siiky
2023/02/16
2024/07/04
2024/07/04
book,philosophy,life,religion,ethics
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1230715W
gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/wp.cgi/view/en?The_Plague_(novel)
Book by Albert Camus about a small town hit by an epidemic of plague.
!!!THIS PAGE CONTAINS SPOLERS!!!
I liked this book a lot. Read it only a little after the COVID pandemic started to come to the end (around here). Because of that much of the book was familiar and relatable.
Question: how can one manage not to lose time? Answer: experience it at its full length. Means: spend days in the dentist's waiting-room on an uncomfortable chair; live on one's balcony on a Sunday afternoon; listen to lectures in a language that one does not understand; choose the most roundabout and least convenient routes on the railway (and, naturally, travel standing up); queue at the box-office for theatres and so on and not take one's seat; etc.
(p32)
When war breaks out people say: "It won't last, it's too stupid." And war is certainly too stupid, but that doesn't prevent it from lasting. Stupidity always carries doggedly on, as people would notice if they were not always thinking about themselves. (...) The people of our town were no more guilty than anyone else, they merely forgot to be modest and thought that everything was still possible for them, which implied that pestilence was impossible.
(p44)
And such peaceful and unthinking tranquility almost effortlessly contradicted the old images of pestilence: (...)
(p47)
"After all," Rambert said to the doctor, "I'm a stranger in this town."
"Of course you are, but let's just hope that the epidemic will not last."
In the end, he tried to console Rambert by pointing that he could find the material for an interesting report in Oran and that, all things considered, there was no cloud without a silver lining. Rambert shrugged his shoulders. They were coming to the centre of the town.
"You see, doctor, it's ridiculous. I wasn't put on this earth to make reports; but perhaps I was put on earth to live with a woman. Doesn't that follow?"
Rieux said that to him it seemed reasonable.
(p98)
p99 has a long discussion of whether it's right or wrong to "imprison" the people like that.
Tarrou looked at him with his grey eyes.
"What did you think of Paneloux's sermon, doctor?"
The question was naturally put and Rieux replied to it naturally.
"I've spent too much of my life in hospitals to like the idea of collective punishment. But, you know, Christians sometimes talk in that way, without really believing it. They are better than they appear to be."
"And yet you think, as Paneloux does, that the plague has its benefits because it opens people's eyes and forces them to think."
The doctor shook his head impatiently.
"Like every sickness in this world. But what is true of the ills of this world is also true of the plague. It may serve to make some people great. However, when you see the suffering and pain that it brings, you have to be mad, blind or a coward to resign yourself to the plague."
Rieux had barely raised his voice, but Tarrou waved his hands as though to calm him. He smiled.
"Yes," Rieux said, shrugging his shoulders. "But you still haven't answered me. Have you thought about it?"
Tarrou sat back a little further in his chair and leant forward so that his head was in the light.
"Do you believe in God, doctor?"
Once again, the question was asked quite naturally, but this time Rieux hesitated.
"No, but what does that mean? I am in darkness trying to see the light. I stopped a long time ago thinking there was anything unusual in that."
"Isn't that the thing that makes you different from Paneloux?"
"I don't think so. Paneloux is a scholar. He has not seen enough people die and that is why he speaks in the name of eternal truths. But the least little country priest who administers to his parishioners and who has heard the breath of a dying man thinks as I do. He would treat suffering, not try to demonstrate what a fine thing it is."
Rieux got up; his face was now in shadow.
"Let's leave the matter," he said, "since you don't wish to reply."
Tarrou smiled, not moving from his chair.
"Can I answer you with a question?"
The doctor smiled in his turn.
"You like mystery," he said. "Carry on."
"Well then," said Tarrou. "Why are you yourself so dedicated when you don't believe in God? Perhaps your answer will help me in my own."
Without emerging from the shadows, the doctor said he had already answered that: if he believed in an all-powerful God, then he would stop healing people and leave it up to Him. But since no one in the world believed in a God of that kind -- not even Paneloux who /thought/ that was what he believed -- because no one abandoned himself entirely to Him, in this at least Rieux felt he was on the right path, in struggling against the world as it was.
(...)
(p144-146)
Possibly my favorite passage so far. And it continues through the next few pages.
