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JOURNAL OF CAMUS STUDIES

2015



JOURNAL OF CAMUS STUDIES

2015

General EditorPeter Francev

Camus Society2015



Journal of Camus Studies 2015

General Editor: Peter FrancevBook Reviews Editor: Eric B. Berg

Book Design: Helen Lea

Cover Design: Simon LeaThe purpose of the Journal of Camus Studies is to further understanding of

the work and thought of Albert Camus.

The Journal of Camus Studies is a publication of the Albert Camus Society.The material contained in this journal represents the opinions of the authorsand not necessarily those of the Albert Camus Society or anyone affiliated

with the society.

Copyright © 2015 by Camus Society

Copyright for all articles is retained with the author[s]. Single copies ofarticles may be made for research and/or private study without permission.

Permission for multiple copies should be sought from the author[s].Authors can be contacted through the society.

First Printing: 2015

www.camus-society.comwww.camus-us.com

ISBN: 978-1-326-46313-7



v

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION......................................................................................vii

DARK AUTHENTICITY: BEING TRUE TO YOURSELF AS EVIL,CRUEL, OR JUST A DOUCHEBAG ARSEHOLE...................................1

BY KIMBERLY BALTZER-JARAY

ORGANIZATION OF THE WORKS OF ALBERT CAMUS BY FIRSTIMAGES .......................................................................................................19

BY ERIC BERG

‘SUBTLE RELIGIOUS SYMBOLISM IN CAMUS’S NOVELS THESTRANGER AND THE PLAGUE’ ...........................................................27

BY PETER FRANCEV

THE NOBLE ART OF MISQUOTING CAMUS – FROM ITSORIGINS TO THE INTERNET ERA.......................................................37

BY GIOVANNI GAETANI

HOLDING FAST THE GOOD: CAMUS AND THE RETURN OFTHE ABSOLUTE........................................................................................51

BY LAWRENCE R. HARVEY

CALIGULA AND THE LETTERS TO A GERMAN FRIEND –DELIBERATIONS REGARDING THE ACTIONS OF CAMUS’SCHARACTERS IN REGARD TO THE ETHICS OF ABSURDITYAND THE CONCEPT OF METAPHYSICAL REBELLION................65

BY MACIEJ KAŁUŻA

CAMUS AND SPIRITUAL EXERCISES: TRAVEL, MEDITATIONAND PHILOSOPHY AS A WAY OF LIFE.............................................87

BY JOEL OWEN



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“PHENOMENOLOGICAL ETHICS” IS EITHER A MISNOMER ORWRONG: ON SHERMAN’S CAMUS ...................................................107

BY ZACHARY JAMES PURDUE

“I WOULDNT DO IT FOR NOTHIN”: THE QUESTION OF SUICIDEAND THE CAMUSIAN CRITICAL TRADITION IN CORMACMCCARTHY’S SUTTREE, WITH CONTINUAL REFERENCE TOKIERKEGAARD.......................................................................................121

BY TROY WELLINGTON SMITH

AUTISM AND ABSURDISM: PHILOSOPHICAL RAMIFICATIONSOF COGNITIVE CRITICISM IN CAMUS' L'ETRANGER .................133

BY ISABELLE WENTWORTH

REVIEW: WHEN PARIS WENT DARK: THE CITY OF LIGHT UNDERGERMAN OCCUPATION, 1940-1944, BY RONALD C. ROSBOTTOM....................................................................................................................161

BY ERIC B. BERG

REVIEW: ALBERT CAMUS AND THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OFTHE ABSURD: AMBIVALENCE, RESISTANCE, AND CREATIVITY ,BY MATTHEW H. BOWKER.................................................................165

BY PETER FRANCEV

REVIEW: THE FRENCH WRITERS’ WAR, 1940–1953, BY GISÈLLESAPIRO......................................................................................................169

