author's own spiritual and intellectual evolution.

In L'Etranger there are distinct traces of what is perhaps the dominant form of nostalgia in Camus' s work: the yearning to return to the paradise of childhood. Camus himself was well aware of the prevalence of this strain in much of the literature which had engaged his critical attention. In an appendix to Le Mythe de Sisyphe he remarks upon "la m61ancolie particuli~re/~ Kafka. La m6me, h la v6rit6, qu'on respire dans l'~euvre de Proust, ou dans le paysage plotinien: la nostaigie des paradis perdus" (E.206). Not only is the Proustian recapture of past experience stated as an artistic objective in a later essay, in L'Envers et l'endroit, the basic technique employed to achieve this aim is also presented: "Recueillir settlement la transparence et la simplicit6 des paradis perdus: dans une image" (E.28). The autobiographical essay from which these words are taken, Entre oui et non, illustrates the technique itself and is an invaluable source of the personal experience, distilled and encapsulated in "deux ou trois images simples et grandes", which was to appear in the form of other images in his fiction, which without being identical, betray a distinct family likeness to the mental pictures directly evoked by the reminiscent essayist. One of the most powerful of these images, to which the novelist had applied the necessary artistic "correction", is that of Meursault's fatal encounter with the Arab.

The key-factor in the network of associations upon which, the personal

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symbolism of the murder depends is designated by a key-word of Camusian vocabulary: l'indiffOrence. In Entre oui et non Camus vividly presents 'Tindiff6rence de cette mbre 6trange" from whom he had inherited what he referred to (in the 1958 preface t o L ' E n v e r s et l 'endroit) as "cette profonde indiff6rence qui est en moi comme une inflrmit6 de nature". This quality which he shared with his mother underlined his affinity, and hers, with their fellow-Algerians. And particularly with the autochtonous Arab population. The link between the Arab murdered by Meursault, the caf6-proprietor in Entre oui et non and Camus's presenta- tion of his mother in this essay can be illustrated by three short quotations: one from L 'E t ranger , the second from the essay and the third from a manuscript draft of it.

In his detailed study o f L'Indif fOrence dans l' ceuvre de Camus (Sher- brooke, Qu6bec, 1971). Claude Treil has this to say (p. 141):

"II y a chez Camus, une indiffdrence propre aux Arabes. Dans L'Etranger, c 'est celle du groupe dont fait partie celui que tuera Meursault: "Ils nous regardaient en silence mais h leur mauiSre, ni plus ui moins que si nous 6tions des pierres ou des arbres m o r t s . . . Ils 6talent toujours/ t la m6me place et ils regardaient avec la m6me indiff6rence l 'endroit que nous venions de quitter."

To the other examples of the same phenomenon cited by Treil might be added the blank stare of the Arab in the deserted caf6 o f Entre oui et non: "Accroupi dans un coin, le patron du caf6 semble regarder mon verre rest6 vide, une feuille de menthe au f o n d . . . J'entends l'Arabe respirer tr6s fort, et ses yeux brillent dans la pdnombre" (E.24). This scene, it would seem, is the product of Camus's transfiguring imagination at work upon the plastic reality of a more intimate experience conveyed, in the manuscript draft of the essay, in the form of another image: "Cette indiff6rence/~ toute chose, cette non-pensde qui se nourrissait du sentiment confus d'une rude (?) existence, c'6tait h la v6rit6 ce qu'il avait d6couvert chez sa m~re, un soir, off tout enfant il l'avait surprise dans le noir fixant anormalement le p a r q u e t . . . " (E.1215)

