Athanasia Siouta
Dr. Ansgar Mohnkern
Master thesis Comparative Literature
15 June 2014
Camus’ The Stranger and The Victory over the Sun: A comparative analysis of
Table of contents
1. Introduction………….………...3-5 2. Heraclitus’ Sun…….………...6-10 3. Plato’s Cave……….…11-16 4. Victory Over the Sun…….………17-32 5. Camus’ measures……….………..…33-50 6. Conclusions……….………...51-52 7. Bibliography……….……….….53-56
Introduction
The sun has always played a vital role in individual's physical and psychological well-being, and human’s dependence on nature had always been undisputable. Humans, for thousands of years, recognized their subordination to the sun and natural phenomena in general, and they adjusted their way of living in accordance to nature’s will. They knew how to use nature’s resources for their survival and how to respect its rules.
Today, however, mostly due to the dramatic technological progress that has taken place over the latest period of time, humane intervention on nature has been maximized, and many believe that the results of this intervention will be catastrophic. Characteristically, it was only at the twentieth century that agriculture disappeared as the principal activity of human life in general and of individual’s cultures. (Serres, 1992: 2) Since then, human civilization has been undergoing an enormous transformation, with urbanization and industrialization being the main trends. The influence of the sun and the climate has been eliminated, especially in modern cities, the inhabitants of which, in their majority, work indoors and no longer think in accordance to the earth’s rhythms and its ordering. Many are the ones who live their lives independently of the sunlight, leaving out the natural world. Nowadays, the schism nature/culture is stronger than ever.
Despite the general cultural tendency of our times, which views nature only as a resource for human use, there are many the ones who encourage a bio-centric perspective and seek a return to a simpler, purer way of life, in harmony with the rest of the living world. More and more recognize the need for the development of another paradigm, and move from anthropocentrism to a more holistic thinking. Proponents of this view recognize the equality of human and non-human life and they believe that separatism from the outside makes individuals become estranged from themselves.
In light of this growing anxiety, this research is mostly concerned with the significance of the sun, as the symbol of the world which exists independently from humans. There will be mostly two questions to which there will be given an answer: firstly, whether there is rationality in the materiality of the sun, and, secondly, what is the relationship of humans with this
materiality. What will be firstly explored is how individuals reflected on natural phenomena before this schism took place, and it will be examined the question whether there was ever a period when humans viewed themselves as one with the rest of the world, and, if so, what did this world mean for them. This will be done in the first, introductory chapter, which will be concerned with Heraclitus, the pre-socratic Ephesian philosopher, and his assumption that the fire is the governor of the universe. The question of the main universal principle, and the idea that the universe is ordered will be central at this point.
Furthermore, the second chapter will stand in Plato’s allegory of the cave, which will be viewed as firstly setting the question of humans’ relationship with external appearances. The symbol of the sun will be read as the objective truth and the allegory as the process of how humans can finally get access to this knowledge. The Platonic cave will be seen as expressive of the opposition lying within the humane perception of reality: the world which exists in reality and that which exists within human’s mind.
The third chapter will be concerned with the Victory Over the Sun, the Russian futuristic play. This play will be read in relation to Plato’s questioning of subjectivity, and the idea that human’s apprehension of reality is disillusioned. On this ground, some analytical grasp will be gained on the reasons of the capturing of the sun which takes place in the play. What will be examined is why the sun is seen as hostile to humans and how do humans envision themselves when they get isolated from nature and external reality. The idea that the universe is irrational and chaotic, instead of ordered, will be also questioned.
This research will conclude with The Stranger of Camus’, which will be viewed as a critique of the avant-garde’s anthropocentric approach and its hostility to the natural world. The novel will be read as an emergent call for wholeness and a speculation on if and how this unity is possible. A comparative analysis of The Stranger and the Victory Over the Sun will be made, so to be analyzed whether Camus’ philosophic thought shares some common characteristics with that of the Russian avant-garde. Moreover, it will be queried in which way Camus returns to the ancient Greek thought and its idea that the universe has measures.
This study will demonstrate some of the reasons of humans’ detachment from the outside and the consequences of this behavior. Moreover, it will prove how Camus’ idea of an active engagement with
the light of the sun could speak to our times and why it is the most reasonable philosophic stance towards the world of the living.
Heraclitus’ Sun
For Heraclitus, the well-known Ephesian philosopher, the world that we all live in is in a constant flux, it is governed by change. Our universe is always under process and we can never step in the same river twice. In the Heraclitean cosmology, nothing is at rest. The world, the
cosmos, is constructed from the totality of the opposites, which do not possess any stable
identity, but, instead, are fluid and changeable. For Heraclitus, ‘war is the father of all’. (Heraclitus, in Patrick, 1969: 100) There is no permanence and stability, and whatever lives, lives by the destruction of something else. The basis of equilibrium is struggle, the war of the opposites. However, behind this apparent chaotic and disordered mobility, there is a rule that governs everything. It is the Logos, the reasoning, which triggers the movement and the transformation of things. In the philosopher’s doctrine, the idea of the universal flux is accompanied by the apprehension of an eternal law, which is forever permanent. The never ending change takes place under the guidance of a universal law. This law connects all things in an indivisible harmony, the harmony of the opposites, under which all things are unified in an inseparable whole. Under this eternal reasoning, this cosmic principle, unity is formed through multiplicity. Logos is the principle connecting and supporting the universe, the law governing the universe. The Logos is that which makes all things become one, claims Heraclitus, when stating that ‘Listening not to me but to the Logos, it is wise to acknowledge that all things are one’ (Heraclitus, 102)
This eternal Being, the Source of Life, is, for Heraclitus, the fire. All material things, whether they are in a solid, liquid or gaseous form, are all transformations of fire. ‘Fire lives in the death of earth, air lives in the death of fire, water lives in the death of air, and earth in the death of water’ claims
the philosopher in his assertion that all the other elements- air, water, and earth- are transformed fire. (Heraclitus, 90) But why did Heraclitus choose the flame, in particular, to be the fundamental principle of the universe?
The classical scholar W.K.C. Guthrie asserts that the symbolization of the fire expresses the two main concepts of the philosopher: firstly, that everything is made from strife, and secondly, that everything is in constant flux. Fire, as he explains, is known for its destructive forces, for its consuming and destroying, and also, it is constantly changing its form and its shape. (Guthrie, 2013: 42) These two characteristics are the ones that make fire govern the natural world. Fire contains the contradictory forces of creating and destroying life. Fire is that which initiates life, and that which finally takes it back.