BY MACIEJ KAŁUŻA

REVIEW: ALBERT CAMUS’S THE STRANGER: CRITICAL ESSAYS,EDITED BY PETER FRANCEV .............................................................179

BY JAMES WOELFEL

MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION GUIDELINES......................................187



vii

INTRODUCTION

On 13-14 November 2014, the Albert Camus societies UK and USAheld their annual joint conference in Bloomsbury, London, England.The two-day affair brought together Camus scholars from NorthAmerica and Europe. Such diverse panels as ‘Camus and Religion’

and ‘Camus and Ethics’ proved to provide for stimulating discussionfor two days. The culmination of such excellent scholarship is the journal before you.

Over the last year, the Journal of Camus Studies has undergonesome minor changes: as such, Simon Lea (ACS UK President) and Iwould like to welcome Dr. Eric Berg as our Book Reviews Editor, aswell as Professor George Heffernan and Dr. Kimberly Baltzer-Jarayas Associate Editors. Heffernan and Baltzer-Jaray replace MatthewBowker and Brent Sleasman, who stepped down as Associate Editorsin recent months. Simon and I wish them the very best. Also, wewould like to welcome Dr. Luke Richardson and Troy WellingtonSmith as part of the editorial team. With their expertise, the Journal ofCamus Studies will continue to flourish and be a beacon of researchand scholarship in the field of Camus studies.

Finally, the annual conference will once again take place in mid-November 2015 in Bloomsbury, London. Please check the Society’swebsite (www.camus-society.com) for details as they become

available.

Peter FrancevPresident of the Albert Camus Society US

Simon LeaPresident of the Albert Camus Society UK



37

THE NOBLE ART OF MISQUOTING

CAMUS – FROM ITS ORIGINS TO THEINTERNET ERA

by Giovanni Gaetani

‘The problem with quotes from the Internet is that ishard to verify their authenticity’

—Abraham Lincoln

‘Die Hälfte der Dummheit, die die Leute sagen, dassich gesagt hätte, habe ich nie gesagt’1

—Albert Einstein

‘Dans ce monde, il y a les témoins et les gâcheurs. Dèsqu'un homme témoigne et meurt, on gâche son

témoignage par les mots, la prédication, l'art, etc.’2

—Albert Camus, Carnets

1 Of course Einstein never said something similar to this sentence. I ironically wroteit in German to translate the following quote that one can easily find on Internet: ‘Inever actually said half the idiocies people said I did’.2 Albert Camus, Œuvres complètes, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2006-2008, II, p. 1008,(I translate): ‘In this world there are witnesses and bungler. After a man witnessedand died, one wastes his testimony with words, predication, art, etc’.



THE NOBLE ART OF MISQUOTING CAMUS – FROM ITS ORIGINS TO THE I NTERNET ERA

38

Misquoting Camus Before the Internet

Camus has always been worried about misquotes, long before thecoming of Internet – that is, long before people started to put his faceand his name next to various existentialist nonsenses and unlikelymystical quotes.

In July 1942, referring himself to a negative review of L'Étranger written by André Rousseaux and appeared on the right-wingnewspaper Le Figaro, Camus complained in his Notebooks: ‘three yearsto make a book, five lines to ridicule it – and the misquotes’3.Similarly, the 13th December 1957 while in Stockholm for the NobelPrize ceremony, another inattentive journalist dramaticallymisquoted Camus again, putting in his mouth the famous sentence ‘Ibelieve in justice, but I would defend my mother before justice’4,while the actual sentence was different and more detailed5: ‘In thismoment bombs are thrown in the tramways of Alger. My mothercould end up in one of that tramways. If this is justice, I prefer mymother’6. Basing themselves on this misquote, French and Algerian

