Algerian Chronicles PDF
Preview Algerian Chronicles
A L B E RT C A M U S Algerian Chronicles EDITED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALICE KAPLAN TRANSLATED BY ARTHUR GOLDHAMMER Algerian Chronicles Albert Camus x Algerian Chronicles v translated by Arthur Goldhammer with an introduction by Alice Kaplan The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, En gland 2013 This book was originally published as Chroniques algériennes, 1939– 1958, by Editions Gallimard, copyright © 1958 and 2002 by Editions Gallimard, Paris Chapter 8 (“Crisis in Algeria”) was originally published, in slightly different form, in Albert Camus, Camus at Combat, copyright © 2006 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press. Introduction and translation copyright © 2013 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America library of congress cataloging- in- publication data Camus, Albert, 1913– 1960. [Chroniques algériennes, 1939– 1958. En glish] Algerian chronicles / Albert Camus ; translated by Arthur Goldhammer ; with an introduction by Alice Kaplan. p. cm. Originally published in French: Paris : Gallimard, 1958. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0- 674- 07258- 9 (alk. paper) 1. Algeria— Politics and government— 20th century. 2. Algeria— Social conditions— 20th century. 3. Algeria— History—Revolution, 1954– 1962. I. Title. DT295.C293 2013 965.04—dc23 2012036100 Contents Translator’s Note ix New Perspectives on Camus’s Algerian Chronicles by Alice Kaplan 1 Algerian Chronicles Preface 23 The Misery of Kabylia 37 1 Destitution 41 2 Destitution (continued) 47 3 Wages 53 4 Education 59 5 The Po liti cal Future 65 6 The Economic and Social Future 73 7 Conclusion 81 contents Crisis in Algeria 85 8 Crisis in Algeria 89 9 Famine in Algeria 93 10 Ships and Justice 97 11 The Po liti cal Malaise 101 12 The Party of the Manifesto 107 13 Conclusion 111 14 Letter to an Algerian Militant 113 Algeria Torn 117 15 The Missing 121 16 The Roundtable 123 17 A Clear Conscience 125 18 The True Surrender 129 19 The Adversary’s Reasons 133 20 November 1 137 21 A Truce for Civilians 141 22 The Party of Truce 145 23 Call for a Civilian Truce in Algeria 149 The Maisonseul Affair 161 24 Letter to Le Monde 165 25 Govern! 169 vi contents Algeria 1958 173 26 Algeria 1958 175 27 The New Algeria 181 Appendix 185 Indigenous Culture: The New Mediterranean Culture 187 Men Stricken from the Rolls of Humanity 197 Letter from Camus to Le Monde 203 Draft of a Letter to Encounter 205 Two Letters to René Coty 209 The Nobel Prize Press Conference Incident 213 Index 219 vii Translator’s Note Algerian Chronicles is a moving record of Albert Camus’s distress at his inability to alleviate the series of tragedies that befell his homeland, Algeria, over a period of 20 years, from 1939 to 1958. Ca- mus collected these reactions to current events in a volume origi- nally entitled Actuelles III. It would no doubt have saddened him to learn that the sources of his heartache—t he diffi culty of reconcil- ing Eur op ea n and non-E uropean cultures, the senseless recourse to violence, the fatal spiral of repression and terror—a re once again matters “of actuality,” lending prescience to his original title. After listening to Camus lecture, the writer Julien Green de- scribed him in terms that one might apply to a secular saint: “There is in this man a probity so obvious that it inspires almost immediate respect in me. To put it plainly, he is not like the oth- ers.” This quality of authenticity is unmistakable throughout the pieces collected here. Camus wrote as a moralist, in the noblest sense of the term. In fact, he was a moralist in two different senses. In the French sense, he was a worthy heir to La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère, moralistes who exposed the hidden selfi shness in osten- sibly selfl ess action, the hypocrisy in what society, for reasons of its own, hypocritically honors as virtue. But he was also a moralist in the American sense, a writer of “jeremiads,” which, as Sacvan Ber- covitch revealed, are best understood as appeals to the fatherland
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