Camus's mother, insofar as she is symbolic of the entire Algerian background of his early life, stands for the undifferentiated unity of the natural universe as it appeared to his young eyes. The resolutely material- ist view of the adult Camus, who sees the universe in terms of the interpenetration of exclusively physical phenomena is matched by the childhood vision of a world characterised by a sort of Camusian Great Chain of Being, the links of which are made up of manifestations of indifference, which range from the supreme indifference of the natural universe to various mitigated and less noble forms of human unawareness and lack of concern. Rocks, stones, trees all have their place in this scheme of things, as do the Arabs: from the Moorish inhabitants of the desert who blend with the grandeur and nobility of their environment ("A force d'indiff6rence et d'insensibilit6, il arrive qu'un visage rejoigne la grandeur

526 Dennis Fletcher - A Fresh Look at the Murder in "L'Etranger"

min6rale d 'un paysage" [E.80: N o c e s " L e D6sert"].) to the nondescript Arabs who trail after Raymond and Meursault and exhibit, rather, "le bonheur stupide des cailloux", 3 the impassivity of "troncs de figuier". 4 But it is his mother who, above all, symbolises for Camus the desolating sense of estrangement generated by an indifferent universe and who awakens "le sentiment de l 'absurde" which was to be articulated in the eloquent fictions of her son. It is she who, by her impermeability to the child's craving for demonstrative affection, creates in him a sense of solitude which is later given a cosmic dimension of existential ddlaisse- ment : "L' indi f fFrence de cet te more dtrange. [Author's italics] I1 n 'y a que cette immense solitude du monde qui m'en donne la mesure" (E.26). The "confrontation d6sesp6r6e entre l'interrogation humaine et le silence du monde" to which Camus refers in the introduction to L ' H o m m e rOvoltO (E.415) is but the loneliness writ large of a son desperately searching for love in his mother 's eyes. The child is father of the man, and the intellectual's discussion of a deus abscondi tus is related to the concrete image which he has carried over into his adult life from childhood: "I1 revoyait ce fler (?) visage d6form6 par les tides et cherchait avec angoisse dans les yeux ronds et noirs les mouvements de ce Dieu qui reposait en elle" (E.1216) s

The discussion of suicide in Le M y t h e de S isyphe could hardly be less academic, for it is apparent from Camus's autobiographical writings that the indifference of the mother was profoundly ambivalent in its influence upon her son. In the first flash-back o f Entre oui et non, Camus presents the huddled figure of his mother, an inert mass verging it would seem, upon the state of brute being, and he recalls his own frightened reaction as a forlorn child: . . . "I1 a mal h pleurer devant ce silence animal" (E.25). Here, the gulf between mother and son seems almost unbridgeable. But this is in contrast with another of the flash-backs in Entre oui et non which depicts an intimate, almost symbiotic, relationship. Camus recalls an entire night spent lying in silence on a bed beside his mother, who had been injured by an unknown assailant, and this "image d6sesp6rante et tendre d 'une solitude/~ deux" suggests "les liens qui l 'attachaient ~t sa m6re" (E.27). " L a transparence et simplicit6 des paradis perdus" starkly evoked in this image brings, in retrospect, thoughts of death to the exile sitting in the Arab caf6:"I1 y a une vertu dangereuse dans le mot simplicit6. Et cette nuit je comprends qu'on puisse vouloir mourir parce que, au regard d'une certaine transparence de la vie, plus rien n 'a d ' importance" (E.27-28). The mute communion between mother and son, "seuls contre tous" , that "bonheur muet" which Camus confessed shortly before his death had always held such an appeal for him, 6 reaches an aching intensity which seems to require suicide as an exquisite "consummation devoutly to be wished". In the same way, Meursault will wait "que tout soit consomm6, 7 will welcome a death which is virtually no more than a delayed self- immolation, a death which will bring reunion with a physical universe

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which has taken on in his thoughts the benign aspect of his mother's indifference and which offers the prospect of becoming "la terre couleur de sang qui roulait sur la bi6re de maman, la chaire blanche des racines qui s'y m61aient" (BL.36/7-8).