3 Writing then an unpublished letter to the same journalist, he wrote also: ‘Youwould understand better what I am saying if I point out to you that the only quote ofyour article is wrong [...] and that it allows some arbitrary deductions in this way’.Here is the original French text, Albert Camus, Œuvres complètes, cit., II, 952: ‘Troisans pour faire un livre, cinq lignes pour le ridiculiser - et les citations fausses’. ‘Voussentirez mieux ce que j'avance si je vous précise que la seule citation de votre articleest fausse […] et qu'elle fonde ainsi des déductions illégitimes’.4 For a brief but detailed history of those days in Sweden cf. Olivier Todd, AlbertCamus. Une vie, Gallimard, Paris, 1966, chapter Le prix à payer, pp. 950-976.5 Here the exact sentence that will appear on Le Monde of 19 December 1957, that is,six days after the meeting with the students at Stockholm: ‘En ce moment, on lancedes bombes dans les tramways d’Alger. Ma mère peut se trouver dans un de cestramways. Si c’est cela, la justice, je préfère ma mère’. And here instead the misquoteof Dominique Birmann (Albert Camus, Œuvres complètes, cit., IV, p. 289): ‘J’aitoujours condamné la terreur. Je dois condamner aussi un terrorisme qui s’exerceaveuglément dans les rues d’Alger par exemple, et qui un jour peut frapper ma mèreou ma famille. Je crois à la justice, mais je défendrai ma mère avant la justice’. Cf.

Jeanyves Guérin, Smarrimenti algerini di un ‘ giusto’, in Francofonia, issue 65,Florence, fall 2013, pp. 33-48.6 At this regard it is interesting to report here the testimony of Carl GustavBjurström, Swedish translator of Camus who was present at the Uppsala conference:‘La formulation " Entre la justice et ma mère, je choisis ma mère " est à la foisinexacte et tronquée. Si ma mémoire est bonne, il a dit : " En ce moment on lance des



GIOVANNI GAETANI

39

critics in unison destroyed Camus, accusing him of being nothing buta poor and selfish moralist who would have chosen his personal

interests and loved ones before the glorious justice, while insteadCamus' message was actually the following: in name of theirpersonal idea of justice, Algerian terrorists legitimise themselves tokill innocent people in a tramway of Algeria with a bomb; my mothercould be one of them, an innocent person among the others; if this iswhat terrorists call justice, I defend my mother – and all the otherinnocent people like her – against terrorists' idea of justice.7

The real importance of misquotes – and mistranslation as well –is undervalued. Whether they are big or small, hidden or manifest,made in bad or in good faith, they are always compromising becausetheir inevitable destiny is to generate false commonplaces to be usedeither for or against the author. Indeed, while a specialist canprobably detect at first glance the misquote or the mistranslation, theaverage reader – that is, the vast majority of an author's audience – iscondemned to believe to what he sees, no matter how disappointingit is. One example above all: the English translation of L'HommeRévolté by Anthony Bower, published by one of the most important

Anglophone editor, Penguin Book. There is only one word to describethis translation: a disaster.8 But the average Anglophone reader, whoprobably does not speak French nor is able – or want to – check theoriginal French text, will simply not realise it. The only chance is that

bombes dans les tramways d'Alger. Ma mère peut se trouver dans un de cestramways. Si c'est cela la justice, je préfère ma mère. " C'est vrai qu'il est "sentimental " de dire qu'on préfère sa mère à la justice. En tant qu'écrivain,l'expression de sa position était beaucoup plus nette : que ce soit pour une bonnecause ou pour une mauvaise, le terrorisme reste le terrorisme. Lancer des bombes aumilieu de gens dont le seul tort est d'exister est inadmissible. Cela dit, je crois que,sur le coup, cette phrase est passée inaperçue dans le mouvement du débat. Etpersonne n'a alors prévu l'exploitation qu'on allait en faire. En France, c'étaitdifférent : l'affaire d'Algérie avait déjà provoqué un ressentiment contre Camus, àqui on reprochait une attitude très timorée. Ainsi retranscrits, ses propos ont faitl'effet d'une bombe’. Cf. http://www.gallimard.fr/catalog/entretiens/01002289.htm7 There is a similar quote from Camus' Notebooks which helps us to understand hispoint of view on the question. Speaking to a friend who "converted" to Marxism,Camus said: ‘Écoutez, Tar. Voilà le vrai problème : quoiqu'il arrive, je vous défendraitoujours contre les fusils de l'exécution. Vous, vous serez obligé d'approuver qu’onme fusille. Réfléchissez à cela’. Albert Camus, Œuvres complètes, cit., II, p. 1076.8 Cf. the appendix to this article.




