Hopeless Love: Camus and Le Premier Homme

Marguerite La Caze

Jump to Content

Chapter 20 Hopeless Love: Camus and Le Premier Homme

In: Brill's Companion to Camus

Author:

Marguerite La Caze

Marguerite La Caze
Search for other papers by Marguerite La Caze in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed

Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 435–451

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004419247_022

Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):

€42.00€35.00 excl. VAT

Add to Cart

Redeem Access Token

“I know only one single duty, and that is the duty to love,” Camus once wrote in his Carnets (NB I 54, OC II, 830). Marguerite La Caze’s culminating contribution to this collection undertakes a patient, quietly observant analysis of Camus’s competing statements on love, as these are played out in particular in the relationships staged for us in Camus’s incomplete last novel, Le Premier Homme. Camus, La Caze begins, was “acutely aware of the difficulties and incongruities of love: joy and despair, hopelessness, and the frequent lack of mutuality.” “The language Camus uses in Le Premier Homme to describe love is quite extraordinary,” La Caze observes: “Love is repeatedly called silent, hopeless (FM 160, OC IV 864), helpless (FM 95, OC IV 814), despairing (FM 133, OC IV 846), sorrowful, and a mystery.” There is the absent father, whose legacy and memory cannot be secured; the enigmatic silence of the mother for whom Cormery-Camus nevertheless feels overwhelming, hopeless love; the unchosen, ambivalent love of the boy for the violent uncle Earnest; and the moving affection Cormery feels for his school teacher M. Bernard, who first glimpsed his talents, and then his older mentor, Malan. What makes La Caze’s essay so quietly absorbing, even moving, is the descriptive phenomenological care with which she reconstructs each of these relationships, leaving any larger systematic conclusions at bay.

Citation Info

Save
Cite
Email this content

Share link with colleague or librarian

You can email a link to this page to a colleague or librarian:
Email this content
or copy the link directly:

https://brill.edhh.ma/abstract/book/9789004419247/BP000023.xml
The link was not copied. Your current browser may not support copying via this button.

Link copied successfully

Collapse
Expand

Brill's Companion to Camus

Camus among the Philosophers

Series: Brill's Companions to Philosophy: Contemporary Philosophy, Volume: 5 and Brill's Companions to Philosophy, Volume: 5

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004419247

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 19 Dec 2019

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies
  - French & Francophone
  - Postmodernism
- Philosophy

Front Matter

Back Matter

Metrics

	All Time	Past 365 days	Past 30 Days
Abstract Views	323	123	12
Full Text Views	11	3	0
PDF Views & Downloads	22	2	0

African Studies	Education	Media Studies
American Studies	History	Middle East and Islamic Studies
Ancient Near East and Egypt	Human Rights and Humanitarian Law	Musicology
Art History	International Law	Philosophy
Asian Studies	International Relations	Religious Studies
Biblical Studies	Jewish Studies	Slavic and Eurasian Studies
Biology	Languages and Linguistics	Social Sciences
Book History and Cartography	Life Sciences	Theology and World Christianity
Classical Studies	Literature and Cultural Studies

Subjects

Authors

Open Access

Product Information

Company

Contact

Chapter 20 Hopeless Love: Camus and Le Premier Homme

Citation Info

Share link with colleague or librarian

Brill's Companion to Camus

Camus among the Philosophers

Table of Contents

Metrics

Metrics