Imprisonment in Camus’ “Modern Tragedies”: Les Justes, Requiem pour une nonne, Le Malentendu

Abstract

tragedie est un ou bute, ou se heurte. Au theâtre, il faut qu'elle naisse et meure dans l'espace restreint de scene.l Camus made this observation in 1939, but the expression monde clos appears throughout the Carnets, in Le Mythe de Sisyphe, in the essay Kafka and in L'Homme Revolte. Furthermore, monde clos is only one example of a whole category of images which permeate Camus' work. Abstract metaphors such as l'univers ferme, la voie sans issue, and la prison de l'histoire play an important part in Le Mythe de Sisyphe and in L'Homme Revolte. The figures which Camus uses in his essays are in a sense complemented by the numerous settings of closed worlds in his novels and plays: the prison cells in L'Etranger, Les Justes and Requiem pour une nonne, the inn of Le Malentendu, rooms in Femme Adultere, L'Hote, and Jonas, and the cities of Oran and Amsterdam in La Veste and La Chute. Il y a cent cinquante ans, declares the protagonist of the latter novel, on s'attendrissait sur les lacs et les forets. Aujourd'hui, nous avons le lyrisme cellulaire. The dualism of Camus' temperament balances this confinement imagery with expressions of joy in nature sea, sun and earth. One could roughly translate Camus' confinement imagery as diverse manifestations of the absurd and his nature imagery as representations of freedom or happiness. Yet the best images of both types are not only more complex (like all successful images); they are often paradoxical. Liberty is at times inseparable from confinement; seas and prisons some-