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he casually ends up on Konrad Bieber's article9 – an unlikelycircumstance, since this article has been written in French in 2001 by

a Camus specialist for other Camus specialists on a francophonerevue of Camus studies (sic!).The point is that such problems does not affect only the general

audience, but also the academic one. Indeed, the commonplaceslowly generated by a singlemisquotes/mistranslation/misinterpretation so often has a kind ofboomerang effect: the same scholar who ignored it in the first place,considering it a manifest idiocy which no one could ever believe in,will face it ten years later, after that this same idiocy had all the timeto grow and to deeply put down roots in the public opinion. It is thecase, for example, of the legend of Camus' conversion to Christianity,poorly threw back in 2000 by the American Methodist pastorHoward Mumma in his book Albert Camus and the Minister : apartfrom a microscopic, passing remark of Ronald Aronson10, no one hasever criticized it at the very beginning, reason why now this legendhas become a matter of fact for many inexpert readers – even in theacademic milieu.11

Let us make an even more particular example of misquote, inorder to understand how complex and imperceptible they can besometimes. Jean Sarocchi – old Catholic French critic of Camus,literary hated by the most part of his colleagues for various officialand unofficial reasons, who hates in turn his colleagues calling them

9 Konrad Bieber, ‘Traduttore, traditore : la réception problématique de L’Hommerévolté aux États-Unis’, in Série Albert Camus n. 19, ‘L’Homme révolté cinquanteans après’, edited by Raymond Gay-Crosier, Lettres Modernes Minard, Paris, 2001,pp. 143-148.10 Ronald Aronson, ‘Camus et son exploration d’un univers sans Dieu’, in AlbertCamus 22 : “Camus et l’Histoire”, Lettres Modernes Minard, Caen, 2009, p. 27 (note1). In the same page, Aronson underlines that : ‘on ne respecte pas ni la carrière ni lavision de Camus si l'on veut faire de lui quelqu'un qui était " au fond un hommereligieux" ou qui démontrait "une certaine soif pour la religion". Ces auteurs ont latendance à diviser le monde en deux: d'un côté, ils ne voient que des athéesdogmatiques et, de l'autre, il y a ceux qui, consciemment ou non, cherchent Dieu.Camus n'appartient ni à l'un ni à l'autre groupe’.11 Cf. my forthcoming essay "Les avocats de Camus" : faire le point sur les différentestentatives de christianiser sa vie et sa pensée, derived from a speech held at the 2014

Journées de Lourmarin.



GIOVANNI GAETANI

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‘the guard dogs of the anticlerical orthodoxy’ – supports the thesis ofCamus' crypto-Christianity. In one of his tortuous and unreadable

essays12

Sarocchi pretends to quote Camus by heart, a practice thatevery serious scholar should always avoid. With his usual,exaggerated self-confidence he wrote – and I translate: ‘Camus hasconfessed: "Secret of my universe: to believe in God without soulimmortality"’; but we all know that the actual quote from Camus'Notebooks was instead ‘to imagine God...’13. A single verb that changescan actually twist the meaning of a whole sentence – and, lastly, theoverall sense of a whole philosophy, considering the centralimportance attributed to such quotes by Sarocchi in his limpingargumentations.

