Speaking Out

The Crisis of Man

1946

In spring 1946 Albert Camus was invited by the foreign ministry s French cultural relations department to give a series of lectures in North America. During the sea crossing, he drafted The Crisis of Man, which he read out in French in public for the first time on March 28, 1946, at an evening event at Columbia University, New York, addressed also by Vercors ( Jean Bruller) and Thimerais (Léon Motchane). Camus gave this lecture again throughout his visit to the United States, in a slightly expanded version, the typescript of which was discovered recently in the archives of Dorothy Norman (Beinecke Library, Yale University). This is the version reproduced in translation here. The chief editor of the journal Twice a Year, Norman published The Crisis of Man at the end of 1946, in a translation by Lionel Abel.

Ladies and gentlemen,

When it was suggested to me that I should give some lectures in the United States of America, I had scruples and hesitated. I am not the right age for giving lectures, and feel more at ease in reflection than categorical assertion, because I do not claim to possess what is generally called truth. When I expressed my scruples, I was told very politely that the important thing was not for me to have any personal opinion. The important thing was for me to be able to pro- vide those few elements of information about France which would allow my audience to form their own opinion. Whereupon I was advised to inform my listeners about the current state of French theater, literature and even philosophy. I replied that it would perhaps be just as interesting to speak about the extraordinary efforts of French railwaymen, or about how miners in the Nord are now working. It was pointed out to me very pertinently that one should never strain one s talent, and that it was right for special interests to be addressed by people competent to do so. With a long-standing interest in literary matters while I certainly knew

Born in Algeria in 1913, ALBERT CAMUS published The Stranger--now one of the most widely read novels of this century--in 1942. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. On January 4, 1960, he was killed in a car accident. QUINTIN HOARE is an award-winning translator. His translations from French have included works by Sartre (for whose War Diaries he won the Scott-Moncrieff Prize), Simone de Beauvoir, Paul Nizan, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.