The movement of the fire, its upward and downward flare, its’ dramatic manifestation have a lot to do with the movement of the sun, with its vanishing at night and its rekindle every dawn.1 On this ground, fire and sun can be viewed as having the same meaning. The sun is
object to cyclical change. This change, as every process in the world- even the sun itself, as the main universal principle- develops according to a definite law, its ‘’measures’’. The cosmos is not simply fire, but fire ‘kindled in measures and in measures going out’. ‘All events proceed with the necessity of fate ... The sun will not overstep his bounds… for if he does, the Erinyes, helpers
1 The Heraclitean associations of fire and sun have been observed by many critics, such as Aryeh Finkelberg. Finkelberg stands in the Heraclitean conception of the war of opposites, in the dipolar schemes day/night,
winter/summer, according to which the fire’s upward movement symbolizes the transaction from night to day and, accordingly, the flaring down that from summer to winter. In her view, the fire’s transformations equate to the sun’s upward/downward movement through the sky that alternate at the solstices. As she claims, ‘’The association between the annual solar cycle and the fire’s transformations must be at the root of the Heraclitean conception of the Great Year, which thus should be the period in which fire, like the sun, completes its downward/upward course with the ensuing alternation of the cosmic ‘’seasons’’, ‘’winter’’ and ‘’summer’’. (Finkelberg, 1998: 208) The correspondence of the fire’s transformations with the solstices makes it clear that Heraclitus saw these transfrormations as recurrent cycles. The cycles of the movement of the sun characterize the cycle of life.
of justice, will find him out.’ (Heraclitus, 91) But the sun does not only follow the law; it watches over it, and gives judgment in accordance to its commands. ‘This world, the same for all, neither any of the gods nor any man has made, but it always was, and is, and shall be, an ever living fire, kindled in due measure, and in due measure extinguished’. (89) The assertion of Heraclitus that Fire is the Law that obeys to the Law seems vague and misleading. In what should the Law subordinate to, how could it obey to that which itself is? The sun, for Heraclitus, has to obey to his own measures, the measures of the change. But what exactly are these measures?
The measures of the sun are likely to refer to its size. Its measures are ‘the dimensions that it does not exceed on its daily rekindling, thus, the limits of the recurrent quantitative change’. (Finkelberg, 203) Going back to the philosopher’s assertion that war is the father of everything, we can see that, indeed, the size (or heat) of the fire is that which decides what is it that has to be burnt, what has to be destroyed, and, subsequently, what has to be born through this destruction. The sun governs the cycle of seasons, since the winter -the time when the sun is at its greatest distance from the Earth- is associated with death, and the summer, the opposite of the winter, is associated with the revitalization of life. The sun, the cosmic fire, cannot overstep its measures, the measures of the circular change, otherwise the Earth will lose its balance and equilibrium. Everything on Earth depends on this every day process, the repetition of which is necessary for the creation of life. The measures of the sun are his every day movement, his dawn and his rekindling, his hiding and his uncovering, which make him new each day, yet the same.
What has been acknowledged about Heraclitus is that his conceptions of Logos and Fire seem to have the same meaning and the distinctions between them seem unclear. It could be, therefore, natural to associate the two terms, inasmuch as they seem to function in Heraclitus’ thought in the same way. The Fire, thus, is Logos, and Logos is expressed in the form of the Fire. But what does the term Logos refer to in particular?
The Heraclitean conception of the Logos is curious and obscure, acquiring a mystical, metaphysical meaning. One reading of the term could comprehend it as the omnipresent wisdom that suspects the work of all things. It is true forever, it has general acceptance and is valid to all things.
It is the measure of things, their causality, and it reminds us of what we describe as God in modern religion. Heraclitus' logos means
First of all, the cognitive law of indivisible harmony, then absolute and unity, and also the law of the identity of absolute opposition. A part of the meaning, therefore, pertains exactly to the observation of logos as a universal cosmological principle and law. It is a universal law, immanent to all things, a law linking all things into a unified whole, establishing incessant change in the universe, in accordance with the general law. There is one immanent law and mind in the world, where human law should act as its embodiment. Logos is the principle connecting and supporting the universe, the law governing the universe. (Ristic Gorgiev, 2009: 57)
The association of Logos with Fire in Heraclitus’ thought can be understood in the ground that, in the ancient thought, the moment when one can finally grasp the true nature of things is
a moment of illumination. Light has been traditionally associated with the discovery of truth. It is the light that which shins upon things, unveiling their substance. The light causes things to unhide and reveal their true nature. Even nowadays, in our every-day lives and in our common speech we very frequently use the metaphor of the light as truth. The sun, the cosmic light, brings the truth from heaven to earth.
For Heraclitus, this moment of illumination is when the human souls understand the unity in multiplicity. It is the moment when they realize the similarity behind the difference, when their souls realize the interrelation and the interconnectedness of all the natural phenomena which, at first glance, seem to have nothing to do with each other. The discovery of truth lies in the realization that everything is one and humans are a part of this unity.
For the philosopher, individuals act as the microcosm of the universe, and their lives do largely correspond to cosmological principles. The human law is the expression of the cosmic law, and the human soul is a part of the soul of the world. The soul is a part of the predominant fire, and it exists within the human body. It is the means through which humans can potentially discover and come to meet the infinite cosmos. The soul, rather than the senses, is the means through which humans participate in the world: ‘Eyes and ears are bad witnesses, if the soul is without understanding’. (106)
The universe, for Heraclitus, is ordered, and humans, being part of it, can live in accordance to it. Whoever lives under the light of the sun, cannot exist independently of it and he always has to respect its rules.
Plato’s cave
Plato follows the same line of thought with Heraclitus in his famous distinction of reality, in the transcendent, divine reality on the one hand and in the imperfect reality of our senses on the other. There is a reasoning in everything that surrounds us, there is an eternal and absolute truth, and this truth has a cosmic point of origin. For Plato, the objects of knowledge did actually exist, but they could hardly be identified with the objects of the material world, known to us through our senses. Plato agrees with Heraclitus in his assumption that the world of multiplicity is, in its deepest structure, a unity. What he was skeptical about was not the actual existence of the real, the divine and the eternal but whether this real could be unveiled to humans, whether humans could ever discover the truth, the very nature of things. This very nature cannot be found in the perceptible world, but in an ideal place, outside space and time, the world of the well-known platonic ideas. One of Plato’s main arguments is how that which is imperfect by itself could ever be lead to the knowledge of the perfect.
In Plato’s view, nature’s truth does not equate to the human’s truth, since it is something much greater and finer. With Plato, and before that, with Socrates, philosophic thought does not just question the nature of things, but mostly their relation to human cognition. Individuals were not just interested in the world of the living as such, but in relation to their own identity. The idea of self-questioning raises, the problem is no more the question: ’’What is it that stands beyond me? What is it made from? What are its rules?’’ but the answer to the self-reflective wandering: “What do I have to do with that? What is my position in this? ”. Natural philosophy becomes ethical philosophy, metaphysical becomes moral, the divine cosmic rules need to be communicated to the material world, and they also have to form the societal rules. Of course, the Heraclitean cosmology, as well as the Pythagorean religious doctrine had also been concerned with the existence of the human soul, but, still, this soul was seen as inextricably linked to the material world. Before Socrates, humans were not that much in seek of their own identity
and, mostly, there could not exist a differentiation between their identity and their surrounding external space.
