Reflections and Refractions in Camus's La Chute

Abstract

The extraordinary complication of Camus's La Chute creates what might be called an allusive complex, including numerous allusions creating various parallels and oppositions. If an allusion is “the metaphorical relationship created when an alluding text evokes and uses another” (Pasco), what makes it especially interesting in Camus's monologue is the way its multiple, extended, and synoptic (or brief) allusions work together to create an experience of significant power that focuses on why the reader cannot accept Clamence's ultimate invitation to confess to him. Camus takes his referent texts for the most part from the Bible and the French tradition, leaving no doubt of the culture required of the reader.

Keywords:

• allusion
• allusive complex
• the Bible
• Rousseau
• synoptic and extended allusions

Acknowledgment

I am indebted to those students and colleagues who, like Jan Clarke, asked probing questions after I presented an early version of this study at a conference organized by graduate students at the University of Kansas (April 28, 2012).

Notes

Pasco 12. Where useful, I have borrowed the terminology in this study as well. For a discussion of “allusive complex,” see 77–97. For other excellent work on allusion, see Riffaterre; Perri; Orr; Machacek. Each of these critics grapples with a description of how the alluding text interacts with the referent, though without always distinguishing the various kinds of intertextuality.

This falling-out has attracted a great deal of attention. Duvall even suggests that it marks “the disappearance if not the death of the intellectual in France as a focus of significant conversation and debate” (579–85). Dante's Divine Comedy provides another excellent example of an external text: see, for example, Galpin; King; Hustis. More work needs to be done on the way Pascal's Pensées function in Camus's work, though a good introduction to Camus and Pascal is to be found in Green, especially in regard to La Chute: see 240–42.

Flaubert 2: 1021. Jean-Jacques Rousseau himself referred to them as “Rousseau premier, Rousseau second” (Les Confessions 1: 157).

Camus, Chute 738; cf., “[J]’en traitai quelques uns de manière à ne pas laisser les rieurs de leur côté” (Rousseau, Confessions 365); and Alceste: “Les rieurs sont pour vous, Madame, c’est tout dire, / Et vous pouvez pousser contre moi la satire” (Molière, Le Misanthrope, act II, scene iv, l. 681).

Rousseau, Confessions 345–46, 357. Other possible prevarications and obfuscations (e.g., Rousseau, Confessions 245–46 and nn5–6, 261–62 and 261n1, 339 and n3) were less embarrassing for the philosophe, but he returned several times to the matter of the children.

For ornaments, see Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (1035 and n4). Rousseau claims, moreover, that he was delivering his children to the public education that he could not provide, possibly unaware that these hospice infants died like flies (Confessions 356–59). His own weakness constituted a frequently mentioned problem (Rêveries 1039). For other weaknesses, see, for example, Rêveries 1034–35.

Camus used Lermontov's “Un Héros de notre temps” for an epigraph in an edition of La Chute (“Notice,” Chute 1366–67, 1373). A portion of Camus's philosophical justification for his position occurs in L’Homme révolté 63–107.

Camus exploits his gift for aphorism across La Chute, where one is frequently reminded of La Rochefoucauld—see, for example, Cruickshank 180–81.

Chute 1479; Balzac 10.1133–46; Conner; Gessler; Krappe; Pugh. I am grateful to Kathy Comfort for her help in identifying the Balzacian referent text. Corry Cropper reminded me that William Styron's novel, Sophie's Choice (1979), and the subsequent film (1982) also use the basic story.

Matt. 3:4; Mark 1:6; Chute 1478, 1549. The quotations are from Petrey 1450. Wheeler also has an excellent, related study.

Chute 1478. Sadducees were conservative, generally wealthy Jews who held to the law, rejecting angels, the resurrection, retribution, and life after death. Yves Ansel suggests that Camus may have confused the Saducees with the Pharisees, because of their commitment to the law (126). Still, Camus surely chose the sect to emphasize Clamence's materialism.

Chute 1510–11. The doves occur several times in La Chute, although this passage is particularly interesting. Clamence's later insistence on going outside to immerse himself in the huge snowflakes that he takes for doves is also significant, for the fantasy may indicate his anguish (1548).

Stendhal 273–77. Jacqueline Lévi-Valensi first pointed to the important story.