Sisyphus and the Web: the unstoppable rock of misquotes

We all know how deeply Internet has changed our lives, ourknowledge and our way to communicate with the others.Nonetheless, we underestimate Internet's impact on literature andphilosophy: ever since everyone has the power to say his personalopinion about everything, even when he is a total incompetent aboutthe subject; ever since everyone can quote a writer without feelingthe need to report the source and ever since everyone seems to notcare at all about sources, believing in everything he sees on Internet,every quote has completely lost reliability. During my research Ihave contacted many bloggers, asking them where Camus shouldhave written/said this or that; their answer was always the same:«check it on Google». Indeed, their reasoning was simple but

tremendously naïve: if a quote is reported by so many people –millions of references in some cases – the author of this quote "must"be Albert Camus14. In the following list I am going to show the ninemost relevant Camus' misquotes on Internet.

12 Jean Sarocchi, ‘Albert Camus ou le malentendu sur Dieu’, in Variations Camus,Séguier, Paris, 2005, p. 55.13 Italics mine. Albert Camus, Œuvres complètes, cit., II, p. 945.14 For example, here the strange reasoning of an user on Yahoo Answers talkingabout a quote falsely attributed to Camus: ‘This quote is very popular. I visitedseveral sites (twenty plus). This quote was on virtually all of them usually eitherunder his name (Camus) or the topic of friendship. I would say that after searching




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1) Camus a Jew preacher?

‘Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in frontof me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be myfriend’.

With around 56 millions of references on Google, this misquote hasby far the right to be the first in such a chart. Despite its enormousspreading, not a single reference reports the source of this quote –and how could it be otherwise, since Camus simply never wrote it?There is even someone who attributes this quote to George Sand15 or

that recognize it as an Ute's Proverb – Ute is a Native Americans tribe16. Anyway, it is easy to deduce that the original quote is in English,since it is by far the most reported17, while all the other languagesversions are fewer and more differentiated – fact that let us think thatthey are probably just different translations from the English one.Using just Google Search tools it is hard to determine with certaintywhich is the first ever site that attributed this quote to Camus – whatI will call from now on «the point zero» of a quote. Indeed, the

presence of forums – where a single thread can last many years – andthe possibility to backdate contents invalidate and compromise theresearch18. Anyway, already some (and unfortunately few) Camusreaders pointed out here and there that this was simply a misquote:a) Georges Benicourt, at the moment treasurer of the Société des étudescamusiennes and founder of the francophone site WebCamus, in 2004was wondering ‘where this quote would come from’19; b) in May

these quote pages I am 100% sure he said it. It would be too much of a coincidence itall these pages dedicated to providing accurate authors associated with quotes wereincorrect’. Cf.https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100203231642AA21h6m15 For example here:http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/georgesand154922.html16 For example here: http://www.walnutridgeconsulting.com/?page_id=37617 In two different versions: ‘Don't walk [in front of me] / [ahead of me]...’18 For example, according to Google, the point zero of this quote would be theKorean blog Maguquotes, because it appears in a post dated 25 January 1970 (sic!);but the author of the post (wndrwmn11) is inscribed to this blog just from November2011.19 http://webcamus.free.fr/faq-camus.html



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2013, the blog Quotesome drafted a chart of ‘10 Famous Misquotationsand Misattributed Quotes’20, concluding that this one was definitely a

misquote by appealing to Joël Calmettes' great knowledge of Camus'works21; c) some months later Tablet, a Jewish Journalism site, wasironically asking ‘Did Camus Write a Jewish Summer Camp Song?Probably not, but the Huffington Post seems to think so’, referring toa Tweet of the HuffPost Religion.

Indeed, as absurd as it may seem, the quote at issue belongs to a Jewish song for children, as anyone can verify simply searching it onYouTube22 or in some Jewish songbooks23. The spontaneous questionis then the following: how it happened that someone ended up toattribute this quote to Camus? The dilemma is far from beingresolved, because, after a deeper research, it seems that the firsttraces of this quote date back even to some 1975s American religiousand motivational books, that at the moment I cannot consultunfortunately24. One thing is sure: in the above mentioned book byHoward Mumma, this quote is reported without source in the backcover; the book has been published in 2000 and – coincidence? – justin that year there is a relevant hike of references on Google. Far from

being the point zero, the book of Mumma could be the actual catalystof this process of misquoting.