"You must come to the hospital tomorrow," he said. "To get your preventive vaccine. But, once and for all, before you become involved, tell yourself that you have a one-in-three chance of surviving."
"Calculations like that are meaningless, doctor, and you know it as well as I do. A hundred years ago, an outbreak of plague killed all the inhabitants of a town in Persia, except the man who washed bodies, who had carried with his job throughout."
"He got his one chance in three, that's all," Rieux said; and suddenly the sound of his voice was duller. "But it's true: we still don't know nothing about this matter."
(p150)
However, it is not the narrator's intention to attribute more significance to these health groups than they actually had. It is true that nowadays many of our fellow-citizens would, in his place, succumb to the temptation to exaggerate their role. But the narrator is rather inclined to believe that by giving too much importance to fine actions one may end by paying an indirect but powerful tribute to evil, because in so doing one implies that such fine actions are only valuable because they are rare, and that malice or indifference are far more common motives in the actions of men. The narrator does not share this view. The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice and virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer's sould is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness.
(p151) And continues through the following page.
A lot of new moralists appeared in the town at this moment, saying that nothing was any use and that we should go down on our knees. Tarrou, Rieux, and their friends could answer this or that, but the conclusion was always what they knew would be: one must fight, in one way or another, and not go down on one's knees. The whole question was to prevent the largest possible number of people from dying and suffering a definitive separation. There was only one way to do this, which was to fight the plague. There was nothing admirable about this truth, it simply followed as a logical consequence.
(p153)
This at least was the opinion of Dr Rieux when he read in the newspapers or heard on the radio the appeals and encouragement that the outside world got through to the stricken town. At the same time as aid by air or by road, every evening on the airwaves or in the press, pitying or admiring comments rained down on this now solitary town; and, every time, the doctor was irritated by the epic note or the tone of a prize-giving address. Of course he knew that the concern was genuine, but it could only express itself in the conventional language in which men try to explain what unites them with the rest of the humanity. Such language could not be applied to the little, daily efforts of Grand, for example, and could not describe Grand's significance in the midst of the plague.
Sometimes at midnight, in the great silence of the deserted town, just as he got into bed to catch an all-too-short moment of sleep, the doctor switched on his radio. And from distant parts of the world, across thousands of miles, unknown but fraternal voices tried awkwardly to express their solidarity -- and did, indeed, express it, while at the same time exhibiting the dreadful powerlessness of all men who endeavour to share a pain that they do not see. "Oran, Oran!" In vain the appeal crossed the seas and in vain Rieux stood by, waiting; then, soon, eloquence would well up and make still plainer the fundamental division that made Grand and the speaker strangers to one another. "Oran, yes, Oran! But no," thought the doctor. "To love or to die together, there is nothing else to be done. They are too far away."
(p159-160) This is generally what I also think about the subject: masses of strangers sending their "strength" at the end of the day make no difference. All too true with what aired on the news around the time when the war in Ukraine started. "'Stand with Ukraine', but only if I don't have to pull myself up from the couch, I can't be bothered to be inconvenienced about this war."
Tarrou, who was giving the man of means a kindly look, said that he knew the figures and the situation was serious, but what did that prove? It proved that they needed still more emergency measures.
"You've taken them already."
"Yes, but everyone has to take them on his own account."
Cottard looked at Tarrou without understanding. The other man explained that too many people were not doing anything, that the epidemic was everybody's business and that they all had to do their duty. The voluntary health teams were open to all.
(p182) This could've been a dialogue between two people a couple of years ago about COVID... Is it so hard to at least NOT SPREAD the fucking thing?
(...)
"Come Tarrou, are you capable of dying for love?"
"I don't know, but I doubt it, now."
"There. Yet you are capable of dying for an idea, that's patently obvious. Well, I've had enough of people who die for ideas. I don't believe in heroism, I know that it's easy and I've found out that it's deadly. What interests me, is living or dying for what one loves."
Rieux had been listening closely to the journalist. Still looking at him, he said gently:
"Man is not an idea, Rambert."
The other man jumped up from the bed, his face contorted with emotion.
"He is an idea, and a very brief one, just as soon as he turns away from love. And that's the trouble: we are no longer capable of love. Let's resign ourselves doctor, let's wait until we are capable of it and if it's really not possible, wait for the general deliverance, without playing at heroes. As for me, I'm not going any further."
