The Shadowlit Realms
| Labyrinth of the Mind |
The FallCamus is truly a fantastic and amazing writing. I absolutely loved The Stranger, and found it instantly engaging and a true page turner, a marvelous and moving story that spoke so true within me, and now I am reading The Fall, while it is not as titillating as the stranger was, and does not have the same masterful prose, the philosophy within The Fall strikes so close to home within me. It is as if Camus is within my mind, and his thoughts and words, may be reflections of myself.
I am left absolutely struck by his arguments regarding personal reasonability and the way in which mankind refuses to be held accountable for their own choices and the way in which they seek to lay the blame for their own actions on circumstances outside of themselves, and still want to claim their right to "innocence" while not putting the effort into doing the right thing. These passages were just stunning and made me scream Yes! Yes! Yes! at the book as I was reading, it is refreshing to see that at least someone else understands, even if they are a dead french writer. Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself. You won't delight a man by complimenting him on his efforts by which he has become intelligent or generous. On the other hand, he will beam if you admire his natural generosity. Inversely, if you tell a criminal that his crime is not due to his nature or his character but to unfortunate circumstances, he will be extravagantly grateful to you.
Yet there is no credit in being honest or intelligent at birth. Just as one is surely no more responsible for being a criminal by nature than for being a criminal by circumstance. But those rascals want grace, that is irresponsibility, and they shamelessly allege the justifications of nature or the excuses of circumstances, even they are contradictory. The essential thing is that they should be innocent, that their virtues, by grace of birth, should not be questioned and that their misdeeds, born of a momentary misfortune should never be more than provisional.
This is true that we rarely confide in those who are better than we. Rather, we are more inclined to flee their society. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don't want to improve ourselves, or be bettered, for we should first have to be judged by default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. In short, we should like, at the same time, to cease being guilty and yet not to make the effort of cleansing ourselves. Not enough cynicism and not enough virtue. We lack the energy of evil as well as the energy of good. Do you know Dante? Really? The devil you say! Then you know that Dante accepts the idea of neutral angels in the quarrel between God and Satan. And he puts them in Limbo, a sort of vestibule of his Hell. We are in the vestibule, che ami. 8:36 PM - 11/11/2009 - post comment
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 For though All are not able to write books, all conceive themselves able to judge them. ~The Monk
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