20 http://blog.quotesome.com/10-famous-misquotations-and-misattributed-quotes/21 Joël Calmettes is the director of four documentaries on Camus' life, notably:«Albert Camus, une tragédie du bonheur», 1999; ‘Albert Camus, le journalismeengagé», 2009; : «Vivre avec Camus», 2013; «Camus, Sartre : une amitié déchirée’,2014.22 For example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJpTAYdx6yc; and here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ov_KiuimVM23 For example here:https://www.tzivoshashem.org/cth/ArticleFiles/The%20Official%20Jewish%20Songbook.doc24 In one of that, for example, we can read the following words: ‘Those of us whowere close to Allie Beth but are librarians in other than public libraries, are remindedof Camus' words "Don't walk in front of me […]". Cf.https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bV3pAAAAMAAJ&q=Camus+%22walk+in+front+of+me%22&dq=Camus+%22walk+in+front+of+me%22&hl=it&sa=X&ei=ffCXVNGsA8LsO97zgcAI&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBg




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2) Camus a wise gambler after Pascal's example?

‘I would rather live my life as if there is a God, and die tofind out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't, and dieto find out there is’.

Dozens of disoriented readers doubted at first glance of the reliabilityof this quote, but none of them was capable of solving the enigma:someone assumed that ‘maybe Camus wrote it on some privateletters’, few others noticed the similarity with Pascal's wager on theexistence of God. Unfortunately, the author of this quote is for sure

neither Camus nor Pascal. According to Google, the actual spreadingof this quote dates back to the early 2000s, when it firstly appeared insome American Christian sites25. In 2006, the Bishop T. D. Jakes eveninvented a ‘8 seconds prayer’ chain letter using this quote26. Anyway,I did not manage to understand how and why Camus is consideredthe author of this quote.

3) A false (honeyed) letter

‘My dear, in the midst of hate, I found there was, within me,an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was,within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, Ifound there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized,through it all, that in the midst of winter, I found there was,within me, an invincible summer. And that makes mehappy. For it says that no matter how hard the worldpushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger –

something better, pushing right back. Falsely yours, AlbertCamus’

While Camus is not the author of this honeyed letter, he is surely theauthor of the isolated sentence ‘in the midst of winter, I found therewas, within me, an invincible summer’. He actually wrote it in Retourto Tipasa27, a lyrical essay contained in the 1954 book Summer (L'Été).

25 For example, christistheanswerministries.com or bibleteachingnotes.com.26 http://www.2jesus.org/livingword/8seconds.html27 Albert Camus, Œuvres complètes, cit., III, p. 613 : ‘Au milieu de l'hiver, j'apprenaisenfin qu'il y avait en moi un été invincible’.



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It seems, then, that someone took this original quote and extended it,maybe trying to reach an higher level of sentimentalism and

poeticalness, ending up instead decontextualizing and ruining thismarvellous sentence. On the site whatwasthatbook.com28 there is anuser who firstly noticed this problem but who was not able to resolveit – someone even read The Stranger again in order to verify whetherthis letter was there or not!

4) Another false letter

‘My dear, I don’t know what to do today, help me decide.Should I cut myself open and pour my heart on thesepages? Or should I sit here and do nothing, nobody’s askinganything of me after all. Should I jump off the cliff that hasmy heart beating so and develop my wings on the waydown? Or should I step back from the edge, and let theothers deal with this thing called courage. Should I stareback at the existential abyss that haunts me so and trydesperately to grab from it a sense of self? Or should I keep

walking half-asleep, only half-looking at it every now andthen in times in which I can’t help doing anything but?Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee? Falsely yours,Albert Camus’

Also this letter is falsely attributed to Camus. In his book The Paradoxof Choice29, the American psychologist Barry Schwartz wrote thefollowing passage: ‘Novelist and existentialist philosopher AlbertCamus posed the question, “Should I kill myself, or have a cup of

coffee?” His point was that everything in life is choice’.Unfortunately, Schwartz did not quote the book of Camus he wasreferring to. Similarly, also Al Gini in his book Why It's Hard To BeGood30 did not say where Camus should have said or written it. Theorigin of this misquote remains then a mystery hard to resolve.

