Albert Camus and Maria Casarès: Letters 1944-1959
Edited by Béatrice Vaillant and annotated by Alexandre Alajbegovic
Translated by Sandra Smith and Cory Stockwell
Penguin Classics. 2026. £45. 1200 pages.
ISBN: 978-0-241-40042-5
Reviewed by Tony Roberts
Parted lovers often sound alike —at least in translation:
Here is one: ‘I feel I am writing badly
—you will read this without emotion —I am saying nothing of what I want to say.’
And here another: ‘I’m still putting it badly, and crudely, but you can
perhaps guess the wonderful joy you bring to my heart.’ The first is from a
letter by Flaubert to Louise Colet on October 7, 1846. The second is from Albert
Camus to the actor Maria Casarès on July 17, 1948.
Lovers are also repetitive. Although there is recognition of the ways of the
world and life’s absurdity in the exchange of letters between Camus and Casarès,
there is little reference to events beyond those each of these two charismatic
artists is experiencing. I must admit that I was only slowly won over by the
agony and the ecstasy of their Letters, the intense passions and great
anguish, to use Casarès’ own words. Their emotion is epic, relentless and
—particularly for the frequently convalescent Camus —constantly in need of
reassurance. She worries at one point that their letters could become ‘morose,
gloomy and lifeless’ They are not. Eventually I began to care for these two
brilliantly creative people (and also for Camus’ mentally fragile and alienated
wife, Francine, and their two children). The marriage, the author’s health, the
busy public schedules of the two and the distances between them frequently drive
both to distraction. The letters come to interest us more, however, when we
learn what they are doing rather than what they are feeling, when the
extravagance of their emotional declarations is gradually muted a little.
Camus is already renowned when he meets Casarès in March 1944. He is as
influential in France, say, as George Orwell (whom he admired) is in England.
Now thirty, he has already published L’ Ėtranger (The Stranger),
the philosophical, The Myth of Sisyphus, and written his plays Le
Malentendu (The Misunderstanding) and Caligula. He works for
the publisher Gallimard and edits the banned newspaper, Combat for the
Resistance.
In the Letters, though, the playing field is tilted a little Casarès’
way. The reader comes to admire particularly her life-force and incredible
energy, while the often-depressed Camus lives, for much of the collection, a
‘monk-like’ existence. Casarès, nine years younger than Camus, is the daughter
of a self-exiled Spanish government minister. She had come to France in 1936
when Franco seized power in Spain. An opening note in Letters informs us,
‘They first met at the home of Michel and Zetta Leiris during a performance of
Picasso’s play Desire Caught by the Tale, on March 19, 1944. The writer
asked the young actress, a former student of the Conservatory of Dramatic Art
then under contract at the Théâtre des Mathurins, to play the role of Martha in
The Misunderstanding. Rehearsals began and Camus was captivated by the
actress.’ She was about to embark on a highly distinguished career.
Writing of their mutual attraction an early Camus biographer, Herbert R.
Lottman, reckoned, ‘Perhaps she appealed to the dark side of Camus, to emotions
which could be purged in private when pudeur and the code of the mail
would not let him manifest them in public; one could shout and sob, even weep,
and about death. Casarès’ excesses, her effusive presence on stage and off,
compensated for the dull servitudes of his public life. She represented Camus’
Spanish blood.’
In Olivier Todd’s admired Albert Camus: A Life we learn, for instance,
that Casarès ‘had a high-pitched, hoarse voice, that her French had ‘a slight
Madrid accent’, that she was ‘very feminine, and indifferent to what people
thought of her’. To quote from one of her letters here, ‘On the outside, I look
myself, and people swoon over my radiance and beauty — “Dark and curvaceous,” as
someone said recently.’
Todd writes about the couple, ‘Their relationship was striking for all those who
knew them, as she was a force of nature, fiery and sometimes violently
impatient’ and ‘the writer stopped playing the role of the indifferent man or
the foreigner, as she declared her desire to follow him in all his activities’.