The mother of Entre oui et non represents for the emergent creative genius of her son a dangerous temptation: the temptation to succumb to a regressive inclination towards a lower form of being. Her completely unreflective existence, analogous to the mindless neo-paganism of the sun-worshipping younger generation to which her son belonged, symbol- ises the force of inertia which acts as a curb upon the development of the artist as a young man. The insidious and insistent appeal perniciously exercised upon the budding intellectual ("elle n'6tait 1/t que pour l'aider s'opposer fi ce nouveau lui-m6me si lentement et si gravement construit" [E. 1214].) conduced to the growth of a tenacious form of nostalgia which can be identified in the adult Camus as a death-wish, the desire, expressed in the 1958 introduction to L'Envers et l 'endroit, to " r e v e n i r . . . vers cette pattie tranquille ol) la mort m6me est un silence heureux" (E. 13). This nostalgia for the paradise he had lost when he left Algiers, the "kingdom" of his childhood and adolescence was a counter-irritant to be set against Paris, the paradise of French intellectuals, the place of "exile" which acted as a powerful stimulus, creating the tension which is at the heart of the absurd and which, in turn, generates the spirit of revolt which is the impulse behind so much of his creative activity.

In the fight of Camus's presentation ofl ' indiff~rence, it is not too difficult to view the confrontation between the vacuity ("la non-pens6e") of an illiterate mother and the brilliance of a gifted son as susceptible of an artistic transposition which would set at odds a "tronc de figuier", an underprivileged Algerian Arab and one of his better educated fellow- Algerians from among the colon population. It is not inconceivable that the regression towards some lower, more primal state of being, the fulfilment of a death-wish, might have been represented - either consciously or on a subliminal level- through the presentation of the image of an encounter of fateful significance between a pied noir and an indigenous inhabitant of Algeria, on a Mediterranean beach.

The beach and the events immediately preceding the murder of the Arab inL 'Etranger are represented in a way which is strongly reminiscent of the series of vignettes in Entre oui et non. During the second encounter with the two Arabs, Meursault describes the scene just after he has received the revolver from Raymond:

"Pourtant nous sommes rest6s encore immobiles comme si tout s'6tait referm6 autour de nous. Nous nous regardions sans baJsser les yeux et tout s'arr6tait ici entre lamer, le sable et le soleil, le double silence de la trite et de l'eau. J'ai pens6 fi ce moment qu'on pouvait tirer ou ne pas tirer." (BL.77/9-14).

Here, the sense of claustration ( " . . . comme si tout s'6tait referm6

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autour de nous"), the atmosphere of stillness and silence, recall both the "chambre du pass6" evoked in the earlier essay and the Moorish caf6. The effect which is conveyed is that of the frozen motion of a snap-shot, a moment taken out of time, "un instant suspendu dans l'6ternit6" (E.23). The idea of a confrontation involving a choice is underlined in the last sentence of the passage quoted above. The same idea is present in the description of Camus sitting alone with the Arab in the caf6 and evading the onus of decision-making. Whatever decision needs to be taken can be deferred until later: "Puisque cette heure est comme un intervalle entre oui et non,je laisse pour d'autres heures l'espoir ou le d6gofit de vivre" (E.28). The exile will continue to savour the mild euphoria induced by r~verie and memories of his early life, poised in a delicate balance between tiresome options.

Meursanlt's almost somnambulistic return to the scene of the two earlier encounters with the Arabs parallels the nostalgic mental journeying of the adult Camus in E n t r e ou i e t n o n , to scenes from his past: "Je pensais/~ la source fralche derribre le rocher. J'avais envie de retrouver le murmure de son eau, envie enfln de retrouver l'ombre et son repos." The powerfully magnetic features of the spot which draws Meursault to his death have their counterpart in the attractive forces operative in Camus's nostalgia as revealed in E n t r e ou i e t n o n . The "source" could here be very plausibly taken as a symbol of the maternal womb, and the "repos" as the inertia which is associated in a general way with both the pre-natal and post-mortal state and in a more particular way with the passivity of Camus's own mother. Other connective elements relate to more specific aspects of Camus's personal evocations. The gentle murmuring of the spring, relieving an otherwise oppresive silence, can be compared with the faint r6verie-inducing background of sound described in E n t r e ou i e t non:

"Au loin, est-ce le bruit de lamer? Le monde soupire vers moi dans un rythme long et m'apporte l'indiffdrence et la tranquillit6 de ce qui ne meurt pas" (E.24). The same sort of timeless peace ("une indiff6rence sereine et primitive/~ tout et/~ moi-m6me" [E.30]) is suggested by the sleep which gradually creeps over the young Camus as he lies beside his sick mother. The plenitude of"ce moment ob il avait senti les liens qui l'attachaient h sa m6re" grows out of the "grand jardin de silence ol) croissaient parfois les gdmissements apeur6s de la malade" (E.27). The antithesis between the fierce sunlight and the shade afforded by the rock, between the silence of the beach and the jabbering of Marie and Masson's wife finds a parallel in E n t r e o u i e t n o n . Camus, evoking his childhood, describes how he felt in a house silent as the tomb in which his mother sits immobile and oblivious of the gathering dusk and the sudden change brought about by the irruption of his grand-mother who does not believe in spoiling the child by sparing the rod (or, more accurately, the riding crop): "Tout /~ l'heure la vieille rentrera, la vie rena~tra: la lumi~re ronde de la lampe/~ p6trole, la toile cir6e, les cris, les gros mots. Mais maintenant, ce silence marque un temps

Dennis Fletcher - A Fresh Look at the Murder in "L'Etranger" 529

d'arrrt, un instant drmesurr" (E. 25-26). The charmed, timeless quality of the calm before the stormy entrance of his grandmother is the same as that of the second encounter between Meursault and the two Arabs. The sound of the flute played by one of the Arabs harmonises with this atmosphere and also contrasts with the "cymbales du soleil" (BL.80/2).

The second (sick-bed) scene evoked by Camus in Entre oui et non can also be related to Meursault's involvement with the Arabs. The overpowe- ring heat of the sun and its effect upon the hero of L'Etranger recall Camus, "tremp6 de sueur" (E.27) in the feverish atmosphere of the sick-room. The memory of the assault of which Mme. Camus has been the victim lingers on ("La peur du drame rrcent trainait dans la chambre surchauffr" [E.26]) in much the same way as the second encounter between Meursault, Raymond and the Arabs is charged with the tension generated by the earlier violent clash involving Masson and Raymond of which Meursault had been a witness. The tension peters out with the retreat of the Arabs, but not before the silent confrontation has been invested, in Meursault's account, with the quality of a tableau. Similarly, in the relevant passage of Camus's essay, the atmosphere of impending disaster created by the thought of the possible death of his mother is relieved by 'Timage drsesprrante et tendre d'une solitude h deux" (E.27) which the son takes with him into the realm of sleep.

The final confrontation between Meursault and his victim makes excellent sense if considered in the light of Camus's personal symbolism, as long as the symbolic significance one attaches to it is not required to fit an over-exact pattern of correlation. Camus himself has indicated a possible approach to this question: "Un symbole est toujours dans le grnrral et, si prrcise que soit sa traduction, un artiste ne peut y restituer que le mouvement: il n'y a pas de mot h mot. ''8 Following these guide-lines, one can interpret Meursault's overpowering impulse to reach the coolness of the spring, the shade of the rock as the force of instinct which intermittently drove Camus towards the infmitely appealing refuge from the responsibilities of adult life and particularly the tensions engendered by a clear-sighted view of the absurdity of the human condition. The lure of such a state of passivity is manifestly associated in Entre oui et non with the figure of the author's mother and the stultifying effect of the entire complex of influences for which she stands. At its most potent, this effect attains the dimensions of a death-wish, the got~t du nFant characteristic of the early Camus which is identifmble in his later work as a recurrent form of nostalgia. The Arab who blocks Meursault's access to his goal can be symbolically interpreted as the estranging aspect of the mother of Entre oui et non, with her seeming imperviousness to her child's love which discourages his yearning for blissful union and sends him into emotional exile.

