CAMUS, Albert (1913—1960), French novelist, dramatist, essayist, and journalist, whose writings had profound influence in the mid-20^th century on the conscience of Western man. Both his personality and his work were deeply marked by the historic struggles that shook European civilization during his lifetime. A man of great personal integrity, Camus sought to define not a dogma but a way of life that would respect in equal measure the logic of the heart, the logic of the mind, and the limitations imposed on the individual by reality.

阿尔贝·加缪（1913年至1960年），法国小说家，剧作家，随笔作家和记者，他的作品在20世纪中期对西方人的良知产生了深远影响。在其一生中，他的个性和作品都深受动摇了欧洲文明的历史斗争的影响。一位非常正直的人，加缪试图定义的不是教条，而是一种生活方式，这种生活方式会同样尊重心灵的逻辑，思维的逻辑，以及现实强加于个人的限制。

The marked changes in mood in Camus’s work and his great diversity in literary technique accentuate rather than mask the inner coherence characteristics are evident in the recurrence from work to work of certain images—sea, sky, light, and desert—and of basic themes—exile, revolt, happiness, and man’s responsibility in a meaningless world. Camus early defined his own realm of concern and explored it with intellectual and artistic integrity. Like Jean-Paul Sartre and other existentialist thinkers with whom he was familiar, he examined the fundamental dilemmas of modern man, who is shorn of traditional structures of religious belief and explanation and who sees human existence as “absurd,” that is, purposeless and incomprehensible in rational terms.

加缪作品中情绪的显著变化和他在文学技巧中的巨大多样性，强调而不是掩饰内在的相关特征，这在作品到作品的某些意象的重现中是很明显的---海洋、天空、光线和沙漠---以及基本主题---流放、反抗、幸福以及人在一个无意义世界中的责任。加缪早期就关注他自己的领域，并用智慧和艺术的完整性探索了它。就像让·保罗·萨特和他熟悉的其他存在主义的思想家一样，他审视了被剥夺了传统宗教信仰和解释结构的现代人的基本困境，而且他认为人类的存在是“荒谬的”，换言之，理性地说是无目的的，而且是不可理解的。

Camus, however, was more optimistic than many existentialists in the value he accorded man. He sought, through the fictional characters he created, to define a positive ethic based on happiness, solidarity, and a respect for human life. This humanistic ethic rejected absolutes and stressed the continual effort, without falling into extremes, to balance the legitimate yet paradoxically contradicting aspirations of the individual for personal freedom and social justice, self-realization and solidarity, the happiness of love and a lucid understanding of the hopelessness of man’s fate.

然而，加缪在赋予人的价值方面要比许多存在主义者更乐观。通过他创造的虚构角色，他试图基于幸福、团结和尊重人的生命定义一种积极的伦理。这种人道主义的伦理拒绝绝对，在不陷入极端的情况下，强调不断努力，平衡个人对个人自由与社会正义，自我实现与团结，爱的幸福与对人类命运绝望的清晰理解的合理而自相矛盾的愿望。

Camus had a demanding conception of the artist’s responsibility in a time of crisis. He called upon man to face the crucial issues raised by the convulsions of the time—communism and World War II, for example—and elucidated them in works of sustained intellectual and stylistic excellence. Camus was awarded the Noble Prize for literature in 1957.

加缪在危机时期对艺术家的责任有着苛刻的概念。他呼吁人们面对时代动荡引发的关键问题---例如，共产主义和二次大战---并在持续的才智超群和卓越风格的作品中阐明它们。因此，加缪在1957年获得了诺贝尔文学奖。

Early Life.  Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria, on Nov. 7, 1913. His father, a farm laborer of Alsatian descent, was fatally wounded in action during World War I. his mother, to whom Camus was devoted, was of Spanish origin and worked as a servant. Camus poverty-stricken childhood in a working-class section of Algiers inspired his unwavering commitment to social justice, his simple ethical code, and his sense of the violence and fatalism that characterized the illiterate working class. To his environment he also owed his basic fictional milieu, the landscape of the North African Mediterranean coast.

早期生活。1913年11月7日，加缪生于阿尔及利亚的蒙多维。其父，一位阿尔萨斯血统的农场工人，在一次大战期间的作战中受了致命伤。其母，加缪挚爱的人，是西班牙裔，作过仆人。加缪在阿尔及尔的一个工人阶级区度过了贫困的童年，这激发了他对社会正义的坚定承诺，他的朴素道德准则，以及他对文盲工人阶级特征的暴力和宿命论的意识。他也将虚构的基本环境，北非地中海沿岸的景色归功于他的环境。

Through education, Camus was able to move beyond the limitations of his environment. At the University of Algiers, under the influence of the philosopher Jean Crenier, he developed a lifelong interest in literature and philosophy. To these fields he added a passion for the drama in all its aspects. Knowledge that he had tuberculosis, a disease that dogged him all his life, forced him to give up an academic career and stimulated him to become a writer.

通过教育，加缪能够超越他生存环境的限制。在阿尔及尔大学，在哲学家让·格雷尼尔的影响下，他对文学和哲学产生了终身兴趣。除了这些领域，他还对戏剧的各方面都充满了热情。得知他得了肺结核，一种折磨了他一生的疾病，迫使他放弃了学术生涯，激励着他成为了一个作家。

The 1930’s and Early World War II.  In the 1930’s, Camus became committed to the THREE-pronged activity—political, theater, and writing—that shaped his whole career. After briefly belonging to the communist party, he became a non-doctrinal socialist. As a young journalist in Algiers, he incurred the hostility of the local authorities because of his vigorous and scrupulously documented campaigns for economic and political reforms on behalf of the Algerian Muslims. He participated in an amateur theatrical group as an actor and director, thus acquiring firsthand experience with the stage. Camus also traveled in Europe and was for a short time a journalist in Paris. After the fall of France in 1940, he returned to Algeria, where he taught in a private school.

