"Taking care of man" ---- We knew that Albert Camus was a resistance
fighter opposed to injustices and attacks on freedoms. His role in theCombat network and at the head of the eponymous newspaper gives a strong
image of this even today. But where does this commitment come from? From
Algeria? From Paris? Well no! It is in a small village in the Massif
Central, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon that he becomes aware of the situation.
He is alone far from his family in a mountain landscape of Vivarais,
gray houses, rain, cold, fir trees as shown so well on the cover of the
book Camus chez les Justes, published by Bleu Autour. This work brings
together testimonies, reflections of close friends including his
daughter Catherine Camus, a collective work under the direction of Anne
Prouteau, president of the Société des études camusiennes. The reader
will enjoy the drawings and watercolors of Jacques Ferrandez, the
photographs that are often little known, particularly that of his false
identity card in the name of Albert Mathé.
A hook that clearly shows the complexity of Camus but also the logic in
his choices: "I started the war of 1939 as a pacifist and I ended it as
a resistance fighter. This inconsistency, if it is one, has made me more
modest," he wrote in 1951. In 1942, the tuberculosis that he had
contracted when he was younger made a serious comeback. His doctor in
Algiers advised him, urged him to go to a region more conducive to
treating this illness. This would be the Chambon-sur-Lignon area, more
specifically the hamlet of Panelier. Anne Prouteau gives us a concise
biography and underlines the solidarity shown by Camus towards the Jews,
in Algeria and in mainland France. Why insist on this point? Quite
simply because this isolated plateau, inhabited by Protestants and
Huguenots, became a place of protection for families and Jewish children
hidden by these inhabitants who asked for nothing because for them,
protecting the persecuted was second nature, linked to their history. In
the aftermath of the war, many of them received the title of Righteous
Among the Nations. They had long known the value of hospitality and
tolerance. Two pastors publicly denounced Nazism from the pulpit.
From solitude to the Resistance
And Camus? He wrote The Plague, The Stranger, his Notebooks, his
thoughts took shape and became denser. The solitude weighed on him but
allowed him to lay the foundations of his work. "That's where I spent a
hard year in absolute solitude in 1943." He met resistance fighters,
anonymous people, but also Francis Ponge, Pascal Pia. He joined Combat,
a bit like an obvious step in the modesty of the Righteous who were
close to him. His daughter Catherine remembers that she had found his
Resistance medal hidden in a drawer but he considered that he did not
deserve it because he was still alive and thought of his comrades who
had died fighting against the occupier. When Astier de la Vigerie
accused him of taking refuge in a moralizing role, he replied: "We do
not have the merit of our birth, we have that of our actions. But we
must know how to keep quiet about them so that the merit is complete."
"Work finds its account"
His stay undoubtedly influences his work: "I rest, I work, I go for
walks. Since it rains, I read a little more. In short, long, empty and
silent days where work finds its account." Reflection and action on the
period lead him to rewrite The Plague as Marie-Thérèse Blondeau
demonstrates in her article, notably with the place of rats and flies.
He also thinks of The Rebel, so decisive in the construction of a
thought independent of all totalitarianism, but also The Just. How to
articulate the mind and the sword? Rémi Larue in his contribution
relating to Camus' entry into resistance develops his conception of the
latter. "Taken separately, the mind, through impotence, and the sword,
through the blind violence of which it can be the tool, lead to
oppression. But Camus, by combining them, conceives of a resistance that
would make violence a limited use. He insists again on the sacrifices
undergone."
And after the war, he returns to Chambon-sur-Lignon, finds his steps.
His thought always reflects the will to act as he writes in his
Notebooks: "The greatest economy that one can achieve in the order of
one's thought is to accept the unintelligibility of the world - and to
take care of man." A sentence of rare topicality.
* Collective directed by Anne Prouteau
Camus at the Justes
Le Chambon-sur-Lignon - 1942-1943
Ed. Bleu autour, 2024
https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8100
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