Rieux stood up with a look of sudden tiredness.
"You're right, Rambert, quite right and I wouldn't want to divert you from what you intend to do for anything in the world, because it seems to me good and proper. But I have to tell you this: this whole thing is not about heroism. It's about decency. It may seem a ridiculous idea, but the only way to fight the plague is with decency."
"What is decency?" Rambert asked, suddenly serious.
"In general, I can't say, but in my case I know it consists in doing my job."
"Ah!" said Rambert, furiously. "I don't know what my job is. Perhaps I really am wrong to choose love."
Rieux stood in front of him.
"No!" he said emphatically. "You are not wrong."
Rambert looked at them thoughtfully.
"I suppose the two of you have nothing to lose in all this. It's easier to be on the right side."
(p188-189) Big oof! Tarrou told Rambert afterwards that Rieux's wife was away because of some illness.
Did our fellow-citizens, at least those who suffered the most from this separation, ever get used to the situation? It would not be quite correct to say that they did. Rather, they suffered a kind of spiritual and physical emaciation. At the start of the plague they remembered the person whom they had lost very well and they were sorry to be without them. But though they could clearly recall the face and the laugh of the loved one, and this or that day when, after the event, they realized they had been happy, they found it very hard to imagine what the other person might be doing at the moment when they recalled her or him, in places which were now so far away. In short, at that time they had memories but not enough imagination. At the second stage of the plague the memory also went. Not that they had forgotten, but (which comes to the same thing) it had lost its flesh and they could only see it inside themselves. And while in the early weeks they tended to complain at only having shadows to deal with where their loves were concerned, they realized later that these shadows could still become more fleshless, losing even the details of colour that memory kept of them. After this long period of separation, they could no longer imagine the intimacy that they had shared nor how a being had lived beside them, on whom at any moment they could place their hands.
(p209-210)
"Can't you hear them?" he asked. "After the plague, I'll do this, after the plague I'll do that.." They're ruining their lives, instead of staying calm. And they don't even realize what they have going for them. Could I say: "After my arrest, I'll do this or that? An arrest is a beginning, not an end. While, the plague... Do you want to know what I think? I think they're miserable because they don't let themselves go. And I know what I'm talking about."
(p230)
Rambert said that he had thought it over again. He still believed what he believed, but if he went away he would feel ashamed. It would make him uncomfortable loving the woman he had left. But Rieux sat up and said firmly that this was ridiculous and that there was no shame in choosing happiness.
"Yes," said Rambert. "But there may be shame in being happy all by oneself."
(...)
"In any case, you know that as well as I do! Otherwise, what are you doing in that hospital of yours? Have you made your choice then and given up on happiness?"
(...)
"I'm sorry Rambert," he said. "But I don't know. Stay with us if that's what you want."
He was silenced as the car swerved. Then he carried on, looking straight ahead:
"Nothing in the world should turn you away from what you love. And yet I, too, am turning away, without understanding why."
(p243-244)
Certainly the suffering of a child was humiliating for the spirit and the body, but this is why one had to become part of it. And this is why -- Paneloux assured his listeners that what he was about to say was not easy to say -- you had to want it because God wanted it. Only in this way would the Christian spare nothing and, with all other outlets closed off, go to the heart of the essential choice. He would choose to believe everything so as not to be reduced to deny everything.
(p262-263) OK.jpg! Picking this but not that is too often the case with religion "devotees".
"My brethren, you must be the one who stays!"
It was not a matter of not taking precautions, the sensible order that society introduces into the chaos of a pestilence. One should not heed those moralists who said that we should fall down on our knees and abandon everything. One should merely start to move forward, in the dark, feeling one's way and trying to do good. But for the rest, one should remain and agree to put oneself in God's hands, even concerning the death of children, without seeking any personal solution.
(p264-265) At the end of the day, we don't know shit. And we're largely powerless in a shithole of a world. But that is not reason to give up to the wrong path just because it's easier.
§ 2021-12-27, Jean Valjean on duty
"So what is his idea?" the old priest asked.
(...)
"If a priest consults a doctor, there is a contradiction."
(...)
