Chapter 2 “That Other North African”: Camus on Augustine and His Legacy

In: Brill's Companion to Camus
Author:
Ronald Srigley
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Ronald Srigley’s chapter on Camus’ engagement with Saint Augustine begins by analysing the Augustinian motives informing Camus’ depiction of the priest in The Stranger and Paneloux from The Plague. In these, a clearly polemical perspective arises, with the arguments of Meursault and Rieux positioned by Srigley as standing in opposition to the Augustinian Christianity. Provocatively, Srigley contends that the “modern” critics of Augustine represented by the heroes in Camus’s literary works “do not offer anything modern or new,” instead pointing back in the direction of Camus’ classical proclivities. The second part of the chapter focuses on the structural and thematic resemblances between Augustine’s Confessions and Camus’s The Fall. Srigley argues that Augustine is indeed the key source for interpreting Camus’s last published novel. The theme of duplicity and self-love, often reflected upon by Clamence, is presented by Srigley alongside the reflections of Augustine on the nature of guilt and corruption of human nature. According to Srigley, whose evaluation here contrasts directly to that of Richardson, the solution for Camus was to be found in the Greeks: “As in The Stranger and The Plague, in The Fall the Greeks save us from our worst frenzies not by satisfying them but by healing us of them, mortifying our self-love rather than feeding it.”

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