m

Albert Camus

T
The Windat D.jemila

HEREare places where the spirit dies

so that a truth maybe born which is
th.e spirit’s very negation. WhenI went
to Djemila there was wind and sun but that
must wait. Whathas to be said first is that a
great silence reigns there, heavy and without a
crack. The cries of birds, the furred soundof a
three-holed flute, the stamping of goats, mur-
murs from the sky--these are so many noises
 The Wind at Djemila 47
Soon, spread out to the four corners of the
world, I was the wind, and in the wind, these O Nr lives with a few familiar ideas. Twoor
three. In one’s chance encounters with
colunmsand this arch, these hot flagstones, and menand worlds, one polishes these ideas, one
these pale mountainsaround the deserted city. transforms them. It takes ten years to have an
And never have I felt so strongly both my idea really one’s own--about which one can
detachment from myself and my presence in talk. Naturally, it is a little discouraging.But
the world. only that way does a man gain intimacy with
the beauty of the world. Until then, he saw it
y rs, I am present. Andwhat strikes me at
this momentis that I cau go no further.
bluntly, face to face. Nowit is necessary for
him to take a step sideways to look at its pro-
Like a man condemnedto life imprisonment, file. A youngmansees the world face to face.
for whomeverything is in the present, but who He has not had time to polish the idea of death
also knows that tomorrow will be the same, or nothingness of which, however, he has
and all the other days. Becausefor a manto be- digested the horror. That is what youth should
comeaware of his present is to expect notlfing be, this hard confrontation with death, this
any longer. If there are landscapes which are physical fear of the animal that loves the sun.
states of the soul, they are the most vulgar. Contrary to what is said, in this respect, at
Through this landscape I followed something least, youthhas no illusions. It has had neither
which was not mine, but its, like a taste of the time nor the piety to construct any. And,I
death we had in common. Between these do not knowwhy, before this furrowed land-
colunms with their now oblique shadows, scape, before this solemn, mournful outcry of
anxieties cameto rest like woundedbirds. And stone, Djemila, inhuman in the setting sun,
in their place, this arid lucidity. As the day ad- before this death of colours and hope, I was
vanced and the noises and the lights were sure that at the end of their lives menworthyof
snuffed out under the ashes descendingfrom the the nameshould find this confrontation again,
sky, abandoned by myself, I felt &fenceless deny the few ideas which were theirs and re-
against the slow forces within mewhichsaid no. cover the iunocenceand the truth that shines in
Fewpeople understand that there is a rejec- the faces of the menof ancient times before
tion which has nothing in commonwith re- their destiny. Theyregain their youth, but it is
nunciation. Whatdoes it mean here, the word by embracing death. Nothing is more con-
"future"? What can the "progress" of the temptible in this respect than sickness. It is a
heart mean?If I obstinately refuse all the remedyagainst death. It prepares for it. It
"laters" of the worldit is becauseit is a ques- creates an apprenticeship of which the first
tion dlso of not renouncingmypresent riches. stage is tenderness for oneself. It supports man
It does not please me to believe that death in the great effort he makesto escape from the
opens on another life. For me,it is a door that certainty of utter death. But Djemila .... and
closes. I do not say it is a thresholdthat mustbe then I feel that the true, the only progress of
crossed, but rather that it is a horrible andfilthy civilisation, that to which from time to time a
nfisfortune. Everything that men propose to manattaches himself, is in creating conscious
meis an attempt to rid manof the weightof his deaths.
own life. Andbefore the heavy flight of the What always astonishes me, when we are so
great birds in the sky of Djemilait is exactly a promptto refinement on other subjects, is the
certain weight of life that I ask for and obtain. povertyof our ideas about death. It is goodor it
To be wholly in this passive passion--the rest is bad. I amafraid of it or I longfor it (as they
no longer concerns me. I have too muchyouth say). But this proves also that everythingsimple
in meto be able to speakof death. But it seems is beyond us. What is blue, and what can one
to methat if I had to, it is here that I would say about blue? One has the same difficulty
find the exact wordto express, between horror with death. About death and colours we can-
and silence, the conscious certainty of a death not reason. Andyet what is really important is
without hope. this manbefore me, heavy as the earth, who