Their love affair, which began in early June 1944, terminated that October with
the arrival of Francine Camus, née Faure, a teacher in Oran. They met again on
the boulevard Saint-Germain in the summer of 1948 and from then on lived in
anticipation of the times they were together, until his death in January 1960.
To give a random illustration of the passion and anguish their relationship
inspires, here is Camus driven by her absence at an acute moment: ‘It’s the
anxiety of love. I’m ill, I’m ill because of you. I can’t be healed over your
absence. Calm me down, my petite, beautiful, fresh flower! Love me with our
love, our caresses; I can’t stand waiting anymore.’ As for the hyperbole, he
observes, ‘From so far away, alone, worried, revolting against our separation, I
exaggerate everything, that’s bound to happen.’ Casarès replies in kind, wanting
to smother beneath him ‘and push you away and welcome you once more and drink
from your lips and laugh again. I want storms and rest and nothing more.’
The two tend to avoid mostly the obvious eroticisms, though sexual frustration
certainly energises them. Occasionally it surfaces. There are references to
thighs (hers) and ‘feeling the weight of your body’ (his). ‘I desire your
letters,’ he writes, ‘and only seek to find in them a heartbeat, passion,
urges.’ On another occasion she writes, ‘I’m bubbling up inside, and outside
too. Everything’s burning, soul, body, above, below, heart, flesh, and now I’ve
reached the listlessness of the falling evening. Have you understood? Really
understood? Good. Let’s move on.’
Camus can raise their love to lyrical heights: ‘What binds us are not the ties
of dreams or social convention, but the ties formed by blood, our bodies, and
the way we create each other. These are ties that are never broken because you
find them only once in a lifetime.’ For Casarès there is always the agony of
being the other woman, of not being able to have Camus to herself. She writes in
February 1950, ‘The very idea that you’ll never, ever be mine makes me afraid to
continue wanting all of you.’ Only gradually does she learn to rationalise their
situation: ‘It would be good if we were together more often, but you and I both
know that we can’t go any further in the intensity of our love. It has never
failed us.’ Late in their relationship, he sums up concisely what ‘mature love’
means: ‘You can easily get used to a love that’s lasted twelve years, but our
love is so rich, so varied, so wise and yet so full of anguish, that it is an
entire life unto itself and enough to justify who you are and what you have
done.’
The plight of their separation is compounded by his illness, the relapses he has
to face. He is frequently either depressed or fearing ‘falling into the depths
of terrible indifference’. In response to her desire to have details of his
daily life, he gives some account of his regime. On Saturday January 7 1950 he
writes, ‘Here’s my schedule: Get up at 8. Get washed and dressed. Breakfast
(since it’s the only time of day I’m hungry I devour eggs, cereal, toast, etc.).
From 9 to 11 work in bed (background material, notes, etc.). From 11 to 12,
mail. Go for a walk at noon. Lunch at one. Treatment from 2 to four. Work from 4
to 7, editing, etc. Dinner from 7 to 8. Spanish with F[rancine] from 8 to 9.
After 9, reading in bed.’ When well, Camus is writing, or directing at the
theatre, and he travels extensively, giving lectures in Europe, North Africa and
North and South America.
It must at moments torture him that on her part life is overabundant. Casarès
acts on radio and in the theatre (regularly on the same day —including in a long
run of his play, The Just Assassins). She makes films (debuting in the
Marcel Carné 1945 classic, Les Enfants du paradis). She constantly
endures interviews, contributes to recorded discussions (on her acting, on
theatre, on Spanish affairs) and attends others’ plays. Casarès tours worldwide,
like Camus. She is immensely well known, loved by critics and the public. One
critic in his Le Monde column writes in 1949 of a performance she gives
as: ‘sincere, quivering, so much strength in this slim body and soul, almost
disembodied. She is on fire. She is a dark torch.’ One fan wishes she could sign
an autograph with her eyes.