28 http://whatwasthatbook.livejournal.com/2583038.html29 Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: why more is less, HarperCollins e-books,New York, 2004, p. 42.30 Al Gini, Why It's Hard To Be Good, Routledge, New York, 2006, p. 92.




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5) Still not Camus

“Life is a sum of all your choices. So, what are you doingtoday?”

This misquote may be related to Barry Schwartz's book, given thecontent, although in this book we do not find a similar sentence.Anyway, it is impossible to determine the real point zero of thisquote.

6) ‘Written by’ vs. ‘Dedicated to’ Albert Camus

‘Ho orrore di tutte le verità assolute,delle loro applicazionitotali,dei loro presunti detentori d'ogni risma. Prendete unaverità, portatela con cautela ad altezza d'uomo, guardate chicolpisce, chi uccide, cosa risparmia, cosa elimina,annusatela a lungo, accertatevi che non puzzi di cadavere,assaggiatela tenendola un po' sulla lingua, ma siate semprepronti a sputarla immediatamente. L'uomo libero è questo:il diritto di sputare’31

This quote is reported only in Italian. Using Google search tools wecan easily discover the point zero of this quote (the blog Le Bateau Ivre32

). Here, the sentence is reported just as a dedication ‘to’ AlbertCamus, not a quote written «by» Albert Camus. The enigma is theneasily resolved: some distract user (probably Elena19666 on hispersonal site33) must have reported the sentence eliminating for noreason the Italian preposition ‘ad’. The result of this innocent

omission is that now there are nearly 6000 references of this misquoteon Google.

31 I translate from Italian: ‘Have fear of all absolute truths, of their total applications,of their presumed worst owners. Take a truth, raise it to the eye level, look at itstargets, its victims, what it saves and what it eliminates, smell it for a long time, besure that it does not smell like a corpse, taste it holding it on the tip of your tongue,but be always ready to spit it immediately. The free man is this: the right to spit’.32 http://www.pojanlive.com/p/book.html33 http://spazio.libero.it/elena19666/



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7) Camus the moralist

‘By your actions or your silence, you, too, enter the fray’.

We do not have a lot to say about this misquote, except that it isfirstly reported by a religious preacher in a motivational speech,notably Elder David B. Haight in a 1984 speech on Personal Morality34.

8) Something similar to a paraphrase

‘Great novelists are philosopher-novelists who write in

images instead of arguments’.

Not that far from Camus' point of view, this sentence35 is nonethelessa misquote. Indeed, it is a kind of mix between two differentsentences of Camus: ‘Les grands romanciers sont des romanciersphilosophes, c'est-à-dire le contraire d'écrivains à thèse’36 and ‘On nepense que par image. Si tu veux être philosophe, écris des romans’37.

9) Confusing Sartre with his parody

‘Être en se faisant et faire que cela soit, c'est être à toutvenant sans être quoi que ce soit’

This quote is different from all the others because it is actuallywritten by Camus, but it has been attributed to Sartre. The storybehind this misquote is definitely worth to be reported here. In the

unpublished work The Comedy of the Philosophers (L'impromptu des philosophes) Camus put this sentence in the mouth of the protagonistof the pièce, Monsieur Néant, who is nothing but the parody of Jean-

34 https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1984/10/personal-morality?lang=eng#watch=video35 http://izquotes.com/quote/21621336 I translate from Le Mythe de Sisyphe (Albert Camus, Œuvres complètes, cit., I, p.288) : ‘Great novelists are philosopher-novelists, that is, the contrary of the thesis-novelists’.37 I translate from Carnets (Albert Camus, Œuvres complètes, cit., III, p. 800) : ‘Onecannot think but with images. If you want to be a philosopher, write novels’.