Plato’s allegory of the cave is indicative of his view on how the ideas make their appearance on humans. Plato’s masterpiece is widely known as a strong questioning about the real and the impression, the illusion of it. Plato’s prisoner is held from his childhood captive in chains in a cave-like dwelling. Forced to immobility, he can only look at the projections of the objects that have been carried behind his back and shape their shadows through a fire that casts its glow towards them. Thus, they are disillusioned with the impression that the shadows are the actual truth of things. The real world lies on the outside, and it is revealed to the very few ones who manage to escape from their condition.
In contrast to the humane thinking, which is restricted to only see the appearance of things, the sunlight outsight the cave is in no way a product of human thinking and it is that which stands as the symbol of the universal truth. In Socrates’ words,
It was this (the sun) that not only provided the yearly cycle of the seasons and oversaw everything in the region of the seen, but was also in a certain way the cause of those other things he and the other prisoners used to see. (Plato, 2012: 242)
The sunlight exists apart from the human perception of it and it is, and always will be, independently of the question whether humans can grasp it or not. The outside world is eternal and transcendent and it works as the paradigm of our every-day experience. As Heidegger notes, ‘the things that the allegory mentions as visible are the image for what the proper being of beings consists in.’ (Heidegger, 1998: 164) The Platonic sun carries the truth from the Ideal to the material world and it is the barrier of the heavenly meaning of things. The sunlight is that which makes all visibility and knowledge possible and which enables all humans finally form this impression of reality. It mediates between the material and the divine world, carrying the significance of the divine truth. Only under the natural light can one exist
sincerely and in accordance to the vast universal ordering. In the same way as with Heraclitus, the sun stands as the symbol of the ordered universe and as the transporter of the cosmic truth. In its brightness the true nature of things emerges and reality becomes visible. The sunlight, to which the ones who escape from their shackles are exposed to, signifies the cognition of the divine and the awareness of the deepest structure of the cosmos.
The question now arises to whether and how can one become accustomed to the revelation of the sun. When someone finally gains his freedom, he will at first get dazzled by the sunlight, ‘’his eyes ‘’will hurt, and he‘d turn round and try to bolt back in the direction of the things he could see, thinking these really and truly clearer than what was being shown to him’ (241) Attached to his previous view, the prisoner will definitely believe that the real is the images, the projections of things. With his eyes being burnt, he will turn his head back into the darkness and the shadows and he will be unable to grasp what is revealed to him. He will react in any way in the sun’s manifestation and he will prefer his enslavement rather than his freedom. Humans have to struggle with themselves when having to accept the truth. At first they have to struggle with the limitations of their mentality and their senses and then they have to fight with their need to stay confronted with their illusions. The truth of the sun is painful and hardly acceptable and there are few the ones who can stand its burning. Humans, thus, have to give the double battle with firstly, their imperfect perception of reality and, secondly, with the willingness to live within the phantoms of their thought. As Heidegger notes, ‘’So even those who have been freed from their chains still assess wrongly in what they posit as true, because they lack the prior condition for ‘’assessing’’, namely, freedom. Certainly removing the chains brings a sort of liberation, but being let loose is not yet real freedom. ‘’ (Heidegger, 1998: 169)
The fact of the matter now in the sun’s symbolization becomes a questioning of the inside and the outside truth. Plato’s cave is the place of human thought and inner sensation. It is the place where the
human mind exists separately from everything that surrounds it, independently from materiality. In the cave there is no bodily experience, no active participation, only visual appearances. Thus, the withdrawal to the cave symbolizes one’s separation from the material and the living world and his isolation to his own subjectivity and his own stream of consciousness. It requires a strenuous effort for someone to get used to the intensity of the sunlight, the path to the objective knowledge is hardly accessible. For this reason, living in the darkness can often be a conscious choice. Plato’s prisoner is a victim of his own limitations, his inability and his unwillingness to accept the real.
The cave symbolizes the desire of someone to live in an imaginary condition, it is the regression to a previous state of existence, where the limits within objective reality and subjective cognition are unclear. In this pro-logic state there is no language, there are no causal relations between the objects and there is no rational reasoning. Jean-Louis Baudry states that ‘the philosopher exposes man’s condition and the distance that separates him from ‘’true reality’’’ (Baudry, 1975: 691) and he identifies this condition with what we experience when we dream. Plato’s prisoner, thus, ‘is a victim of an illusion of reality, that is, of precisely what is known as a hallucination, if one is awake, as a dream, if asleep; he is the prey of an impression, of an impression of reality.’ (Baudry, 693) Indeed, Platos’ allegory has various analogies with what we experience when we dream. Following the Freudian analysis of the dreams, we notice that in the dream there is a lack of movement, there is no turning towards the external world, but rather a turning towards one’s own reflections. These reflections may be a product of someone’s thought, but they spring from the subject’s external experience. Again, as in the cave, we receive the fragmented images of what stands beyond ourselves and we process these images in a way which serves our own desires and our personal point of view. Even though the dreamer’s actual immobility forces him to passivity, the dreamer believes that he actively participates in the dream, unaware of the fact of what actually happens in the dream takes place nowhere else than in his own mind. 2. This condition, very 2 Baudry, quoting Freud, tells us about sleep that, ‘’from a somatic viewpoint is a reviviscence of one’s stay in the body of the mother, certain conditions of which it recreates: the rest position, warmth, and isolation which
much similar to the one of the platonic prisoners, enables the regression to the pro-causal thinking. This regression serves the wish to escape from the potential pain that sometimes comes together with our external bodily experience and to go back to a state of being where all our expectations are satisfied.
The way in which the dreamer constructs his own world is as if his projection of truth is generally valid. When being inside a dream, one can hardly realize the falseness of his appearances. The subject experiences the dream as if real and this reality is the one that it partly creates for itself. The prisoners’ reluctance to leave the cave expresses their fascination with living in a passive, dreamy condition, in their own subjectivity, where things are not the way they truly are, but the way they think of them to be and the way they want them to be. And then, the question becomes why should humans leave their protected and secured space and let themselves exposed to the risks and dangers of the outside.
For Plato, the place within our minds is- no matter what we think of it- imperfect and hallucinated. The allegory clearly manifests that what can be known through the intellect alone does not have any correspondence to that which actually exists. In the Platonic view, it is clear that humans are strongly connected to the material world and natural phenomena. When they get withdrawn from the sunlight they get enslaved in the shadows of their thought, unable to experience the material reality. The sun, as Heraclitus first showed, is the governor of all that which appears to humans. Reality does not exist in the place within us, but rather in the outside. When humans get detached from natural phenomena they cannot identify themselves with the existing reality. The human body and mind corresponds to the body of the universe, and the cosmic law is not imposed from the inside to the outside but vice versa. It is not the material world that has to comply with human thinking, but rather humans have to come to terms with the truth of the sun. Furthermore, human cognition cannot live independently from the external reality, inasmuch as the human mind, by being a part of the universe, subordinates to it. It is not the human who carries the truth, but the sun, as the symbolization of the outside sphere. Separatism from
the outside holds humans captive to their illusions. No matter how confronting these illusions may be, and no matter how the revelation of truth hurts, they finally have to get adapted to it.
