Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, two of the most important minds of the 20th century, were closely entwined throughout their careers. On the centenary of Camus' birth, SPIEGEL looks back at their famous friendship and the ideological feud that ultimately unraveled it.Continue reading.
What is a famous man? Albert Camus wrote in his diary in 1946 that it was "someone whose first name doesn't matter." That certainly applies to Camus, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday on Nov. 7, and it can also be said of his great adversary Jean-Paul Sartre, who was eight years older than him, yet outlived him by 20 years.
Camus and Sartre were the intellectual stars of Paris during the postwar years: the existentialists, the Mandarins and the literary vanguard. They became iconic figures of the ideological conflicts of the second half of the 20th century. Their rivalry shaped intellectual debates in France and around the world.
Camus and Sartre's falling-out in the summer of 1952, which was played out in full view of the public, was a signal, a political watershed. The rupture, in the midst of the Cold War, split the camps. For decades, people would say: Sartre or Camus? Should we hope for a better world in the distant future at the price of accepting state terror? The revolutionary mass politics espoused by Sartre in the name of Marxism would seem to contain this tradeoff. Or should we refuse to sacrifice people for an ideal, as Camus' humanist principles required?
Camus and Sartre basically stood in each other's way right from the beginning. They were both storytellers, playwrights and essayists, literature and theater critics, philosophers and editors in chief. They had the same publisher. They both were awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Camus felt overwhelming gratitude when he accepted his award in 1957. Sartre loftily declined the designation in 1964 - making sure to underscore that he was not insulted "because Camus had received it before me," as he said at the time.
The Company of Women
And there was another -- at first glance unremarkable -- commonality. Both preferred the company of women to that of men. "Why women?" Camus wondered in his diary in 1951. His answer: "I cannot stand the company of men. They flatter or they judge. I can stand neither of the two." Back in 1940, Sartre used nearly the same choice of words in his diary when noting that he "gets horribly bored in the company of men," yet "it's very rare for the company of women not to entertain me."
They were long seen as friends and allies. But Camus could not hide that he felt a growing sense of distance from the clique of Parisian intellectuals surrounding Sartre and his companion, Simone de Beauvoir. No matter how much he debated with the others, and spent long nights drinking, dancing and seducing, he remained the wistful loner.
Sartre was envious of the idolized and good-looking French Algerian, the "street urchin from Algiers," as he later called him. Sartre saw himself as a child of the French bourgeoisie -- and he strove to break its bonds as demonstratively as possible. By contrast, Camus was proud of his humble origins and never denied his roots.
The two ambitious men met personally for the first time in the midst of the war, in occupied Paris during the summer of 1943. Camus introduced himself on the occasion of the premiere of Sartre's play "The Flies." At the time, a small group of artists and philosophers met regularly in private homes and in the cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the heart of Paris. But rivalries soon surfaced, long before the public was privy to any intellectual competition. The conflict, no surprise, often had to do with women.
Sartre once asked himself if he didn't seek out women's company "to free myself from the burden of my ugliness." In early 1944, he wrote a letter to his lifelong companion de Beauvoir, informing her of his victory over ladies' man Camus. It had to do with a certain Tania, whose sister put in a good word for him: "What are you thinking, running after Camus? What do you want from him?" he'd had the sister tell her. He, Sartre, was so much better, she'd said, and such a nice man.
Video c/o The Libertarian.
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