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Paul Sartre38. The sentence at issue has no meaning at all in itself andit is used by Camus just to ape Sartre's meaningless and tortuous

style of writing. A user of the famous site wordreference.com, whothought that the author of the quote was Sartre, posted a questionasking to check whether his interpretation of this presumed difficultphilosophical passage was right39. The result is entertaining and letus understand how people will always strive to find a meaningwhere there is no meaning at all.

Camus were right, then, when he said: ‘Those who writeobscurely are lucky: they will have commentators. The others willhave only readers, fact that seems to be shameful’40. One thing is sureanyway: both "obscure" and "clear" writers will always have distractreaders that will misquote them.

Appendix

Remarks on Anthony Bower's translation of The Rebel ,Penguin Books Edition, 2000

WRONG INDEX: The index does not respect the original one:a lot of paragraphs are simply unified with others withoutany reasonable logic, others are deleted arbitrarily withoutany advice to the reader;

MISSING EPIGRAPH AND DEDICATION: Holderlin'sepigraph and the dedication to Jean Grenier are missing;

3 MISSING PAGES: Camus' introduction is inexplicably

shortened of 3 pages, from ‘Mais cette contradictionessentielle...’ (III, 67) to ‘Le miroir brisé’ (III, 69);

38 Cf. my essay for the Journal of Camus Studies 2013, ‘The Critique ofContemporary Philosophy in Camus’s unpublished work ‘L’Impromptu desPhilosophes’’, pp. 65-74. For the above-mentioned quote: Albert Camus, Œuvrescomplètes, cit., II, p. 780.39 http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2205590&langid=1440 I translate from the original French text (Albert Camus, Œuvres complètes, cit., IV,p. 1087) : ‘Ceux qui écrivent obscurément ont bien de la chance : ils auront descommentateurs. Les autres n'auront que des lecteurs, ce qui, parait-il, estméprisable’.



GIOVANNI GAETANI

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8 MISSING PAGES: In the chapter ‘The Sons of Cain’ Bowerincredibly deletes 8 pages, from ‘Est-ce à dire que la révolte...’

(III, 83) to ‘Historiquement...’ (III, 90); MISSING TITLE: The title ‘La négation absolue» in deleted; MISSING FINAL AND NAME: The final of the chapter ‘the

Dandy's rebellion’ is deleted and manipulated – the name of‘Rameau’ is deleted;

MISSING STIRNER'S PART (4 PAGES): In the chapter‘Absolute affirmation’ – which, unlike «Absolute negation»,actually appears in the translation – the whole part on Stirner

named by Camus as ‘L'unique’ is missing – from (III, 113) to(III, 116); MISSING TITLE: The chapter on Nietzsche has no title (the

original one was «Nietzsche et le nihilisme») and it is onething with the chapter ‘Absolute affirmation’;

MISSING NOTES: Camus' fundamental note on Nietzsche'schapter are all – and I say all – deleted, especially the onewhere he affirms that this chapter can be considered acommentary of the Will to Power ;

MISSING PART ON ‘REBEL POETRY’ (16 PAGES): Thewhole part ‘La poésie révoltée’ is deleted, including thechapter ‘Lautrémont et la Banalité’ and ‘Surréalisme etRévolution’ – it is about 16 pages, from (III, 129) to (III, 145);

BAD TRANSLATIONS: ‘Meurtriers délicats’ badly translatedas ‘Fastidious assassins’, as well as ‘The Check to the Profecy»for «L'échec de la proféthie» and «self-becoming» for «ledevenir».

the noble art of misquoting camus -- fro

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