The prisoners have to leave the cave and live in accordance with the rules of the universe that the sun transfers. Knowing the real becomes a duty and the ones who finally manage to straight look at the sunlight without hesitations and without doubts are, in Plato’s view, the happiest of all. The hardest of all the tasks, to not just look at the sun’s reflection but at the sun itself and to the bare truth of things Plato promises to be finally achievable. The prisoner would be finally able to look at the sun itself:
Then finally, I imagine, he’d be able to catch sight of the sun, not just reflected in the water, or as it appears in any alien location, but the sun itself, by itself, in its own place, and observe it as it is’. (242)
Plato promises that, through the proper training, our insides can live in accordance to the sun’s messages and humans will give themselves to its warmth. The truth of the sun is finally accessible, and humans can live in harmony with it.
In the summer of 1913 the company of four of the most subversive Russian avant-gardists met in order to make one of the most challenging projects ever made, the Victory Over the Sun. Alexei Kruchenykh wrote the libretto of the play that they themselves liked to call ‘’futuristic opera’’, Velimir Khlebnikov wrote the prologue, Kazimir Malevich designed the sets and the costumes and Mikhail Matiushin composed the music. The whole story of how the work was conceived and executed is interesting and expressive of the colorful and intense rebellion against an over 2000 age-old tradition of Western thought.
The work was written in a playful atmosphere in just seven days. Thanks to the newspaper articles about the futuristic works, the rumors spread out from the casting calls and the promotion of the contributors, the play was a great commercial success. The tickets were sold out in a day. Except of two professional singers all the performers were amateurs, since, in the audition announcement the creators had clearly announced that professional actors were unwelcomed. Victory Over the Sun had to manage with just two rehearsals before the opening night and the only music came out from an old out-of-tune piano- delivered at the very last moment, on which Matiushin played alone. On the 3rd of December, the
first night of Victory over the Sun, the audience responded with boos, whistles, cheers, howls, and applause. The creators were pleased. 3
The story is about the capture of the sun from the men of the future. The sun, representing rationality and the attachment to the past gets ripped from the sky and is locked into a box. The Strong People of the Future are no longer in need of it. They have achieved their independence from natural
3 An extensive description of the reaction to the play is to be found in: Douglas, Charlotte. "Victory Over the Sun." Russian History 8.1 (1981): 69-89. Web.
phenomena and the conventional ordering: ‘We are free/broken sun…Long live darkness! /And black gods/And their favorite-pig!’(117)
The work was an enormous challenge for its time, bringing new dynamics in literature, music and visual arts. In visual arts, it was the beginning of Malevich’s non-subjective painting, and his so-called Suprematism, the supremacy of the inner feeling and sensation over the depiction of the outer, subjective reality. In literature, the word was liberated from the law of causality and the principle of a given meaning. New words were invented, that would express the new order of things. These words aimed to destroy the ‘’clean, clear, honest, resonant’’ Russian language, stigmatized by the dead and boring language of criticism and literature. (Douglas, 1981: 70) In music, new ideas of harmony and melody were given, and new techniques were initiated, such as the simultaneous movement of four completely independent voices. The Victory over the Sun had the intention to turn the world upside down, and so it did. Through this play, these four well-known Russian futurists wanted to get rid of all the artistic conventions that the new artists had to bear. They wanted to throw away all their past, so that they could enthusiastically jump into the future. Kruchenykch admits:
The point of the opera is to destroy one of the greatest artistic conventions, the sun in the given instance. In men’s minds there exist certain means of human communication which have been created by human thought. The futurists wish to free themselves from this ordering of the world, from these means of thought communication, they wish to transform the world into chaos, to break the established values into pieces and from these pieces to create anew. (Kruchenykch, quoted in Grey, 1962: 308)
The sun lies slaughtered!
It seems that the sun, not only as the source of light in a physical sense, but also as the symbol, if not last and ultimate signifier of an ordered universe, needs to disappear. The Heraclitean Logos is a barrier for the future men, who, through the power of their technological triumph will dominate natural phenomena. Humans will be the only ones who will decide about themselves, anything else that stands beyond themselves, beyond their own rationality, their free will, needs to be rejected. The sun, for Heraclitus, is the father of all, but the humans, the children of the sun, want to revolt against their father and take his position as the only ones who rule themselves. The Strong Male Inhabitants are dynamically turning themselves against the world:
There will be no end! / We are striking the universe/we are arming the world against ourselves/we are organizing the slaughter of scarecrows/plenty of blood plenty of sabers/and gun bodies! /we are submerging the mountains! (Kruchenykch, 1971: 109)
The ‘’sun of cheap appearances’’, in Matiushtin words, (quoted in Douglas, 1981: 73), the god of rationality and clarity is treated in the play as the main enemy of humans. For the avant-garde, the illumination of the sun upon things only provides an illusion of reality, a false idea that the cosmos can be clear and harmonious. The main universal principle is not ordered, but, instead, it is chaotic and disrupted. Most of the things surrounding us do not correspond to an eternal reasoning and they do not exist in accordance to an absolute truth. There is no such thing as a subjective reality, and the material world keeps humans captive to their bodily needs, making them unable to experience reality according to their desires. In the view of Russian futurists, the sun does no longer carry an objective truth as a pre-given entity. And this is so because there is no such truth anymore. And even if it was, it would be hardly
accessible to humans, who, as Plato manifested, in most of the cases live within their own reflections. ‘’Sun, you gave birth to passions/and burned with an inflamed ray/we will throw a dustsheet over you/and confine you in a boarded-up concrete house!’’(109) says the Strong Man to the Sun, and so he does.
Through the capturing of the sun, the futurists intended to bring a radical darkness in the place of the light. The creators of this by all means revolutionary work hoped that the raise of their play could help them achieve much more than just the expression of themselves, or the communication of their innovative artistic style. They wanted to reverse the existing reality doctrine. With the Victory Over the Sun human apprehension of reality and the visible world was strongly questioned. Until their time, humanity very largely followed the Platonic principle, according to which the universe is ordered and humans can potentially follow this ordering. With the Victory over the Sun the futurists manifested their hostility to the belief that the natural world has measures and works under rules which are of general application. The capturing of the sun signifies the closure of the metaphysical era and any possible belief in the various forms of a divine truth. Furthermore, the fundamental questions of subject-object relations and the relationship of artistic creativity to reality were shifted in a strikingly different direction. A brief examination of the socio-political and cultural background of the play may help in the understanding of how this shift has taken place, since the avant-garde movement was indisputably determined from a new historical awareness and a new social consciousness. This new awareness is well expressed by the German artist Franz Marc: ’the turning point of two long epochs, similar to the state of the world fifteen hundred years ago, when there was also a transitional period without art and religion – a period in which great and traditional ideas died and new and unexpected ones took their place… The first works of a new era are tremendously difficult to define’’.(Marc, quoted in Gurianova, 2012: 25)
Characteristically, the opera was written just a few months before the outbreak of another historic landmark: World War 1 and its dramatic consequences, which made Europe reconsider its faith to the authorities and democratic values.
