The Fall (novel)

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The case (French La Chute ) is a novel by Albert Camus . It was supposed to be published in Camus' novellas of exile ( Das Exil und das Reich ), but then became too extensive and appeared in 1956 as an advanced single work. It is Camus' last completed prose work. The story is set in Amsterdam and is told as a monologue by the self-proclaimed "penitentiary" Jean-Baptiste Clamence, who reveals his past as a successful lawyer to a stranger. In his life confession he tells of his crisis and his fall, which can be seen as an individual secular version of the fall . The work explores topics such as consciousness, freedom and the futility of human life. Clamence can be seen in the tradition of Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time , Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Basement Hole and Friedrich Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra .

The peculiarity of this novel lies in the fact that the protagonist who makes confession is the only one who has a say in the entire work. The abandonment of an omniscient narrator , who also shaped Camus' novel Der Fremde , published 14 years earlier , deprives the reader of the opportunity to objectify what happened.

Summary

Life in Paris

At the beginning of the novel, Clamence explains to a stranger how to properly order something to drink in the Mexico City bar . The barman speaks only Dutch. Clamence translates for his counterpart, and after it becomes clear that both are from Paris, he starts a serious conversation with him.

Clamence says he lived what appeared to be a perfect life in Paris as a successful and respected lawyer. Most of his work revolved around widows and orphans, the poor and disenfranchised who otherwise could not afford a defense. He also talks about his everyday willingness to help (helping blind people across the street, clearing space in the bus, etc.). He believed of himself that he was only living in the service of others and had achieved more than the common man, he had made it to the summit where virtue was its own reward.

One night while crossing the Pont Royal, he fails to prevent the suicide of a woman. He lives on as usual. He later comes to the conclusion that he was inhibited from saving the woman because it would have had to endanger his own life. Years later, without having succeeded in forgetting the incident, he heard a laugh on the Pont des Arts that haunted him from then on.

A third incident finally seals Clamence's downward spiral: at a traffic light, he waits behind a motorcycle that does not start and that he cannot overtake. It comes to an argument with the adamant offensive motorcyclist. When Clamence tries to hit him, someone intervenes and is outraged that Clamence wanted to hit a man who is handicapped - and thus disadvantaged - by his motorcycle. Clamence tries to put things right, but suddenly the motorcyclist hits him on the head and drives off. Clamence returns to his car, humiliated, without taking revenge on the breaker. Only then does it occur to him - again and again - what he could have done. Bitterness gnaws at him. After allowing himself to be beaten defenselessly in public, he can no longer maintain his self-image. Since the humiliating incident bothers him so much, he was evidently not the benevolent friend of the truth that he believed himself to be - because then he would have long since forgotten the incident, which must have long been forgotten by the eyewitnesses.

Clamence concludes that he has spent his entire life seeking honor, recognition, and power over others. After this knowledge he can no longer live as before.

crisis

At first, Clamence tries to fight against the feeling of having lived hypocritically and selfishly. His good deeds, which he uses as an argument, quickly prove to be obsolete. It occurs to him that whenever he helped a blind man across the street, he especially liked to raise his hat. Since he couldn't see the gesture, Clamence wonders who else it should be addressed to: the audience. So Clamence comes to see himself as hypocritical and double-faced. The clarity that his whole life has been wrong leads him into a mental and emotional crisis; what he thought he can no longer undo. The laughter he heard for the first time on the Pont des Arts begins to permeate his whole existence. Clamence even starts to laugh at himself when advocating justice and justice matters in court. Unable to hide the laughter, he tries to shake it off by shedding his hypocrisy and destroying the reputation he once built on it. So he lets u. a. incorrect comments fall among people. His efforts fail. You think he's joking - it seems unthinkable that a worthy man should mean such things seriously. The laughter still gnaws at him. He realizes that his efforts to banish it were just as dishonest: he wanted to throw himself into complete mockery to get all the laughter on his side, or at least to try to - it's still an attempt at deception, an attempt at deception Law.

