The righteous

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The Just ( French Les justes ) is a drama by the French writer and philosopher Albert Camus from 1949 (first performance).

action

The play is based on a true story: In 1905 the terrorist group of the Social Revolutionaries carried out an attack on the Russian Grand Duke Sergei , from which Albert Camus developed a drama in five acts.

1st act

Annenkov, Stepan, Dora , Woinow and Kaljajev meet in an apartment in Moscow to plan the assassination attempt on Grand Duke Sergei. Kaljajev is supposed to drop the first bomb. Stepan, recently released from prison, is the last to join the group.

2nd act

The attack is supposed to take place on the evening of the following day; Dora and Annenkov follow what is going on from the apartment. But Kaljajev does not manage to drop the bomb because he sees that the Grand Duke's nephew is sitting in the carriage with the Grand Duke. Back at the apartment, the group discusses how to proceed. Only Stepan thinks Kaljajev's hesitation is wrong; the others support him because it is against their morals to kill children.

3rd act

After a lengthy conversation between Dora and Kaljajev, which among other things shows their mutual attraction, Kaljajev decides two days later to try to assassinate the Grand Duke for the second time and is successful. He is arrested.

4th act

In prison, Kaljajev speaks to another inmate, Foka. He is also responsible for hanging the prisoners and receives one year detention for each hanging. Then the chairman of the police department Skouratov and later the Grand Duchess come to speak to him. The Grand Duchess wants him to confess to having murdered a person, which Kaljajev does not, since the murder of the Grand Duke is an act of justice for him. Skouratov proposes a deal: he'll stay alive if he betrays his companions. Kaljajev does not go into that either.

5th act

In a new apartment, the others wonder whether Kaljajev has betrayed them. An informant tells them that this is not the case and that Kaljajev was hanged. Dora volunteers to drop the next bomb in order to avenge Kaljayev and get justice or - just like him - to be executed.

precursor

In 1931 the French translation of Boris Savinkov's Memoirs of a Terrorist , published in 1909 and supplemented in 1917, was published by Payot in Paris . In 1933 Irène Némirovsky published the novel L'affaire Courilof ( The Kurilov case , 1995).

Némirovsky acquired some of the book Savinkov, which was fundamental to Albert Camus and his drama, without Camus knowing anything about Némirovsky. For the portrayal of their terrorists Fanny Zart and Léon M. Némirovsky borrowed similar borrowings from the discussions reproduced by Savinkov as did Camus. Before and after their attacks, the terrorists discuss what is allowed and when there are limits to the bombing. However, Némirovsky is concerned with another assassination attempt, namely that of the Minister for Schools Valerian Alexandrovich Kurilov in 1903.

At Némirovsky's, Fanny breaks out in sobs after the attack (p. 200 f.):

"Dead! Dead! He's dead ...! ”“ But who? ”I asked blankly. "Dead! Dead! Kurilov is dead! And it was me, I killed him ...! "[...]" Dead! And it was we who killed him ...! "

Savinkov calls the figure Dora (also Camus, see also Dora Brilliant ). Savinkov, p. 124:

At the same moment Dora leaned over to me and began to sob [...]: "We killed him ... I killed him ... me." "Who?" I asked, thinking that she was spoke of Kaljaev. "The Grand Duke."

Léon M's statement that he would also throw the bomb on Kurilov in the company of his family with his wife and children (p. 197) has its counterpart in the arguments reproduced in Savinkov on pages 116 ff. And 258 ff. And in Camus in second act. For the last identity of Léon Ms - Jacques Lourié - there is an equivalent to Savinkov in Némirovsky, namely in Rachel Vladimirovna Lourié, who came from a wealthy Jewish merchant family, joined the Social Revolutionary Party and shot herself in Paris in 1908 ( Savinkov, p. 452).

Albert Camus' borrowings from Savinkov are more direct than those from Némirovsky, but at the same time show weighty rearrangements and variations. Above all, they aim at what Hans Magnus Enzensberger wrote in 1963 under the heading “ The beautiful souls of terror ” about the “ tender-feeling murderers ” (Camus, “ L'homme révolté ”, 1951).

literature

  • Brigitta Coenen-Mennemeier: The theater as a moral institution: Jean-Paul Sartre, "Les Mains Sales" (1948) and Albert Camus , Les Justes (1949). In: Konrad Schoell (Ed.): French literature. 20th century. Theater (= Stauffenburg interpretation ). Stauffenburg-Verlag, Tübingen 2006, ISBN 3-86057-911-8 , pp. 151-200.
  • Arata Takeda : Aesthetics of Self Destruction. Suicide bombers in Western literature . Wilhelm Fink, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-7705-5062-3 , pp. 247-294.

Web link

Remarks

  1. ↑ Boris Savinkov: Memories of a Terrorist (= The Other Library. Vol. 4). Translated from Russian by Arkady Maslow. Revised and supplemented by Barbara Conrad. Pre- and post-report by Hans Magnus Enzensberger. Franz Greno, Nördlingen 1985, ISBN 3-921568-27-7 .
  2. ↑ Cf. Arata Takeda: Aesthetics of Self-Destruction. Suicide bombers in Western literature . Wilhelm Fink, Munich 2010, pp. 252–281.
  3. ↑ See Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Politische Kolportagen (= Fischer-Bücherei. Vol. 763). Fischer, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1966, p. 196.
  4. ↑ 10 min .: biography of the AC; 20 min .: scenes from Les Justes. Additionally: background, lessons. It contains a worksheet and an excerpt from an interview with Camus by Pierre Cardinal in French, 1958. The film is also available on data carrier. Production: Pascale Spengler, Les Foirades, Strasbourg; TV director: Jean-Marie Perrochat. Product of the WDR and the SWR . The interview is also available as a sound document (MP3) under the title "Gros plan sur Albert Camus". As long text online, in French. ( Memento of July 31, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Print in the Pléiade edition of AC: "Théâtre, Récits, Nouvelles," p. 1716 ff.