Before that, the ideas of philosophers such as Marx and Engels had shaken individuals’ idealistic beliefs, according to which first comes the idea and then the material world. Their approach was quite the reverse of the Platonic truth: it is not consciousness that forms social life, but it is rather social life that shapes consciousness. It is not the ideas that manifest themselves in materiality, and there is no such thing as ‘’reality as such’’, existing independently from history and politics. Historical and social development subordinates to material conditions, the base of which is the economic activity- the way of production and consumption. Ideas do no longer carry an ideal truth and human relationships are driven by class struggle.
Moreover, it is important to remember that in a very close period with the artistic development of the early avant-garde the psychoanalytic theories had started to emerge, declaring that there is much more in human psyche than rational thinking. Commenting on Freud, Neil Badminton observes that ‘in proposing that human activity is governed in part by unconscious motives, Freud further problematized the Cartesian model, in which the critical determinant of being is rational, fully-conscious thought’. (5) Discursive thought has only limited access to knowledge, inasmuch as human activity is largely driven by unconscious motives. The idea of human identity changed perspective: the Descartean Cogito ergo sum would be paraphrased as the Lacanian quote, referring to the Freudian method: ‘’I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think… I am not wherever I am the plaything of my thought; I think of what I am where I do not think to think’’. (Lacan, quoted in Badmington, 6) Thus, rationality and consciousness are not the elementary mental process, but only one part of it. Individuals, instead of suppressing their
instincts and their unconscious drives they should acknowledge their existence, bring them into surface, analyze them and learn how to cope with them.
The influence of these theories, as well as the impact of new scientific discoveries in people’s psyches is well known, but, still, it is important to be stressed so that the shift in human understanding of material reality will become clear. This shift was an attack to mostly two traditional values: it was the killing of the God-the death of the metaphysical meaning and its subsequent praise to human potentials, and, secondly, the idea of the self as existing on its own, having its unique identity independently from external reality. The nihilistic, atheistic thought of philosophers such as Nietzsche takes a positive character, the death of the metaphysical gives space to human creativity and expression. The moment when history ends, when the old model has proved itself dysfunctional, but the new one hasn’t already been born, is the moment with the limitless possibilities.
The Victory over the Sun is the manifest of human’s new potentials against the old model. Its aim was mainly the attack against two ontological dogmas: firstly, the idea expressed by Heraclitus and the natural philosophers, that there is rationality in materiality and, secondly, the Platonic belief that humans can potentially live in accordance to it. As we have seen with Heraclitus and, to some extent, with Plato, ancient thought was inextricably linked to the external appearances and there was no questioning regarding the truth of the objects. With the Victory, however, we see a great shift of human cosmological comprehension. This research will shed some light on how the first idea is deconstructed through the play’s linguistic experiments and how the visual images and the costumes of the play attack the old Platonic doctrine in which the sun has been the signifier for the a truth un-accessible to those who live in caves.
Anarchy, the mother of order
The main problem that arises from the play is that of the universal ratio. With the capturing of the sun, the futurists hope to move to a state of an ‘’ontological anarchy’’ (Gurianova, 2012: 25), as Nina Gurianova describes the term. In her analysis, the term is not limited to the movement of the political anarchy, a socially engaged political philosophy which rejected the authority of the state. Indeed, the avant-gardists wanted to achieve more than changing the world through revolution or political representation, they searched for a new ontology. In Gurianova’s view, the term is open to more interpretations than just the political one. The word anarchy is negatively charged as ‘’chaos’’ or ‘’disorder’’, but, for her, it does not necessarily have to be so, since, if we restrict the word to just one meaning, we oversimplify it. The word arche, as we are informed, has its origins in the ancient Greek thought, and it has the meaning of the prime principle, the initial cause of things. The arche has been sought from Heraclitus and the Ionian philosophers, who, according to Gurianova, ‘’denoted the first substance or primordial element, the origin and divine source out of which the world was created’’. (23) The word is formed through negation (an-arche) and it signifies the absence of the arche, the origin of things. However, the word got steadily a broader meaning, carrying the ideas of foundations and principles. Subsequently, arche can also signify the ‘’method of government’’ the ‘’realm’’ and the ‘’political authority’’. The absence of an arche, for Gurianova, does not necessarily have to equate to chaos, but to the challenging of the idea of ‘’origin’’.(25) Heraclitus had firstly seen these chaotic elements in the natural world, but things, in their very beginning, as well as in their very end, are governed by reason. Anarchism comes to challenge this view by its questioning of the source of things.
This observation may lead to the conclusion that our arche, the source of life, can be seen as that which governs us. That which gives life is that which controls life, and that which finally takes it back. By
having an arche, we, therefore, have a hierarchy. If the universe is governed by an ordering principle, it means we are also governed by it. The state of being governed reduces our freedom and independence. Accepting a hierarchy in the natural world means to accept a hierarchy in our personal entities, in the way we construct our own identity as humans. The attack to the universal ratio, thus, signifies an attack to human rationality. The Heraclitean Logos, as we saw, has a double significance: it has the meaning of both rationality and speech. There is a close interconnectedness between these two. But the Victory
Over the Sun manifests: ‘Do not trust old measurements!’ (110) A trans-rational view of the universe
goes hand in hand with a trans-rational view of the word. The arche in language is the already given meaning of the words, which, for the Futurists, expresses the old and decadent view of reality. The new order of things has come, and it has to be expressed through a new vocabulary, new grammatical rules and new syntax. By using the already existing words, we are slaves to the past. Krychenykch in his manifest ‘’The Declaration of the word as such’’ proclaims: ‘’The artist has seen the word in a new way and, like Adam, proceeds to give things his own names’ (Kruchenykch, in Lawton, 1988: 67)’. The destruction of the sun is therefore at the same time understood as the destruction of language in order to give room to a type of creativity beyond the firm connection between linguistic signifiers and 'things', objects, the world. The new image of reality must be created from the material of individual
conceptions:
Thought and speech cannot keep up with the emotions of someone in a state of inspiration,
therefore the artist is free to express himself not only in the common language(concepts) but also in a personal one(the creator is an individual, as well as in a language which does not have any definite meaning(not frozen), a transrational language) ( Kruchenykch, ‘Declaration of the word as such’, in Lawton, 1988: 67)
‘’ Lilac kooroza storr dvan entol tee te’’ (124) are the words that follow the overthrow of the linguistic rule of the signifier and the signified. The use of the zaum, translated in English as beyond-sense language is constructed through the use of neologisms and abbreviations, where the prime importance is given to the sound, the acoustic impression of the word, and not to its logical conveyance. Normal communicative language is thought to keep the word chained to the meaning, leaving individuals unable to express their feelings. Kruchenykch had criticized normal communicative language, stating that:
