“There is only one thing that is revolutionary: the bomb.”
"... at a certain level of suffering or injustice no one can do anything for anyone. Pain is solitary." — Albert Camus
I just finished reading Camus’ Les Justes. It’s a great work and very well done in exploring the multi-dimensionality of situations looked through the eyes of different characters. As Camus says himself “I tried to achieve dramatic tension through classical means—that is, the opposition of characters who were equal in strength and reason.”Reading the play also made me a bit gloomy because I would love to produce this play and since I do not really have the chance to do theater (or at least what I consider theater) it only reminds me of the long list of plays I want to do but I can’t and it makes me sad.
I am going to read Camus’ Caligula again. When I read it for the first time—that is perhaps 15 years ago—I didn’t like it or I didn’t get it. I though it lacked strong dramatic action. Now I am curious to know what I would think of it this time.
posted by Vahid at 12:35 AM
2 Comments:
Albert Camus novel "L'Etranger" ("The Stranger") has always been amongs my top 10 favorite books ever! In fact, it inspired me to think about it as a possible theatrical material more than any of Camus' actual theatre plays.
Don't get me wrong, those are marvelous works, I just saw them as great writings rather then greatly composed theatre plays.
It seams to me that Camus, as well as Jean-Paul Sartre (whose plays I find much more 'theatrical'), choose drama as a mean of expression because of its active form, that in its intrinsic essence suites existentialism. Perhaps, a bit like Plato when writing Socrates' dialogues - he chooses a literary form that is most convenient for his method, dialectics.
On the other hand, in devise theatre performance, every great writing becomes great working material and "Le Juste" appear to be very contemporary in its subject and idea and as you said, in exploring the multi-dimensionality of situations looked through the eyes of different characters (yes, it's what I'm dealing with very much in my curent work, but more on that on another ocassion, that is if you'd like ).
Howewer, if you are following this track of thought (I mean, the one of Le Juste) I'd strongly recommend you Sartre's "Les mains sales" ("Dirty Hands") that is very close to Le Juste, and maybe, stepping out of realism Lev Lunc's "City of Justice" (in some translations "City of the truth" ) that is one weird Russian avant-garde piece of work!
Anyhow, it is alvays pleasure (re)reading Camus!
So much from me on this gloomy evening.
Hey Dark, I posted a comment on this two days ago, and just saw that
it's
not shown! Is that some Iranian passion for censorship, or I didn't do
something right?
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