Clamence withdraws, closes the office, avoids the earlier contact. He begins uncompromising debauchery - no one is hypocritical in his pleasures. Clamence realizes that everyone is to blame for something, whether intentional or unintentional.

Life in Amsterdam

The last of Clamence's five monologues takes place in his apartment in the former Jewish quarter . He tells more specifically of the events that brought him to Amsterdam. With the outbreak of war and the fall of France, he considered joining the Resistance , but then rejected this plan. Instead, he decided to flee Paris to London and took an indirect route through North Africa. However, he found a friend in Africa and wanted to stay there and possibly settle in Tunis, but was arrested by the National Socialists and locked in a concentration camp.

The figure Clamence also explains how a plaque entitled "The Just Judges" (Clamence calls them "the incorruptible judges") from the famous Ghent Altarpiece by Jan Van Eyck came into his hands. At this point Camus is referring to a true story, because after the entire Ghent Altarpiece was returned to Belgium by the Berlin museums as a reparation payment after the First World War in accordance with the Versailles Treaty, in 1934 the panels with the Just Judges and John the Baptist were made stolen from St. Bavo's Church in Ghent . The latter was returned. A ransom of one million Belgian francs was demanded for the “just judges”. Since the sum was not paid, the picture remains lost to this day. The picture on display is still a copy, as Clamence mentions in the novel. Clamence then uses the picture to demonstrate his self-image as a penitentiary on the basis of himself: He atones for his transgressions (not preventing suicide, vanity, debauchery), which are not punished by society by having one in it by owning the picture Social order has incurred punishable guilt. With this he, as a judge of himself, has created an opportunity to repent.

background

Clamence often speaks of enjoying being in lofty open spaces, like mountain peaks or the top decks of ships. Nowhere was it pleasant for him, except in raised places. Even with everyday little things he had to feel exalted. Amsterdam, on the other hand, is below sea level, which is remarkable in terms of Clamence's penchant for heights. The city is described as a cold, damp place, whose crowded neon-lit streets are always covered with fog. Aside from the eerie atmosphere, the city was chosen for other reasons. On the opening pages, Clamence casually notes that the concentric Amsterdam canals are reminiscent of the circles of hell that Dante sketches in his Divine Comedy . The innermost circle of hell would then be the area of Amsterdam's red light district and the Mexico City bar , which Clamence frequented at night and where most of its narrative unfolds. These circumstances serve to literally and figuratively depict Clamence's case, from the heights of the Parisian upper class down to the dark, desolate, Dantesque underworld of Amsterdam, where the tormented souls wander aimlessly past each other. Clamence says he lives near Mexico City , where the Jewish Quarter used to be, until Hitler's supporters "made room ".

Mentions in popular culture

  • The post-punk band The Fall took their name from Camus' novel.
  • The band Manic Street Preachers quotes the following passage in the music video and album packaging of their song Love's Sweet Exile : "Then came human beings, they wanted to cling but there was nothing to cling to." (German: "Then people came, they wanted to cling to each other, but they couldn't find a hold.")

expenditure

  • Camus, Albert: The case (German by Guido G. Meister). Rororo: Reinbek (1997), ISBN 3-499-22191-8
  • Camus, Albert: La Chute . Gallimard: Paris (2005), ISBN 2-07-036010-5 (French original edition)

Further literature

  • Barretto, Vicente (1970). "Camus: vida e obra". [sL]: José Álvaro, 1970.
  • Galpin, Alfred (1958). "Dante in Amsterdam". Symposium 12: 65-72.
  • King, Adele (1962). "Structure and Meaning in La Chute". PMLA 77 (5): 660-667.
  • Royce, Barbara C. (1966). "La Chute and Saint Genet: The Question of Guilt". The French Review 39 (5): 709-716.
  • Viggiani, Carl A. (1960). "Camus and the Fall from Innocence". Yale French Studies 25: 65-71.
  • Wheeler, Burton M. (1982). "Beyond Despair: Camus' 'The Fall' and Van Eyck's' Adoration of the Lamb '". Contemporary Literature 23 (3): 343-364.

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