Paris from Camus’s Notebooks | Hacker News Reader

Paris from Camus’s Notebooks

theparisreview.org

50 pointsVigier11 comments

I just finished reading The Stranger (translated from French by Matthew Ward), and I've already got The Myth of Sisyphus on my Kindle.

I just pray the translation does justice. Matthew did a fantastic job with The Stranger IMO.

What I remember of L'étranger (other than the story) is its short sentences and rhythm that drags you into the story right from its opening words: "Aujourd'hui, maman est morte." I found that the short sentences combined with Camus' French worked wonders to force me into the story. I just could not stop reading, and I really felt inside Meursault's head.

If you shared that feeling, then we could say the translator kept the spirit of the book :)

Yes, in the preface the translator does mention the use of short phrases. I found it wonderful.

Although I'm not sure if thats the style Camus writes in.

> The myth is tenacious [...]

I love how the article starts!

> In the café’s heyday Flore, regulars would say they were going “à Flore”, rather than “au Flore.”

Does that translate to "in the style of Flore"? Also, I suspect the first Flore is a typo -- or am I missing a pun of some sort?

It rather suggests they're going to someone or something devoid of a definite article (going to Flore). "Aller au Flore" means "Going to the Flore", with the implied idea "going to the café de Flore" (this is the normal way of saying it for any café, restaurant...). So it indicates, for the speaker, that (the) Flore is more than a café.

There's a footnote at the bottom that explains why it said 'a flore'.

I love Camus too. The man who taught me to find beauty in the world around me

He is incredible. His arguments are often shadowed by Sartre but Camus was a philosophical god.

I love Camus. I love how he understood that people would look at his work and think nihilism but he hoped that people would see that they were looking at it wrong and that it was really the opposite.

Can you elaborate on the second part more?

As someone who's always suspected that Camus' characters (and the author himself) actually cared too intensely because they were unable to change events/people around them, I've never found compelling proof that totally convinced me his work wasn't nihilism masquerading as meditations on the inability of individuals to alter phenomena outside of their control.

It's a complicated argument. Instead of doing the formal argument I rather give the anecdotal one because a few years back I finally understood it. It just clicked. Basically Camus says the world does not give a damn about you. It has no interest in you. Nothing matters objectively, so why the f* are you here? Get rid of yourself already!! If you're not going to accept that the nothing has meaning and that only you can give something it then you are living a lie. When you accept that nothing has meaning you are ready to give meaning to things you want; knowing that the meaning comes from within. I don't want to write an essay here but I have more to say so if that doesn't fill your interest feel free to DM me on Twitter (@pducks32).

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