Camus' Attitude to Dostoevsky's Kirilov and the Impact of the Engineer's Ideas on Camus' Early Work.

Abstract

The “ébradement” which Camus claims to have experienced when reading the work of Dostoevsky has frequently attracted the atten‐tion of scholars. The present article endeavours to assess the precise impact of Dostoevsky's hero Kirilovon the development and crystallisation of Camus' early thought. Kirilov, the philosopher‐engineer of Les Posseédés seems to have been the Dostoevskian character who most interested the Camus of the thirties and early forties and it can be argued that he provided Camus with not only a valuable point of reference in Le Mythe de Sisyphe but with a number of ideas and attitudes which may have played an important role in the elaboration of his thought from L' Envers et L' Endroit to the essay on the Absurd. There are quite striking parallels between Camus' attitudes to death, courage, lucidity, authenticity and suicide, and those embodied in Dostoevsky's hero. Moreover, the moments of ecstatic happiness which lead Kirilov to utter the words “Tout est bien” (and which for Dostoevsky represent moments of religious mysticism emanating from Kirilov's epilepsy), seem to possess a most interesting affinity withthe experiences of union, harmony and timelessness which Camus describes in Noces and which inform his thinking at the time of L' Etranger and Le Mythe de Sisyphe.