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48 Encounter
prefigures myfuture. But can I truly think
about it? I tell myself: I mustdie, but this
meansnothing, since I can_not makemyself
believe it andcan only experiencethe death of
others. I haveseen peopledie, aboveall, I have
seen dogsdie: it wastouchingthemthat upset
me.ThenI think: flowers,smiles,the desire for
women,and I understandthat all myhorror of
deathlies in myjealousyof life. I amjealousof
those whowill live and for whomflowers and
the desire for women will haveall their mean-
ing of flesh andblood. I amenvious,becauseI
love life too muchnot to be an egoist. What
does eternity matter to me? Onemaybe lying
in bed one day and hear: "Youare strong and
I oweit to youto be honest; I can tel/you, you
are goin~to die"---one maybe there, with all
one’slife in one’shands,all one’sfear in one’s
intestines, and an idiotic look on one’s face.
Whatdoes the rest matter ?
Mendie in spite of themselves,in spite of
appearances. Onesays to them," Whenyou are
well .... "and they die. I do not want any of
that. For if there are days whennature lies,
there are dayswhenshe tells the truth. Djemila
speaks truly tonight, and with what sad and
insistent beauty!For myself,here in the world,
I do not wantto lie nor to be lied to. I wantto
carry mylucidity to the end and look at my
death with all the profusion of myjealousy
andhorror. It is in the measurethat I separate
myself from the world that I am afraid of
death, in the measurethat I attach myselfto the
fate of living men,instead of contemplating the
enduringsky. Tocreate consciousdeaths is to
diminishthe distance whichseparates us from
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the world, and makesus enter without joy into
the consummation of our lives, conscious of
the exalting imagesof a world forever lost.
Andthe sad songof the hills of Djemiladrives
deeper into mysoul the bitterness of this
lesson.
OWARDS evening we climb the slopes
T whichlead to the village and, retracing
our footsteps, welisten to explanations--"Here
is the pagancity, this quarterwhichrises out of
the earth is that of the Christians.Later.... "
Yes, it is true. Menandsocieties havefollowed
each other here; conquerorshave markedthis
countrysidewith their civilisation of subal-
terns. Theyhad a meanand foolish conception
of grandeurand measuredthat of their empire
by the surface it covered.Themiracle is that
these ruins of their civilisation are the very
negationof their ideal. For this skeletoncity,
seen from so high, in the descendingevening
with the white flight of pigeons around the
arch of triumph, did not write on the sky the
signs of conquest and ambition. The world
alwaysends by vanquishinghistory. This great
stone outcry that Djemilautters amidmoun-
tains, sky, andsilence, I knowits poetrywell;
lucidity, indifference,the true signs of despair
or beauty. The heart contracts before this
grandeurweare already leaving. Djemilare-
mainsbehindus with the sad waterof its sky, a
bird songthat comesfromthe other side of the
plateau, the sudden,brief descentof goats on
the sides of the hills and, in the relaxed and
echoing twilight, the living features of a
homedgod on the pedimentof an altar.
 MUSIC
No Cantatas for Stalin ?
rm~m~are the funeral cantatas for Stalin?
w Whyhas the task of lamenting his death
been left, so far, almost exclusively to the
solemn marches of Beethoven and Chopin?
Whyhave the composers of the U.S.S.R.--
the Great and Small Russians, the White
Russians, the Uzbeks, the Ugro-Finns, the
Armenians, the Georgians--failed to render
their musical homageto Himwho is no longer
with us ? After all, only about eight monthsago
these same composers were issuing a daily
torrent of musical praise to Stalin the good,
Stalin the far-seeing, Stalin the founder--
according to his own announcementof I937--
of "the happy new life." It was neither Marx
nor Engels nor Lenin, but always Stalin and
only Stalin who was thus hymned in the
inevitable majorkey of Soviet self-glorification.
It maybe objected that Stalin has only been
dead about seven months, and that one can
hardly expect to see the fruits of compositionin
so short a time. This was presumablythe point
which the tkussian composer, Kabalevsky, in-
tended to convey in the interview he gave to
the French press, whenhe said that the funeral
cantatas were in course of preparation, and
that they wouldnot be ready until the autumn,
when they will be performed in the House of
Modern Music in Moscow. But this is not
convincing. The present situation is in too
marked a contrast with the staggering speed
with which the unfortunates in the I948
Zhdanovite campaign against "formalism"
producedtheir worksof penanceand rehabilita-
tion. Then, within three or four months the
Soviet musical repertoire was flooded with
brand-new music for fdms, new songs, new
ballets, new symphonies, even new operas, all
written in accordancewith tlie pure principles
of "socialist realism," all filled with perfect
major chords, gloriously optimistic; one can
roughly estimate the average time of composi-
tion as having been eight to twelve weeks.
4 49
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What has slowed downthe pace ? No, one can
hardly be satisfied with Mr. Kabalevsky’s
statement. Instead, one is constrained to wonder
whether the complete absence of funeral odes
to Stalin, or at least the extraordinary delay in
their colnposition, might not have some rela-
tion to the sudden infrequency with which his
nameis mentionedin the pages of Pravda. Or is
it that Soviet composershave becomeso used
to the musical language of joy, with its
abundant major "intonations"--to use a term
dear to Soviet musical theorists--that they
experience somedifficulty or disinclination in
venturing uponthe stilisticheskaya pereustanovka
("stylistic re-orientation") required for the
composition of lamentations in minor keys?
This last point is worth lingering over.
In "socialist realism," whoseprinciples of
musical composition stem from I9th century
textbooks on harmony, there is only one
harmonic style possible: that based on the
conventional use of major and minor triads
and their inversions. When,as is usually the
case, a Soviet composer deals with "heroic
socialist construction,"his score is full of major
triads. It is only on those infrequent occasions
when his work describes the "abject sadness"
of pre-revolutionary life that minor triads
prevail. Theuse of" free" dissonances,or rather
of the dissonances" freed" by the work of such
great composersof the 2oth century as Debussy,
Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, Bart6k, and
Hindemith,is strictly forbidden. Such musicis
condemnedas "formalist," "decadent," and
"bourgeois," and the penetration of the ideas
of free dissonance into the "pure body" of
Soviet music assumes in the eyes of official
authority the character of an infiltration by
"secret agents of imperialism." It is possible,
therefore, that after Stalin’s death the Soviet
composersfound it profitless to switch over,
merdyfor the sake of a passing moment,to the
pessimistic tones of musicset in a nfinor key.