At times, as on a tour in Russia, Casarès is overwhelmed by something
approaching worship. For many years her schedule is terrifying and, while she
worries constantly about his ill health and his depression, he worries about her
overstraining her phenomenal energy. She writes of a typical day, ‘I’ve been
getting up at 7 in the morning, leaving for the [film] studio at 8, and staying
there until 5 in the afternoon. A car brought me home at 5:45, where I ate a
quick dinner, and then the same car delivered me to Chaillot [the theatre],
where I remained until 11:30 in the evening. I got home at midnight. A little
supper, bath, getting ready for bed, and at 1:30 in the morning I turned in
until the next day at seven.’ Somehow, despite her routine, she is able to learn
lines, prepare her characters, spend stolen days with Camus, have dinner with
friends and purchase things for her apartment.
Casarès is shrewd, has good sense and is literary, an inveterate reader. She is
also the more entertaining of the couple. It falls to her to maintain the
spirits of her brilliant lover, which she does with earnest endeavour and
humour: ‘It makes me a nervous wreck to have to tell you for the hundredth time
that I love you with all my heart,’ she writes in August 1951. When Camus is in
Greece, she asks if the Athenian women there are the shape of amphoras. She
recounts her day-to-day experiences with some humour, in order to entertain him.
At a gallery, she is spotted and draws a crowd who ‘decided to treat me as one
more painting’. And, with a touch of absurdity, she writes of a fellow actor,
‘To Ledoux’s left is Monsieur Cusin. Up to now no one’s noticed him except when
they want to know who’s beside Ledoux.’
Camus is humane, deeply thoughtful, guilt-ridden and by nature the more serious
of the two. For the reader of these Letters, he is frustratingly vague
about reporting on his work, although he is confident of his plans for it.
Unsurprisingly, he has a keen eye for the absurd. When his last novel is
published to some acclaim he writes, ‘The Fall continues on its merry way
(five hundred to a thousand sales a day), amid general perplexity. It’s crazy
how many people have reread it or will reread it. I should write in Chinese.’
For those readers who are not familiar with the private life of Albert Camus,
the footnotes on Page 941 might come as something of a shock, since they make
reference to two other lengthy relationships with actresses ongoing at the same
time as his all-consuming love for Maria Casarès. The editor treats the subject
discreetly. According to biographer Todd, ‘Maria and Catherine [Sellars] both
accepted their complementarity and rivalry in their relations with Albert, also
taking into account his obligations to Francine, though Maria accepted Camus’s
further indiscretions and adventures with more tolerance than Catherine did.’
And when, on the eve of his death, he had written his last loving letter to
Casarès (December 30, 1959) about his imminent return to Paris, he had also
written in the same vein on the 29th to a Danish artist, Mette Ivers,
and likewise to Sellars on the 31st. There had been other petites
amies. Camus was a moralist in his public life but, in his private life,
perhaps not so much so.
When we reach 1959 —the last fifty pages—the reader may find reading the letters
uncomfortable, as we prepare to face the premature end to his life. The fatal
car crash in January 1960 occurs at a time, only three years after his receiving
the Nobel Prize for literature — as the historian Tony Judt pointed out —when
Camus’ reputation was in sharp decline in France. There is no sense of that in
these pages.
But my reservations about the Letters come down to two questions: Do I
learn enough about Camus’ ideas and intellectual activities to warrant the
intrusion into his private life (and that of Casarès) on such a scale? And
secondly, are the pangs and pleasures of love sufficient to sustain the interest
for 1200 pages? One could argue that a selected letters a third of the current
length would have sufficed.
Finally, we wonder, as Casarès did in a letter written in February 1950, ‘If all
the days we spent preparing, imagining, thinking about the days to come that
would never be as we expect, if things had been different and we’d been given
those days to enjoy together without suffering, what would we have done? Are we
sure we would have known how to use them so as not to waste a minute, a day, or
even a month? An overlong but affecting
collection.