"Paneloux is right," said Tarrou. "When innocence has its eyes gouged out, a Christian must lose its faith or accept the gouging out of eyes. Paneloux does not want to lose his faith, he will stick with it to the very end. That's what he meant."
(p267) Related to the above quote about devotion.
-----
Tarrou to Rieux about his life. Only he talks for several pages before the end of the section. These quotes are already in the middle of the monologue.
"When I was young, I lived with the idea of my own innocence, that is to say with no idea at all. I'm not the worrying type, I started off properly. Everything went well for me, I was at easy in my own mind, very successful with women, and if I did have any anxieties, they vanished as they had come. One day, I started to reflect. And now..."
(p286) Almost 80 years ago Camus was writing about my own life... See Jean Valjean above.
"You've never seen a man shot? No, of course, it's by invitation only and the audience is handpicked in advance. Consequently, you know from pictures and books -- a blindfold, a stake and, in the distance, a few soldiers. Well, no! Do you realize that, on the contrary, the firing squad stands at one and a half meters from the condemned man? Do you know that if the condemned man took two steps forward, the rifles would hit him in the chest? Do you know that at this short distance the members of the firing squad concentrate their fire on the region of the heart and that all of them with their large-calibre bullets make a hole big enough to put your fist in? No, you don't know, because these are details that people don't speak about. The sleep of men is more sacred than life for plague sufferers. One must not keep these good people awake at nights. That would be in bad taste and good taste is a matter of not harping on about it, as everyone knows. But I have not slept well since that time. The bad taste stayed in my mouth and I haven't stopped harping on about, that is to say, thinking."
(p292-293)
/plague sufferers/ = supporters of the death sentence, or just participants in some way.
With "sleep of men is more sacred than life for plague sufferers" I think he means that, for the /plague sufferers/, it's more important that the general population sleep ignorant of these facts than not to condemn people to the death sentence.
"That is why this epidemic has so far taught me nothing except that it must be fought at your side. I have absolute knowledge of this -- yes Rieux, I know everything about life, as you can see -- that everyone has it inside himself, this plague, because no one in the world, no one, is immune. And I know that we must constantly keep a watch on ourselves to avoid being distracted for a moment and find ourselves breathing in another person's face and infecting him. What is natural is the microbe. The rest -- health, integrity, purity, if you like -- are an effect of will and a will that must never relax. The decent man, the one who doesn't infect anybody, is the one who concentrates most. And you need will-power and nervous tension not to let your mind wander! Yes indeed, Rieux, it is very tiring to be a plague victim. But it is still more tiring not to want to be one. This is why everyone appears tired, because nowadays everyone is a little infected. But this is why a few, who want to cease to be victims, experience an extreme form of tiredness from which nothing except death will deliver them."
"From now until then, I know that I am worth nothing for this world itself and that, the moment I rejected killing, I condemned myself to a definitive exhile. (...)"
(p295)
He knew what his mother was thinking and that she loved him at that moment. But he also knew that it is not much to love a person -- or, at least, that love is never strong enough to find its own expression. So his mother and he would always love one another in silence.
(p340)
This was no doubt how Tarrou had lived and he was aware of the sterility of a life without illusions. There was no peace without hope and Tarrou, who denied men the right to condemn anyone, yet who knew that no one can prevent himself from condemning and that even victims can sometimes be executioners -- Tarrou had lived in a state of turmoil and contradiction, and he had never known hope. (...) In truth, Rieux did not know and it was hardly important. The only images of Tarrou that he would keep were those of a man who took the wheel of his car in both hands to drive and those of his thick body, now lying motionless. A warmth of life and an image of death: that was knowledge.
(p341)
For all the people who, on the contrary, had looked beyond man to something that they could not even imagine, there had been no reply. Tarrou had appeared to reach the almost unattainable peace about which he spoke, but he found it only in death, at a moment when it could be of no use to him. By contrast, there were others whom Rieux saw on the doorsteps of their houses, in the fading light, clasping to one another with all their strength and looking at one another with enchantment: if they had found what they wanted, it was because they had asked for the only thing that depended on them. And Rieux, as he turned in Grand and Cottard's street, thought that it was right that, from time to time, joy should reward those whose desires are circumscribed by mankind and its meagre and terrible love.
(p351-352)