‘Wishing to depict the incomprehensibility, the alogicality of life and its horror, or to depict the mystery of life, they make resource time and again to the same (as always, as always!) ‘’clear neat’’ common language. This is the same as feeding a starving man cobblestones, or trying to catch small fish with a rotten net!) We were the first to say that in order to depict the new -the future- one needs totally new words and a new way of combining them) (‘’New ways of the word’, in Lawton, 72) Zaum was the reaction to the obsession with meaning and reason. Language becomes pure sound, it becomes rather a music expression than a tool for concrete and objective communication. The sound has been chosen for being more appropriate for the expression of the inner self, simple syllables are preferable for the expression of the unconscious, which does not think in words. These simple sounds will set the word free from its referentiality to a subject-matter. Kruchenykch’s words do not refer to an object, they do not express any ideas, but, instead, they directly come to communicate internal states. Kruchenykch insists that words have a relevance on their own and that the word is broader than its meaning: ‘The word is broader than its meaning. Each letter, its sound has its relevance… Why not repudiate meaning and write with word-ideas that are freely created? We do not need intermediaries-symbols, meaning’. ("New Ways of the Word," in Lawton, 72)
The language of the Victory over the Sun is rather expressive than communicative, the story lines are loose and one word is incoherently associated with one another, regardless if this association makes sense. The dialogues of the play very often do not come from guided reflection, but rather from the world of dreams. For example:
The speed you see is expressed if times two root teeth one put a coach of old boxes and sprinkles them with yellow sand yes and so let all that when you yourself think Well in the simplest case they collide into some thathere pipe in an easy chair well but if not? See there he people all climbed up somewhere’s high that it’s not his business hw the engines feel their hoofs and all well it’s natural! (121)
This language beyond the principles of signification is very much the practice which Ludwig Wittgenstein would term ‘’a radical break with the idea that language always functions in one way: to convey thoughts’’. (Wittgenstein, quoted in Dworkin, 2010: 186) Far from just its strictly communicative purposes, language is open to the interplay of reference and to the subjectivity of the transmitter and the receiver. With the liberation of the word from the reference to a particular object, the usage of it broadens in order to embrace one’s creativity and imagination. With the destruction of the traditional meaning, a new meaning will be given, which will be open to various possibilities and will express one’s personal view towards reality. Without the sun, without the external object, humans, the subjects, will be able to view reality in accordance to their own perspectives. The trans-logic of zaum does not necessarily have to equate to non-logic, but to a different kind of reasoning, in which the expression of the feeling is more important than the conveyance of the meaning, and a word can acquire a different significance. The negation of the sun goes together with the creative impulse. What is rejected is specifically the utilitarian reasoning process, the Logos, which does not exist in accordance with the
whole of one’s psyche, with its primitive vitality and its creative power. Without the sun, reality appears as dreamy-like- a horse can fix a bridge and there can be tea-plant waves:
The salt crawls towards the herdsmen/The horse fixed the bridge in the ear/Who keeps you at your posts/Run along the black ribs/Through steam and smoke/And little hooks of cranes/People stood on the steps/Tea-plant waves with switches(115)
Things have disappeared like smoke!
The first capturing of the sun stems from the problematic schism that has been very well expressed in the Platonic allegory: the contradiction between the existing reality on the one hand and the reality of our inner thoughts and feelings on the other. There is the unconscious, the intuition, which does not accord to materiality and objectivity. The traditional division between visual experience and human thought becomes a major theoretical problem. So, since our limitations make us unable to experience the reality of the objects, why do we still need them? Why don’t we just make them disappear? So, if we capture the sun we will finally free ourselves from the tyranny of the objects!
We are free/Broken sun…/Long live darkness!/And black gods/And their favorite-pig!(117) And this is the breakdown of Plato’s allegory, that the cave is not the illusion. What is illusionary is the belief in the existence of reality outside the cave.
In the Victory Over the Sun, Malevich’s very famous and largely commented Black Square firstly made its appearance. As we are informed about the play, Malevich, for the set of scene 3, ‘’created a
black square against a white background to represent a total eclipse of the sun. The image served as a precursor to his move towards non-objectivity and would inspire Black Square, one of the most iconic symbols of modernism’’. (Somerville, 2011: 82) The black square comes to replace the first material- the sun. True creation emerges from nothing else apart from the material of the self. Visualization is thought to be the main reason why humans cannot perceive the true nature of reality. There is much in the universe which is unseen. The image represents a stable view of that which exists, while, as Heraclitus first claimed, reality is fluid and changeable. If the universe is to be understood, it must be without an image, since universe does not involve visual appearances. The purity of the shapes and colors, the representation of the pristine feeling comes to replace the imitation of nature in painting. Painting should be liberated from its mimetic function and what should instead come to the surface are the painter’s insides. Art, for Malevich, should not obey to physical reality and the observed world. Objective painting blocks the artist’s creativity and inspiration. Malevich, in his historical ‘’From Cubism and futurism to Suprematism: The new Realism in painting’’, considers himself happy that he has gotten free from the external appearances. As he proudly claims for himself,
I have destroyed the ring of the horizon and escaped from the circle of things, from the horizon- ring which confines the artist and the forms of nature. This accursed ring, which opens up newer and newer prospects, leads the artist away, from the target of destruction.
And only a cowardly consciousness and meager creative powers in an artist are deceived by this fraud and base their art on the forms of nature, afraid of losing the foundation on which the savage and the academy have based their art. (Malevich, in Bowlt: 1988, 118)
Malevich here claims that realistic painting has its origins in primitive thinking. The savages did not have consciousness of their feelings and their personal identity, and so they turned to the natural world around them. Since they lacked the artistic skills that would allow their art to be complicated, they were only able to draw basic lines and imperfect shapes. As humans evolved, their art became rich and vibrant in the depiction of the visual appearances. But still, for Malevich this technical improvement is not enough, since the only thing that humans finally managed to do is to make their imitation become more complex. The Classical Art and the art of the Renaissance are, therefore, not considered as creative works. The Venus of Milo, is, for Malevich, ‘’a graphic example of decline. It is not a real woman but a parody’’. (121) Realism and naturalism are not creative works either. A true work of Art is created only with the expression of the artist’s ‘’I’’, which has clear boundaries between all that exists and surround us. The final goal of suprematism is nothingness, the zero, the absolute disappearance of materiality. The Sun, the Heraclitean God, ‘’lies slaughtered!’’(115). Without materiality, humans can finally be free.