ff particular attention is paid to the element of movement, as Camus suggests, the symbolic content of Entre oui et non can be related even

530 Dennis Fletcher - A Fresh Look at the Murder in "L'Etranger"

more closely to the murder in L'Etranger. The figure of the mother in her chair is counter-pointed by that of the Arab crouching in the dimly-lit car6. When she suddenly notices her son, she is startled, and her reaction is conveyed by the use of the style indirect libre: "I1 a Fair idiot/~ la regarder ainsi. Qu'il aille faire ses devoirs." Camu s continues: ' 'L' enfant a fait ses devoirs. I1 est aujourd'hui dans un caf6 sordide. I1 est maintenant un h o m m e . . . " (E.26). The movement of ideas here is balanced by that in the final paragraph of the essay:

"Etl' , 'Arabe qui se dresse devant moi me dit qu'il va fermer. I1 faut sortir. Je ne veux plus descendre cette pente si d a n g e r e u s e . . . Mais il faut briser cette courbe trop molle et trop facile. Et j 'ai besoin de ma luc id i t6 . . . Et puis, il y a des gens qui pr6f6rent regarder leur destin dans les yeux." (E.30).

The final sentence quoted here, it may be noted, echoes the earlier "Un homme souffre et subit malheurs sur malheurs. I1 les supporte, s'installe dans son destin" (E.28). If one considers the situation of Meursault on the beach, it may be seen that the act of homicide is precipitated by a reaction on the part of the Arab (i.e. drawing his knife) which can be compared to the parallel developments described in Entre oui et non ("La m6re a sursaut6" [E.26]: " L ' A r a b e . . . se dresse devant moi" [E.30]). The need for "lucidit6" which is consciously expressed by Camus at the end of Entre oui et non, when he decides that since he has become a man he must, however reluctantly, put behind him all the appealing dreams of child- hood, is expressed symbolically, it could be argued, in the murder-scene of L'Etranger by Meursault's action (in his case, represented almost as involuntary) in firing the first shot and at once seeing things clearly: "J'ai secou6 la sueur et le soleil. J'ai compr i s . . . " (BL.80! 12). The four shots which follow might be taken as the "malheurs sur malheurs" which Camus indicated in his essay as the passport which gives entry to man's estate: "Et c'6tait comme quatre coups brefs queje frappais sur la porte du malheur" (BL.80/16-17).

Meursault had been poised between "yes" and "no" ("J'ai pens6 ~ ce moment qu'on pouvait tirer ou ne pas tirer" [BL.77/13-14]); the report of the first shot from his revolver shattered this balance. "L'6quilibre du jour" which he destroyed recalls the final section, La Pierre d'Ariane, of another of Camus's autobiographical essays: Le Minotaure. The city of Oran is there presented as exercising the temptation of inertia in the particularly potent form of an Epicurean ataraxia, in which pain and desire are equally avoided through a sort of petrified suspension: "Oui, consen- tons fi la pierre quand il le f a u t . . . Au-dessus de lamer, silencieuse au pied des falaises rouges, il suffit de se tenir dans unjuste 6quilibre;/~ mi-distance des deux caps massifs qui, ~t droite et/~ gauche, baignent dans l'eau claire" (E.830-831). Camus puts an intimate aspect of his own personal expe- rience on to a more general plane, when he says: "I1 y dans chaque homme un instant profond qui n'est ni celui de la destruction ni celui de la cr6ation.

