The Absurd

This whole void business of my previous post reminds me of Camus. I first read Camus in high school, under the tutelage of another force to be reckoned with, my favorite teacher, Mr L. I worked my butt off for his classes and therefore to worked my butt off to grapple with that deceptively simply book.

I thought then that I understood the book and Camus, until three years later, when I enrolled in a seminar on Camus at college. Now I suspect I know nothing.

The course professor was almost a monk but backed out just weeks before the final induction that would make his vows permanent. Now he's a Camus scholar and interested in international peacemaking, with a brilliant mind and a light, almost lispy voice that puts students to sleep. I learned his theories of Camus and committed the following to memory:

Camus had a master plan for his writing. He believed that men went through various stages of struggle in seeking meaning-- life cycles, if you will. He decided to write an essay, a fiction story, and a play about each cycle. He also named each cycle after a greek demigod, so we have the Sisyphus Cycle, the Prometheus Cycle, the Nemesis Cycle, and, arguably, a fourth cycle that we do not know the name of because Camus died in a freak car accident before he could reveal it.

First of all, you should know that Camus did not believe in God, but did believe that the Universe was inherently cruel to man. (Life is suffering. Shit happens. Etc.) This cruelty, which isn't a result of any consciousness or will, is almost worse because it is unconscious and purposeless. He calls this nasty fact of life the Absurd, and the cycles watch man struggle in the face of the Absurd.

1) The Sisyphean cycle: man pushes rock up hill, only to have it roll down again. Repeat until eternity.

This is our young Mersault (the leading man of the Stranger), pushing the rock of the universe somewhere, only to have the universe undo his labor every time. He's living within the Absurd, dealing with it, but without questioning, without trying to change course. There is innocence here, but not much complex emotion or drive. He has a sense of self-preservation-- after all, Sisyphus always avoids getting flattened by the rolling rock, and maybe he's even pissed off. But what else is there to live for besides yourself?

If this cycle could talk, it would say 'ugh,' or 'meh.'

2) The Promethean cycle: Prometheus defied the gods by stealing fire from them and bringing it to man. So the gods chain him to rock and makes a large eagle eat his liver. The liver grows back every day, and the eagle eats it again, feasting into eternity. This is when man realize how fucked up the Absurd is, and realizes that his true allegiance is with humanity.

Camus says there is one thing that all people can agree upon to some extent: that human life—yours, others, however you define it-- is worth protecting. It's what the Absurd damages, and that damage brings man pain. So you'll be damned if you place any sort of faith or trust in it. You decide to rebel against the Universe, defending the good of human life. This is where man gets a little more developed: he fights on the offense, he has a conscious purpose, a commitment to humanity. Problems like terrorism, hunger and disease work in agreement with the motion of the Absurd, so they need to be attacked on the ground. For all of the doom and gloom of the Absurd, Camus writes really, really beautifully about the Rebel with a human cause.

3) The Nemesis cycle: this one got a little murky to me as I read the Fall. Nemesis is the goddess of measure. Which sounds nice, except it means measure in the 'eye for an eye' sense-- for she's also the goddess of revenge, of retribution.

But basically, when I think of The Fall, the novel that accompanies this cycle, I think of reaching the point of being so hyperconscious of how terrible 'the system' is, that you become cynical, self-absorbed, cruel, and a little nuts. Maybe you even manipulate the system to your own benefit, since you're not going to beat it anyway.

4) And finally, the fourth cycle, or an unfinished half of the third cycle (Camus scholars disagree). There's definitely debate here about what this cycle entails. Where can a man develop from the Nemesis stage, how can he pull himself out of this darkest moment? Where can we find resolution when the Absurd plucked Camus away in an explosion of vehicular carnage right before he revealed his big finale?

I've heard two rumors-- one, that he was planning to call it something like the Cycle of Love, which sounds a little too much like Circle of Life to me, but I'm sure Camus would keep it sophisticated. Two, that he was slowly and secretly converting to Christianity and had he stayed alive long enough he would've openly accepted Christ into his heart and made it the topic of his fourth cycle. To this day, Camus is the subject of a turf war between Christians and Existentialists. I'm on the Existentialist's side-- I like Camus as an atheist-- but I'm clearly biased.

Either way, this little argument is perhaps the Absurd's final jab at Camus-- for I've heard that Camus used to get offended when he was called an Existentialist or a Christian.

Reason enough for me to love Camus.