South Atlantic Modern Language Association

Camus' Aesthetic of RebellionAuthor(s): James M. SharkeySource: South Atlantic Bulletin, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Nov., 1973), pp. 79-81Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3197087 .

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CAMUS' AESTHETIC OF REBELLION

JAMES M. SHARKEY Georgia State University

Albert Camus has been universally acknowledged as a leading representative of modern French thought. The strange story of Meursault in L'Etranger coupled with two philosophical essays are widely read for their profound insights and revelations of con- temporary thought. Le Mythe de Sisyphe, which appeared in 1942, explores the complexities of absurdity and has subsequently equated the absurd with Camus. The second essay, L'Homme RevoltS (1951), takes as its theme rebellion. In this age of resis- tance and revolution it is not surprising that Camus has attracted so much attention. One aspect of rebellion in Camus which has been passed over is the aesthetics found within the idea of rebel- lion. Grounded in the philosophy of revolt, Camus' aesthetics emerge from the depths of negativity through an act of refusal.' It is this moment of refusal which must be the focal point in a description of Camus' aesthetic of rebellion.

Creativity for Camus appears from the ground of refusal. The facticity of the real world is tolerable to a certain degree, but it constitutes itself as a limit. The artist and the rebel refuse to allow the universe to exceed its limit of facticity. The real world contains itself only within itself and thereby is constituted finitely. When the universe defines itself as absolute and demands totality, consciousness rebels simply because the real world, as it is per- ceived by consciousness, is finite and not whole. Consciousness therefore rejects a totalitarian world and finds in this negative attitude of refusal the negativity of reality.

Refusal uncovers the negative structure of the universe. The real world changes and constantly overcomes itself: things come into existence and pass out of existence. There is a passing from what is here and now into what is not here and now. This passage from what is to what is not reveals the inherent negativity of the real. It is floating in a sea of nots, both past and future. These two poles define the present, or the same thing, the present is defined by negatives. Since change emerges from incompletion and im- perfection, it indicates its own refusal of itself.

The very moment of conscious refusal is grounded in nega- tivity. Consciousness, as Hegel has shown, is initiated by a rejec- tion of the real world wherein consciousness posits itself as other than the real world. When the artist rejects the real world as absolute, he not only proclaims a negation but opts in his very

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80 Camus

refusal for an affirmative. An artist says "no" to this world in order to say "yes" to a universe which could possibly supplant the present world. Within his conscious gaze upon the real, he sees the possibilities which, although not there, could be there. The tension between what is and what ought to be is the moment of rebellion. The act of rejection posits the exaltation of certain aspects: "Pour cr6er la beaut?, il doit au meme temps refuser le reel et exalter certains de ses aspects. L'art conteste le reel, mais ne se dbrobe pas 'a lui."2

Refusal, however, demands unity. The conscious rejection of the world as it is demands a unified, harmonious synthesis not present in the real world.

The potentialities of the real reveal their absence in the here and now, but they point to a possible reintegration in which harmony and unity could be achieved. The "I rebel" gives birth to the flight into transcendence promised by beauty. Art estab- lishes a missing harmony through its vision of beauty. Art thus constructs substitute universes out of the real: "Dans toute revolte se d6couvrent l'exigence m6taphysique de l'unit6, I'impossibilit6 de s'en saisir, et la fabrication d'un univers de remplacement. La rdvolte, de ce point de vue, est fabricatrice d'un univers. Ceci d6finit l'art, aussi. L'exigence de la rdvolte, a vrai dire, est en partie une exigence esth6tique."3 Creativity is a transformation of the actual world effected by the aesthetic awareness of the artist. Consciousness is constantly overcoming the universe for a more perfect universe through refusal. Literature envisages a world more harmonious than the actual: "L'effet de la grande litt&rature semble ktre de cr6er des univers clos ou des types achev6s."4

Camus situates his aesthetic within the system of a dialectic. The positing of the actual world brings forth its antithesis, human consciousness. Conscious exploitation of the negativity of the actual world in order to realize the potentialities inherent in it gives rise to a synthesis wherein unity and harmony are recon- ciled. The artist corrects reality by completing its potentialities: "L'unit6 en art surgit au terme de la transformation que l'artiste impose au r6el. Elle ne peut se passer ni de l'une ni de l'autre. Cette correction, que l'artiste opere par son langage et par une redistribution d'616ments puises dans le rdel, s'appelle le style et donne A I'univers recr66 son unit6 et ses limites. Elle vise chez tout r~volt6, et rdussit chez quelques g6nies, 'a donner sa loi au monde."5

Art is refusal, and it is therefore negative. The artist is a rebel because he refuses to accept the world as it is in order to build a world as it could be. Creativity arises from this refusal by exploiting the negativity of the actual world and seeks a new

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South Atlantic Bulletin 81

synthetic unity. Art is the stress and tension which consciousness experiences between what is and what should be. It is a tension grasped in a momentary reflection which generates creativity and artistic production.

NOTES

1. Cf. Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968) and An Essay on Literature (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969); John Cruickshank, Albert Camnus and the Literature of Revolt (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1960).

2. Albert Camus, L'Homme Rdvoltd (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), p. 319. 3. Ibid., pp. 315-16. 4. Ibid., p. 320. 5. Ibid., p. 332.

(continued from page sixty-nine) have been corrected at 149:13, 149:30, 153:13, 201:25-26, 291:3, 328:4, 375:5, 379:41, 384:13, and 384:28. Other typographical errors were caught at 79:23, 212:22, 362:37, and 374:27. In addition to these 31 corrections, more than 50 imperfections in type were cleaned up in the offset plates before reprinting, a list of which is too long to include here.

Having read the text line by line and seen to the corrections of more than 80 typographical errors, I feel it proper to claim I have "edited" the text. Presumably, to function as editor in Meri- wether's view, the type should have been reset, thus introducing the possibility of further errors. I do believe I would have ex- ceeded my function as editor had I decided to correct Wade's sys- tem of quotation and documentation as Meriwether suggests should be done. This would have been a presumptuous collaboration, as Wade's peculiar, albeit inaccurate, system of quotation and dodu- mentation was as much a part of his style as was Faulkner's incon- sistencies and contradictions in the body of his Yoknapatawpha fiction.

Perhaps we do need "a better-balanced, up-to-date scholarly and critical study of Longstreet and his Georgia Scenes," but the value of Wade's biography is less as a scholarly study than it is as a piece of literature unto itself, a unique document of Wade's life and times. In this light I firmly reject Meriwether's conclusion that "this is a book which requires, more than ever, to be used with great care."

M. THOMAS INGE, 'Virginia Commonwealth University

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