The famous opening lines in the Joseph Laredo translation, go like this:
Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. I had a telegram from the home: ‘Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.’ That doesn’t mean anything. It may have been yesterday.
First published in 1942, The Outsider traces a few days in the life of a man known as Meursault. The reader has access to Meursault’s inner thoughts and experiences and watches him at his mother’s funeral and, during the following days, we follow him as he meets a girl and becomes involved with his neighbours and acquaintances. The setting is Algiers and Meursault appears to be, like Camus, a Frenchman born and raised in the city.
The first part of the novel concludes when Meursault shoots and kills an Arab after being out in the sun for most of the day.
Part II of this short novel is concerned with Meursault’s trial, imprisonment, and encroaching execution. But throughout Camus is less interested in plot and more in using character and the sequence of events to elaborate his own theory of existentialism and the absurdity of man’s position in relation to a universe of indifference.
Meursault never tells a lie. At all times he adheres to his own version of the truth. He even refuses to fabricate the ‘white’ social lies with which all societies maintain their existence. And because of this disparity, the nuance between his own version of the truth and the collective truth to which we are expected to conform, he is condemned.
In the preface to the American University Edition of The Outsider, published in 1955, Camus said:
‘A long time ago I summed up The Outsider in a sentence which I realize is extremely paradoxical: ‘In our society any man who doesn’t cry at his mother’s funeral is liable to be condemned to death.’ I simply meant that the hero of the book is condemned because he doesn’t play the game.’
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .‘So one wouldn’t be far wrong in seeing The Outsider as the story of a man who, without any heroic pretensions, agrees to die for the truth.’
It is many years since I first read this novel, and I can say that it has never really left me. To revisit it now has been to confirm its place in my imagination and altogether in our time.
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May 22nd, 2007 at 9:29 am
Camus was and still is my favorite existentialist philosopher, and I remember the time when I first read The Stranger. But even more, I liked that he played football ( I used to play midfield) and when he wrote in his essays about Algiers, I could easily translate the weather to the Caribbean.
The Myth of Sisyphus was the book that remained with me and especially when I am writing longer works, the thought of Sisyphus being happy keeps me going.
jb says: Hi Geoffrey. I never connected with the football, but Camus’ books and imaginations have also been close to me.
May 22nd, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Back in my angst-filled younger days, I loved the existentialists and gobbled up books by Camus, Sartre, Kafka, etc. It’s been years since I read L’etranger, but the opening lines you quote above remind of another line in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: “They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.” If birth takes place over a grave, it stands to reason–for an existentialist–that a child wouldn’t make much note of a mother’s death.
Your post has reminded me of books I had once loved, and now I want to go back and reread them. I’m much happier with myself and my place in society these days, so it would be an interesting exercise to see what impact they have on me now.
jb says: Sounds like a good time coming on, Marydell. Oh, and thanks for the quote.
May 22nd, 2007 at 6:15 pm
I think it has something to do with a quote that you have on your quotes section. Originality and imitations.
Original ideas even if they are logical and truthful are as ugly as our own pine knots. The white social lies that people try to imitate are easy to stomach, even if they are as fragrant as our armpits.
jb says: I don’t want to follow this metaphor, Tom. Makes me think of deodorant.
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Very much as Geoffrey puts it. It was ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, read in youth, that gave form & substance to the shocked sense of having stumbled upon something of great moment on reading ‘The Outsider’ as an adolescent. Both are still very much part of my personal landscape all these decades later.
jb says: Hi Dick. We share aspects of the same glimpsed landscape.
May 27th, 2007 at 6:52 am
> It is many years since I first read this novel, and I can say that it has never really left me.
Same here. It’s certainly never left me. I was heavily influenced by, and depressed by, his philosophy when I was in my early twenties. Especially by The Myth of Sisyphus. (It’s not an inherently depressing philosophy but that was my interpretation at the time). Later I read The Outsider again and just loved it. And I still do.
jb says: It’s good that we change, isn’t it?
May 27th, 2007 at 8:31 am
“Mother died today” and “Aujourd’hui, maman est morte” sound quite different.
jb says: I’m at the Hay festival at the moment, May, surrounded by language.
May 28th, 2007 at 9:29 am
May’s comment goes to the heart of the problem of reading literature in translation.
And it reminds me of a good essay by John Updike in which he compares two English translations of L’Etranger: the one by Stuart Gilbert, which is the version I grew up on, and the one by Joseph Laredo. Updike thinks Laredo’s version is superior, and as it hugs the original more closely than Gilbert’s I’m all in favour of his approach. But the problem is I’ve still got Gilbert’s sentences resonating in my head. So when I read Laredo I flinch at every deviation from them.
Wikipedia’s got a nice comparative sample: the famous opening lines of L’Etranger in the original French and then as rendered by Gilbert, by Laredo, and by a third translator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stranger_(novel)
jb says: Hi Pluto. I knew about the comparative sample on Wikipedia but forgot to mention it, so thanks for the reminder and the link.
May 29th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Thank you for the link, Pluto, by which I realized that I said something obvious. I’ll be able to give a better contribution to posts on applied mathematics…
Jun 29th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
AS a teenager and catholic christian, I love this novel. Though in my own reflections, I find it lovely that despite the existentialist stances, the novel seems to give a catholic perspective. How? For not conforming to the dictates of modern society are after all what christianity requires. Perhaps this is further ehaqnced by the christ figure that Meursault exudes. Love the novel. Peace of JCC.
Mar 18th, 2008 at 3:06 am
I loved reading this book in its original French, unabridged. Although everyone cannot (obviously) read every book in its original language as they would spend more time learning language than reading literature, it’s important (and yet impossible) to ‘cut out the middleman’, that is, the translator, in order to feel what the author was truly feeling with every word. On a more semantic level, it’s important in order to interpret and analyze the author’s nuances, rather than those of a translator. I’m not saying that there isn’t great literature in English, but existentialist (Camus himself resented and even denied the classification) literature is simply best read in French.
jb says: Hi Chris. I think we recognise what you’re saying. But sometimes crumbs are better than nothing.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I’m currently in the 10th grade and have read <>. I didn’t particularly like it, but felt it was somthing to mentally chew on. I also agree that it is better read in its origional french, but I also appreciate the fact that it has been translated for those who cannot read the origional. I really feel that the origional coveys the emotional aspect (from the readers view) better than translation though.
jb says: Hi Alicia. Thanks for the comment. Something wrong with the code in your first line, but it’s been stripped out so I can only guess it’s the title of the book. I envy your ability to read French but I was raised and stunted in a country that saw anything other than English as a waste of time. Such arrogance has not been obliterated unfortunately.