Les sources du thème de la mort dans l'écriture d'Albert Camus. Une analyse de la triple mimèsis.
Abstract
These reflections attempt to understand the origins of the omnipresence of the theme of death throughout the literary work of Albert Camus, French writer of the twentieth century. Our hypothesis presumes that the recurrence of the reality of death in the author's works derives from his personal experiences and the socio-historical context. At the end of the analyses of the six works constituting our corpus, by using the theoretical aesthetics of Paul Ricoeur (1983), la triple mimèsis, we have come to the conclusion that the redundancy of our study theme comes, not only from the context of wars (the Second World War and the Cold War) of Camus' time, but also and above all from his double consciousness of death, such as it can be read in his diary, the Carnets (1964): the consciousness of physical death and the consciousness of metaphysical death. The first concerns fears and anxieties experienced by Camus during his high school years. He discoverd that he had developed tuberculosis. Metaphysical death is closely connected to physical death. However, it implies a philosophical attitude that any mortal man may adopt to overcome the fears and anxieties related to death. Thus the Camusian literary character is at the crossroads of these two consciousnesses of death. Our reading of this close relationship between the author's personal experiences and his literary works helped us to understand the ambition and the therapeutic project he wanted to bequeath to posterity. Thus Camus' literature can be likened to a panacea allowing man, victim of an inevitable destiny, to heal his fears, by converting his life to a perpetual invitation to death, in order to live happily and free. It follows that the omnipresence of the theme of death in the French writer’s works, constitutes both an individual and a collective dimension and as such, it is a humanist project.