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I1 s'agit de ne ressembler h rien" (E.830). The fact that he is describing a particular temptation which was to be expressed under various fictional guises is made clear in a note which he added: "Je parle ici d'une certaine tentation parce queje crois qu'elle est de celles qu'il faut avoir reque. On sait mieux ensuite ce que vaut et ne vaut pas l'action."9 The section of Le Minotaure entitled Les Monuments makes the point even more clearly: one can choose intellectual and emotional petrification (i.e. become as stone) or else assert one's superiority to, and mastery over, the world of inorganic things (i.e. use stone purposefully). Man's role is not in doubt: " . . . changer les choses de place, c'est le travail des hommes; il faut choiser de faire cela on rien" (E.827). And, here again, Camus adds a personal note: "Cet essai traite d'une certaine tentation il faut l'avoir connue. On peut ensuite agir ou non, mais en connaissance de cause." The temptation of endless inaction attaining to an extra-temporal, semi- mystical plane of experience is suggested by the second encounter with the Arabs in L'Etranger. Just as the parallel examples of the "instant suspendu dans l'rternitr" and "l'intervalle entre oui et non", in the essay which has been analysed, are followed by the moment of decision, so the murder in L'Etranger marks a turning-point in Meursault's life.

In the way in which it is described, the murder could hardly be said, if interpreted literally, to reveal a conscious choice on Meursault's part between passivity and action. If the episode is taken as symbolic of a change in the orientation of Camus' s own life, however, it certainly can be considered in terms of a choice between alternatives. The ultimate effect of the murder is to project Meursault from a state of comparative mental torpor into a situation which generates in him an awareness of personal values which he is goaded (by the chaplain) into affirming with passion. This transformation from l 'homme quotidien to l 'homme absurde reflects Camus's own evolution towards a more reflective existence, the growth of the "nouveau lui-mrme" who was to become the writer of world-wide renown. The journey to consciousness, to revolt and solidarity with suffering humanity, via an "absurdist" view of existence begins on the other side of "la porte du malheur". The act of murder, insofar as it deprives Meursault of the happy prospect of lying on the beach in the shade of a rock, lulled by the sound of the spring, could be said to represent Camus's own separation from his mother-country and his liberation from all the infantile fixations which bred in him a sterile nihilism and inhibited his growth as a creative artist. To use the terms of Entre oui et non, it might be seen as showing Camus's acceptance of the necessity of maturity, his decision to "faire ses devoirs et d'accepter d'rtre un homme".

From another point of view, however, by kilting the Arab Meursault can be thought of as bringing about his own death and consequent reduction to that nothingness for which one side of Camus longed with an intensity as great as that of his more often emphasised amour de vivre. For Camus, the temptation of nihilism, the appeal, in Sartrean terms, of l'en-soir took as

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one of its forms the inclination to succumb to the powerfully adhesive 1~ influence of the maternal milieu. This manifested itself in the aspiration towards the fixity of an absolute, which can be seen, in Entre oui et non among other places, in Camus's attempts to recapture experiences from his past characterised by the suspension of chronos, mere duration, in favour of kairos, the fulfilled moment when the eternal breaks into the temporal, or, more morbidly, by a death-wish. Involvement with the course of historical events, subscribing to relative values, the free play of consciousness and the sustained determination to endure the inevitable sense of estrangement which it produces - all these "yea-saying" features of the pour-soi would find no place in an interpretation of Meursault's act which laid prime emphasis upon its suicidal implications.

It is in the very nature of symbolic representation to be multivocal. Thus, in the perspective of personal symbolism which has been adopted for this analysis, the murder in L'Etranger could be regarded as embo- dying, in fiction, and allegorically, a situation which could not possibly come about in fact: confronted with the necessity of saying "Yes" or "No" and saying both. Camus can, in his novel at least, indulge a certain Gidian aversion to choice, and have it both ways, for art, as he said, is "l'exigence d'impossible mise en forme". 11 In whichever way one interprets the killing of the Arab, it is difficult to ignore the influence of Camus's unconscious. The account of the murder given by Meursault excludes almost entirely the element of volition and reflects, in this way, how close it is to "la part obscure, ce qu'il y a d'aveugle et d'instinctif" in the author himself. The impossible dream of living a life which did not involve conscious choice may have been the stuff of which this part of Camus's fiction was made.