Humans, in order to reach a higher state of awareness, have to abandon logic and dependence on nature. Victory Over the Sun initiates the era of conceptual painting and the reverse of the Platonic schema: human impression and subjectivity comes to over-place the object. The material is abandoned in favor of the ideas. The projections of reality have taken a life on their own, they have lost the connection with their primary source. Our sensations are, for Plato, in a close dialogue with the material, by being a projection of it. Our inner feelings do not exist separately from their surroundings. Even if they do not always go together with them, external reality is the place which stands as the raw material of the self. With Malevich, the self is thought as existent independently from the external space, being in a constant fight with it. There is no common ground for connection between the spiritual and the material reality. With his White on White, Malevich reaches the highest point of suprematism, with the
complete disappearance of the object in favor of a higher, immaterial reality. The destruction of the matter becomes a kind of a spiritual act. The abundance of objectivity opens the path to the intuitive reason of Suprematism. ‘’Our faces are dark/our light comes from inside’’ (117) envision the new people for themselves after the capturing of the sun. Beyond nothingness, Malevich’s zero symbolizes the overcoming of conservative ways of perception and depiction of external reality. The zero is the absolute infinity, the higher intuitive reason.
Appearing in the beginning as a departure point for existing beyond the limits of the logical progression of numbers, moving beyond the boundaries of art reduced to ‘’zero’’ by reason, this sign gradually acquires a more metaphysical meaning, initially as a symbol in which one must ‘’dissolve’’ in order to enter the non-objective world, and eventually becomes in The Suprematist
Mirror the symbol of the infinite God, the divine ‘’non-entity’’. Thus, Malevich actually arrives at
an interpretation of ‘’zero’’ as a mystical symbol and applies it to his own formulation of the theory of non-objective art. (Firtich, 2009: 359)
Humane perception of reality could, thus, be mainly divided into three units of psychic experience: sensational perception of the external appearances, abstract thought- non-referential to an object and, beyond that, the ‘’higher intuition’’, a cosmic reasoning. Only with the overcoming of objectivity can one develop a new vision. Only with the extinction of the external appearances can one’s personal consciousness grow so to embrace the cosmos.
Going back to the opera, we can see how Malevich applied his ideas in the designing of the sets and costumes and how he overcame the limitations of the stage space and the human body of the actor. Characteristically, the costumes of the actors were all three-dimensional, large in size, geometrical
shaped, and with vivid colors. All these qualities gave to the play the impression of a defiance of a conservative idea of space and time. A description on this is given by Susan Compton:
Since the walls and floor were green, the green and black costume of the ‘Ill-intentioned one’ would have largely disappeared into the background, except for a part of his head, and his red hand. By playing a red light into the stage the ‘Squabbler’ (who appeared in the same scene) would have had his single red leg intensified, his upper part would have become dark and the green, ‘Ill-intentioned’’ one would have become brown, except for his single, red hand and the black, geometric shapes on his costume which would have stood out. (….) Very simple sets, like the one on which Malevich wrote “Square’’ (quadrat) which allowed a large, plain area against which the characters could be seen clearly, would have been the most effective. (Compton 1976: 581)
What Malevich attempted to do with these sets and costumes was to express his rejection of the three dimensional Euclidean geometry and to form new measurements of space. Malevich’s geometrical bodies seem to exist in an ideal place, outside space and time and do not seem to subordinate to the Newtonian physical laws. There is almost no gravity, and the land of the future-after the capturing of the sun- is not located in a concrete space and time, but, instead, it seems as if existing in infinity. It is the
tenth country of the future, described in the sixth scene of the opera:
10th countries… all the windows are built toward the inside, the house is fenced in try to live here if
you can/What 10th countries! Well I don’t know I would have to live locked up one can’t move one’s
head or hand something will become unscrewed or displaced and how that damned axe works clipping all of us we walk aroundbald and it’s not hot it’s only humot it’s such a nasty climate that even gabbage and onions don’t grow and a market… where is onw? They say on the islands… (120)
The Victory Over the Sun was the expression of the ideals that followed the Industrial Revolution, that humans are in a dominant position over nature, which had been seen as a dead matter, existing only to be possessed by humans. The main idea behind this behavior is that the human and the non-human environment are two poles that cannot be united. This behavior has incalculable consequences, inasmuch as humans, by being a part of nature, cannot be conceived independently of it.
A few years, however, after the killing of the Heraclitean God, the French in origin Albert Camus comes to re-bring to the philosophic dialogue the idea of the universal limits:
The Greeks, who spent centuries asking themselves what was just, would understand nothing of our idea of justice. Equity, for them, supposed a limit, while our whole continent is convulsed by the quest for a justice we see as absolute. At the dawn of Greek thought, Heraclitus already conceived justice as setting limits even upon the physical universe itself: 'The sun will not go beyond its bounds, for otherwise the Furies who watch over justice will find out.' We, who have thrown both universe and mind out of orbit, find such threats amazing. In a drunken sky we ignite the suns that suit us. But limits nonetheless exist and we know it. In our wildest madness we dream of an equilibrium we have lost, and which in our simplicity we think we shall discover once again when our errors cease-an infantile presumption, which justifies the fact that childish peoples, inheriting our madness, are managing our history today. (Camus, 1970: 148-49)
The revolt against the metaphysical, against the sun’s limits and its reasoning, is, for Camus, condemned to failure. Humans will always be in search of a metaphysical meaning behind the sun, the need of an absolute truth is part and parcel of their identity and their nature. The desire for clarity is deeply rooted in people’s psyches, humans are longing for a connection with the rules of the universe and they cannot differentiate themselves from external appearances. They are a part of the universe and they will always subordinate to their very father, the Sun. Camus, while agreeing with the avant-garde in the idea that the universe may often seem to be indifferent to humans’ needs and desires, he saw humans as inextricably linked to it. The
absurdity of human condition is, thus, formed as the following: ‘We know that either God is all-powerful and we are not free, or that he is not all-all-powerful and we are free.’ (Blackburn, 2012: 314)
Humans, due to their limitations, will not ever be able to fully answer to the question of the universal ratio, but this is a question that will always come to their mind. Moreover, the attraction that Camus felt for the material and the physical world was deep and intense. In spite of the fact that humans are suffering because of their inability to solve the problems and the mysteries of the universe, they cannot cut themselves from it. The main philosophical problem results in the question whether or not life is worth living, whether the temporality and fluidity of our life makes it meaningless and without sense. As Heraclitus discussed, we cannot step in the same river twice. Camus’s argument is that, since everything that lives - even the eternal sun- is doomed to die, whereas humans, on the opposite side, are desperately calling for stability and permanence, what is the reason of living, while being aware of death? The human tragedy is that of our finite, imperfect existence under an infinite and vast cosmos. The central theme of Camus’s thought becomes that of metaphysical revolt: man’s rebellion against an unjust universe.
Meursault, the main character of Camus’s The Stranger, expresses Camus’s absurdity. Meursault is a young clerk, leading an uneventful life, characterized by the routine of work and every-day life. He places himself above the human drama, showing no feelings and being indifferent to everything. He shows no pain in his mother’s funeral and he responds to his girlfriend’s proposal with an ‘’she’s the one who was asking me and I was simply saying yes’’. (Camus, 2000: 44) He agrees to help his friend, Raymond, to abuse his ex-girlfriend, by writing her a letter, in which he convinced her to come back to him. Then it comes the event which changes his life: Meursault spends some time to the beach together with Marie-his girlfriend- and Raymond, when they realize that they have been followed by a group of Arabs, including the brother of Raymond’s abused girlfriend who wants revenge. In one moment, when Meursault is alone at the beach, he shoots and kills an Arab under the oppressive, unbearable light of the sun. At his trial, Meursault shows no regret or guilt towards his victim. The jury condemns him to death, not just because of his actions, but, mostly, because of his lack of emotions.
