Ephemeral Creation
At this point I perceive, therefore,
that
hope cannot be eluded forever and that
it
can beset even those who wanted to
be free
of it. This is the interest I find
in the
works discussed up to this point. I
could,
at least in the realm of creation,
list some
truly absurd works. (Melville's Moby
Dick,
for instance). But everything must
have a
beginning. The object of this quest
is a
certain fidelity. The Church has been
so
harsh with heretics only because she
deemed
that there is no worse enemy than a
child
who has gone astray. But the record
of the
Gnostic effronteries and the persistence
of Manichean currents have contributed
more
to the construction of orthodox dogma
than
all the prayers. With due allowance,
the
same is true of the absurd. One recognizes
one's course by discovering the paths
that
stray from it. At the very conclusion
of
the absurd reasoning, in one of the
attitudes
dictated by its logic, it is not a
matter
of indifference to find hope coming
back
in under one of the most touching guises.
That shows the difficulty of the absurd
ascetics.
Above all, it shows the necessity of
unfailing
alertness and thus confirms the general
plan
of this essay. But if it is still too
early
to list absurd works, at least a conclusion
can be reached as to the creative attitude,
one of those which can complete absurd
existence.
Art can never be so well served as
by a negative
thought. Its dark and humiliated precedings
are as necessary to the understanding
of
a great work as black is to white.
To work
and create "for nothing,"
to sculpture
in clay, to know one's creation has
no future,
to see one's work destroyed in a day
while
being aware that fundamentally this
has no
more importance than building for centuries---this
is the difficult wisdom that absurd
thought
sanctions. Performing these two tasks
simultaneously,
negating on the one hand and magnifying
on
the other, it the way open to the absurd
creator. He must give the void its
colors.
This leads to a special conception
of the
work of art. Too often the work of
a creator
is looked upon as a series of isolated
testimonies.
Thus, artist and man of letters are
confused.
A profound thought is in a constant
state
of becoming; it adopts the experience
of
a life and assumes its shape. Likewise,
a
man's sole creation is strengthened
in its
successive and multiple aspects: his
works.
One after another they complement one
another,
correct or overtake one another, contradict
one another, too. If something brings
creation
to an end, it is not the victorious
and illusory
cry of the blinded artist: "I
have said
everything," but the death of
the creator
which closes his experiences and the
book
of his genius.
That effort, that superhuman consciousness
are not necessarily apparent to the
reader.
There is no mystery in human creation.
Will
performs this miracle. But at least
there
is no true creation without a secret.
To
be true, a succession of works can
be but
a series of approximations of the same
thought.
But it is possible to conceive of another
type of creator proceeding by juxtaposition.
Their words may seem to be devoid of
inter-relations,
to a certain degree, they are contradictory.
But viewed all together, they resume
their
natural groupings. From death, for
instance,
they derive their definitive significance.
They receive their most obvious light
from
the very life of their author. At the
moment
of death, the succession is but a collection
of failures. But if those failures
all have
the same resonance, the creator has
managed
to repeat the image of his own condition,
to make the air echo with the sterile
secret
he possesses.
The effort to dominate is considerable
here.
But human intelligence is up to much
more.
It will merely indicate clearly the
voluntary
aspect of creation. Elsewhere I have
brought
out the fact that human had no other
purpose
than to maintain awareness. But that
could
not do without discipline. Of all the
schools
of patience and lucidity, creation
is the
most effective. It is also the staggering
evidence of man's sole dignity: the
dogged
revolt against his condition, perseverance
in an effort considered sterile. It
calls
for a daily effort, self-mastery, a
precise
estimate of the limits of truth, measure,
and strength. It constitutes an ascesis.
All that "for nothing," in
order
to repeat and mark time. But perhaps
the
great work of art has less importance
in
itself than in the ordeal it demands
of a
man and the opportunity it provides
him of
overcoming his phantoms and approaching
a
little closer to his naked reality.
Let there be no mistake about aesthetics.
It is not patient inquiry, the unceasing,
sterile illustration of a thesis that
I am
calling for here. Quite the contrary,
if
I have made myself clearly understood.
The
thesis-novel, the work that proves,
the most
hateful of all, is the one that most
often
is inspired by a smug thought. You
demonstrate
the truth you feel sure of possessing.
But
those are ideas one launches, and ideas
are
the contrary of thought. Those creators
are
philosophers, ashamed of themselves.
Those
I am speaking of or whom I imagine
are, on
the contrary, lucid thinkers. At a
certain
point where thought turns back on itself,
they raise up the images of their works
like
the obvious symbols of a limited, mortal,
and rebellious thought.
They perhaps prove something. But those
proofs are the ones that the novelists
provide
for themselves rather than for the
world
in general. The essential is that the
novelists
should triumph in the concrete and
that this
constitute their nobility. This wholly
carnal
triumph has been prepared for them
by a thought
in which abstract powers have been
humiliated.
When they are completely so, at the
same
time the flesh makes the creation shine
forth
in all its absurd luster. After all,
ironic
philosophies produce passionate works.
Any thought that abandons unity glorifies
diversity! And diversity is the home
of art.
The only thought to liberate the mind
is
that which leaves it alone, certain
of its
limits and of its impending end. No
doctrine
tempts it. It awaits the ripening of
the
work and of life. Detached from it,
the work
will once more give a barely muffled
voice
to a soul forever freed from hope.
Or it
will give voice to nothing if the creator,
tired of his activity, intends to turn
away.
That is equivalent.
Thus, I ask of absurd creation what
I required
from thought---revolt, freedom, and
diversity.
Later on it will manifest its utter
futility.
In that daily effort in which intelligence
mingle and delight each other, the
absurd
man discovers a discipline that will
make
up the greatest of his strengths. The
required
diligence and doggedness and lucidity
thus
resemble the conqueror's attitude.
To create
is likewise to give a shape to one's
fate.
For all these characters, their work
defines
them at least as much as it is defined
by
them. The actor taught us this: There
is
no frontier between being and appearing.
Let me repeat. None of all this has
any
real meaning. On the way to that liberty,
there is still a progress to be made.
The
final effort for these related minds,
creator
or conqueror, is to manage to free
themselves
also from their undertakings: succeed
the
granting that the very work, whether
it be
conquest, love, or creation, may well
not
be; consummate thus the utter futility
of
any individual life. Indeed, that gives
them
more freedom in the realization of
their
work, just as becoming aware of the
absurdity
of life authorized them to plunge into
it
with every excess.
All that remains is a fate whose outcome
alone is fatal. Outside of that single
fatality
of death, everything, joy or happiness,
is
liberty. A world remains of which man
is
the sole master. What bound him was
the illusion
of another world. The outcome of his
thought,
ceasing to be renunciatory, flowers
in images.
It frolics---in myths, to be sure,
but myths
with no other depth than that of human
suffering
and, like it, inexhaustible. Not the
divine
fable that amuses and blinds, but the
terrestrial
face, gesture, and drama in which are
summed
up a difficult wisdom and an ephemeral
passion.
---Albert Camus
|
Evans Experientialism 