The University College of Wales, Aberystwyth

DENN1S FLETCHER

Notes

I. Albert Camus, Essais, Gallimard ,,Biblioth6que de la P16iade" (1965), p. 1925. (All subsequent references to page numbers in this edition will be in the form: E. 1925). Cf. Ad61e King, Camus (Edinburgh and London, 1964), p. 108: "Anglo-Saxon critics have often been more alert than French critics to this feature [mythic and Freudian elements] in Camus's fiction". This alertness has been recently exemplified in a richly perceptive work by Donald Laz6re, The Unique Creation of Albert Camus (New Haven and London, 1973); see, particularly, Ch. 4: "A psychoanalytic view".

2. Albert Camus, ThO&tre, rOcits, nouvelles, Gallimard, "Biblioth6que de la P16iade" (1962), p. 189: "l~tre classique, c'est en m6me temps se r6p6ter et savoir se r6p6ter".

3. This phrase occurs in Martha's final speech inLe Malentendu. 4. Carnus's friend, Jules Roy, in his La Guerre d'AlgOrie (1960) recalls (p. 18) how this term

was used in his childhood-days in Algeria by the colons to designate the Arabs. 5. The whole of the text (Fragment manuscrit pour Entre oui et non) from which this

quotation was taken is to be found at E.1213-1216. 6. R~ponses ~ Jean-Claude Brisville (1959): "M6me aujourd'huij'ai encore de grands dons

pour le bonheur muet" (E. 1920).

Dennis Fletcher - A Fresh L o o k at the Mm'der in "L ' f~ tranger" 533

7. L'Etranger, ed. G. BrEe and C. Lynes (London, 1964), p. 138, 11.26-27. (All subsequent references to this edition, in which the lines are conveniently numbered, will be in the form: BL. 138/26-27).

8. Le Mythe de Sisyphe, Appendix: "L 'espoir et l 'absurde dans l'oeuvre de Franz K',ffka", E.201.

9. Cf. Carnets I (mai 1935 - sept. 1937), p. 45" " L a tentation la plus dangereuse: ne ressembler ~ rien".

10. The characteristically Sartrean use of images of viscosity is prefigured in the first entry (May, 1935) in Camus ' s private note-books (Carnets 1, p. 15): " U n e certaine somme d'annEes vEcues misErablement suffisent ~ constmire une sensibilitE. Dans ce cas particulier, le sentiment bizarre que le ills porte ~ sa mare constitue toute sa sensibilitY. Les manifestations de cette sensibilitE dans les domaines les plus divers s 'expliquent sufflsamment par le souvenir latent, materiel de son enfance (un glu qui s 'accroche ~t l '~me)."

11. L 'Homme r~volt~, IV: "REvolte et art", E.674. The last entry in Carnets I (pp. 74-78) illustrates the interrelation between the Gidian leitmotive ofddnuement, disponibilitO, ferveur and aversion to choice in Camus 's treatment of the entre oui et non theme. The entry concludes: "Aujourd'hui n 'es t pas comme une halte entre oni et non. Mais il est oui et il est non. Non et revoke devant tout ce qui n 'es t pas les larmes et le soleil. Oui ~. ma vie dont je sens pour la premi6re fois la promesse ~. venir. Une annEe brfilante et dEsordonnEe qui se termine et l'Italie [Camus is in Fiesole]; l'incertain de l'avenir, mais la fibertE absolue ~ l'Egard de mon passe et de moi-m6me. L~ est ma pauvret6 et ma richesse unique. C'est comme si je recommengais la partie; ni plus heureux ni plus malheureux. Mais avec la conscience des mes forces, le mEpris de rues vanitEs, et cette fi6vre lucide, qui me presse en face de mon destin."