Solidaire and Solitaire - First reflections

Broaching this topic is rather strange as I sit alone in a coffee shop with an uncertain future as to where I'll be sleeping tonight watching a woman across the room vigorously text on her cell phone while sitting alone with her legs crossed.

I've finally finished another comprehensive biography of Camus's life, but this one focused much more on Camus the man than Camus the philosopher, or Camus the writer. Camus the man interests me as much, if not more, as the other Camuses. There is enough material in this book to sustain me and my thoughts and reflections for many months, but I realize I have a need to re-read many things I've already read with a new sense of context. Wikipedia and a few of the biographies that I have read through do nothing for generating a real portrait of Camus.

Why is it so important for me to get this portrait of Camus?

There are too many coincidences between the content of his philosophy and politics with my own for me to be able to simply accept his words without wanting to know what inspired them. I have a fairly decent understanding of myself (in some respects) and I have a need to understand how he came to these conclusions. I need to know how his life shaped him and the language he used that extends so wonderfully from the page.

I'll be writing much more on Camus, but I want to start with a theme that I've noticed throughout reading this recent book. The continual movement between periods of Solidaire (solidarity) and Solitaire (solitude) in his life. How wonderful that these words are so strikingly similar, because in many ways they have the same function.

I am impressed by the anecdotes about Camus's life and how people in his village all knew him and loved him. His funeral involved everyone in town. He consistently helped people in somewhat surprising ways, yet also so consistent with his personality. He used money from his Nobel Prize to help wives and children of men who were killed in the Hungarian Revolution. The talk of the "human cost of war" was often overlooked when talking about WWI and WWII in contrast to the great cause of these wars. After WWI, the mass destruction created a vacuum of meaning that lead to absurdist movements like DADAism, but also left a more tangible mark on Camus personally due to his father dying in the war. WWII is often talked about as the great cause to defeat the evil NAZI expansionism, Holocaust, and brutal occupation. Camus continued to talk about the simple costs of life on a much more individual level. The respect for individuals, and the feeling of solidarity he has with those in the human experience, particularly those who suffer is exceptional. Likely, so much of this has to do with growing up without a father, poor, with a mostly mute mother, and suffering most of his life from very painful, crippling episodes of tuberculosis. Camus understands suffering, and his "Mediterranean sensibilities" along with his university work on the Greeks and interest in theatre are such obvious places for Camus to obsess that we should almost expect it.

The gravity of the seriousness of Camus's passions weighed on him, no more than the Algerian independence movement near the end of his life. He attempted unsuccessfully to create a peace between the French Algerians and the Algerians, and suffered greatly as his true home, Algeria, tumbled into a violent mess and ceased to be the true home of his youth.

Camus's retreat toward the solitaire was very necessary for him to face these great problems, but it wasn't easy. He often complained of not accomplishing anything, and had terrible bouts of writer's block that lasted for years at a time. This can help give me some perspective, but I'm beginning to really feel the weight of having truly not done anything as each year passes.

The push and pull of needing to feel a sense of solidaire in his life and retreating to a solitaire state are reflective of his idealism and moralism and the lack of finding these ideals/morals in the world and in himself. This tension is central in all of his books, and the importance of this cannot be understated.

Women played an important role in this, yet a complicated role... I will discuss this further at another time.