What is striking in the case of Meursault is his absolute dependence on materiality. Meursault shows far greater significance to the physical aspects of the world surrounding him, than to the social or the emotional sphere. Throughout the novel, Meursault’s attention is centered around his basic bodily needs, the weather and nature more than events which are generally acknowledged as significant, such as a marriage proposal or a funeral. For this reason, the description of daily life is predominant in the novel. For instance, after his mother’s burial, Meursault narrates:
I thought I maybe ought to have some dinner. I had a bit of a neck-ache from leaning on the back of my chair for so long. I went down to buy some bread and some pasta, I did
my cooking and I ate standing up. I wanted to smoke a cigarette at the window, but it had turned chilly and I felt a bit cold. (…) I realized that I’d managed to get through another Sunday, that mother was now buried, that I was going to go back to work and that, after all, nothing had changed. (28)
What particularly stands for Meursault is the simple and pure beauty of the sun and the sea. These are the only places where the hero wishes to return so to find peace and harmony, and to live in unity with his cosmic parents.
The character expresses Camus’s belief in the importance of the physical world and bodily experience. Above all, humans have their material bodies. In this light, Malevich’s calling for the destruction of the object becomes impossible. There is no possibility of escaping from the object and from the material, as long as we, ourselves, are flesh. Camus’s stance on corporality is clear: first and foremost is placed the body and the fulfillment of its needs. Moreover, this body corresponds to the body of the universe, humans are a part of a larger entity. Humans must definitely rely on the outside sphere and on the non-human environment in order to survive. In the mechanical paradigm which humanity followed during the Industrial Revolution, nature has been seen as hostile, precluding the possibility of man’s freedom. The Sun is the enemy, which has to be enslaved. It is not seen as having a life and purpose on its own, but only to be possessed by humans. Meursault, on the opposite side, is always focused on the sensate world, being finally unable to separate himself from the external, sensate reality. Independently from the question whether or not he can live in harmony with his environment, he cannot live apart of it.
The avant-garde criticized realism for its blind obedience to objectivity. Camus did not reject human imagination, what he sought to achieve through his novels was to relocate it within the world of external appearances. Eubanks and Petrakis comment, quoting Camus:
The unity we seek is some understanding of the world and our experience in the world, without rejecting that world or succumbing to it, a lucidity of meaning that acknowledges absurdity while embracing the sensuality of existence. Yet, artists cannot dispense with realism or imagination. Thus, whatever unity the authentic artist can achieve only ‘’appears at the limit of the transformation that the artist imposes on reality… This correction which the artist imposes by his language and by a redistribution of elements derived from reality is called style and gives the recreated universe its unity and its boundaries’’. (Eubanks and Petrakis, 1999: 306)
The Sun, the material, is that which provides the substance of the human reflection and imagination. The world of the dreams is not oppositional to the objective world, it is rather in a constant dialogue with it. Internal appearances are formed from the stimulus that the outside sphere provides to the object. With the overthrow of the Sun’s truth, there can be no subjective truth either. Without the Sun, there can be no shadows either. Plato’s prisoner would be unable to even see the projections of things. He would have to deal with the absolute emptiness and nothingness. No matter how incomprehensive and irrational the universe may be, one cannot deny its existence. After gaining the victory over the sun, after becoming estranged from objective reality, humans become estranged from themselves. With the closure of the metaphysical era, modern man has to face the fear of insignificance. Thus, Meursault chooses to displace himself from the world of the living, since he cannot be unified with it. He chooses to
kill his desire for connection and to keep himself distant from that which he cannot explain, his need for unity and romantic attachment and his relationship with external reality.
In the aftermath of the avant-gardist revolt against the Sun what remains is the uprooted and alienated Meursault, who, even though is seeking his unity with his cosmic parents, he is a stranger, drawn away from the physical world. 4In most of the cases, Meursault’s longing for a
return to nature stays unverified and his wish to be placed within a unified world remains unfulfilled. Meursault can hardly leave his bed in the morning and lead an active life:
That Sunday I had trouble waking up and Marie had to shout at me and shake me. We didn’t eat anything because we wanted to be in the water early. I felt completely empty and I had a bit of a headache. My cigarette tasted bitter. Marie made fun of me because she said I had ‘a face like a funeral ‘. (49)
Humans, having destructed their bond with external reality, feel themselves in disharmony with the universe. Without the Sun, man stays with nothing to hold himself to. A sky without a sun, is empty of the ‘’principles and ideals which men need in order to face the contradiction of the absurd and to sustain it’’. (Zants, 1963: 35) In Stephen Ohayon’s words, Camus’ concept of ‘’saintete laique’’ (‘’lay loneliness’’) illustrates his obsessive wish to find innocence and relevance in a world where God has been neutralised’’. (Ohayon, 1983: 192)
4 For Emily Zans, ‘’ the stranger is one who is enticed by the physical world of nature, drawn away from men (…) At the extreme point of his isolation he is faced with the Absurd’’. (30) The Absurd, for Zans, is the confrontation of ‘’the world’’ and the displacement from the world of the living, which breathes under the light of the sun.
Meursault is often viewed by as a weak personality, without opinions on his own. 5 The novel’s
famous opening words find the hero narrating that: ‘’Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. I had a telegram from the home: ‘Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.’ That doesn’t mean anything. It may have been yesterday’’. (9) However, Meursault shows respect for his mother and he often misses her. His inability to cry at the funeral does not stem from his lack of interest, but from the fact that, he himself being young, he cannot be identified with death, he has no awareness of it.
The story with Salamano, the old neighbor of Meursault and his relationship with his dog is a metaphor of the relationship that Meursault himself had with his mother. Salamano detests his dog, he treats him in a disrespectful way, and yet he cannot live without him. When Salamano’s dog disappears, the old man can hardly bear his absence. Salamano is at an old age, like Mersault’s mother, and his dog was very old too. Salamano’s dependency relationship with his dog contrasts with Meursault’s apparent lack of sentiment towards his mother. However, when Meursault hears Salamano crying , he thinks of his mother:
He closed his door and I heard him pacing up and down. Then his bed creaked. And from the peculiar little noise coming through the partition wall, I realized that he was crying. For some reason I thought of mother. But I had to get up early in the morning. I wasn’t hungry and I went to bed without any dinner. (42)
Meursault’s neutrality and indifference is only phenomenal, and it is used as a mechanism that will protect him from the potential pain and confusion that comes together with emotional and
5 For Alison Strange, for instance, Meursault ‘’avoids any attempt to make sense of his experience’’ (Strange, 1997: 38) and he permits others to define his reactions.