20世纪30年代和二次大战早期。在20世纪30年代，加缪致力于三方面的活动---政治、戏剧和写作---这决定了他的整个职业生涯。在短暂加入了共产党之后，他成为了一位非教条的社会主义者。作为在阿尔及尔的一位年轻记者，由于他代表阿尔及利亚的穆斯林为经济和政治改革进行了有力而记录严谨的活动，他招致了地方当局的敌意。作为演员和导演，他参加过一个业余的戏剧团体，因此获得了第一手的舞台经验。加缪还游历过欧洲，并在巴黎做过一段时间的记者。1940年巴黎沦陷后，他回到阿尔及利亚，在那里他在一所私立学校教书。

Throughout this period Camus was hard at work writing. The ambience and imagery of L’envers et l’endroit (1937) and Noces (1938), two small volumes of essays, reflect Camus’ early lyrical commitment to life, beauty, and happiness in this world, especially the world of the North African coast that he knew. The essays also EXPRESS Camus’ revolt against the burden of suffering, death, and solitude that estranges human beings from the plenitude of life.

在这一时期，加缪在努力写作。两本小随笔集《反与正》（1937年）和《婚礼》（1938年）的氛围和意象反映了加缪早期对这个世界上的生命、美丽和幸福的抒情承诺，尤其是对他了解的北非沿岸的世界。该随笔集也表达了加缪对使人类疏远生命之丰富的痛苦、死亡和孤独的反抗。

The theme of revolt dominates Camus’ next THREE works. The novel L’etranger (1942; Eng. Tr., The Stranger, 1946) is narrated by Meursault, a clerk in Algiers, who blindly commits murder, then, confronted by his own execution, realizes the unique value of life and the solidarity of all men in the face of unjust condemnation to death. In the essay Le mythe de Sisyphe (1943; Eng. Tr., The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. 1955), Camus uses Sisyphus, who in Greek mythology is condemned eternally to push a boulder uphill only to have it roll down again, as a symbol of man’s fate and possibilities in a purposeless world. The play Caligula (written in 1938 and published in 1945; Eng. Tr., 1958), presents the Roman emperor as so driven by his sense of the absurdity of life that he indulges in excessive cruelties that destroy even himself.

反抗的主题主导了加缪接下来的三部作品。小说《局外人》（1946年英译本）通过阿尔及尔的一个职员默尔索的叙述，他盲目地杀了人，然后面对他的处决，他认识到生命的独特价值和所有人在面对不公正的死刑判决时的团结。在随笔《西西弗的神话》中（1943年；英译本，《西西弗的神话与其它随笔》1955年），加缪用希腊神话中永远受到谴责的西西弗斯，作为人类命运和无目的的世界的可能性象征，推着一快巨石上山，只是为了让它又滚下来。戏剧《卡利古拉》（写于1938年，1945年出版；1958年英译本），将罗马皇帝描绘为受其生活荒谬感驱使的人，以至于沉溺于过度残忍，甚至毁灭了自己。

Later War Years and Postwar Period.  In 1942, Camus returned to France, where he took an active part in the Resistance against the German army of occupation. He wrote leading articles and editorials for various underground journals, including the left-wing paper Combat, which he edited from 1944 to 1947. In these articles, and in the novels, plays, and essays of this period, Camus EXPRESSED his revulsion to the public’s cynical acceptance of wholesale violence and murder. He attempted to translate the bitter experiences of the German occupation and of the political disappointments of the post-liberation years into a general philosophy about man’s tragic situation.

战争岁月后期和战后时期。1942年，加缪回到法国，在那里他积极参加了抵抗德军占领的活动。他为各种地下刊物写了一些重要文章和评论，包括左翼报纸《战斗》，他从1944年至1947年成为了它的编辑。在这些文章中，以及在这一时期的小说、戏剧和随笔中，加缪表达了对公众愤世嫉俗地接受大规模暴力和谋杀的反感。他试图将德国占领时期的痛苦经历和对解放后几年政治上的失望转变为关于人类悲惨处境的一般哲学。

One of the most important of these somber works is the novel La peste (1947; Eng. Tr., The Plague, 1948). La peste, considered at one level to be an allegory of occupied France and at another level an allegory of the human situation, is a sparely written account of an epidemic of bubonic plague in the Algerian town of Oran and of the reaction of various individuals. Dr. Rieux, the central figure, who has no faith in God or the rationality of the universe, devotes himself whole-heartedly to helping his fellow men. 

这些忧郁的作品中最重要的一部就是小说《鼠疫》（1947年；1948年，英译本）。《鼠疫》一方面被认为是对被占领法国的宣言，而在另一方面是对人类境况的宣言，是对阿尔及利亚奥兰镇鼠疫传染病以及不同个体反应的简单地书面记录。中心人物里厄博士既不相信上帝，也不相信宇宙的合理性，将自己全神贯注地投入到帮助其同胞之中。

In the essay L’homme revolte (1951; Eng. Tr., The Rebel, 1954), Camus studies the concept of personal and historical revolutions in Europe since the 18^th century, concluding that revolution carried to its logical extreme justifies war and murder, as for example in Stalin’s Russia, and thus destroys the very freedom it had set out to win. This view caused great controversy among leftists, and led to a split between Camus and the pro-Communist Sartre. Other works concerned with the troubled war and postwar years include Lettres a un ami allemand （致一位德国友人的信）(1945) and the dramas Le Malentendu（误会） (1944; Eng. Tr., The Misunderstanding, 1958) andLes justes （义人）(1949; Eng. Tr., The Just Assassins, 1958).

在随笔《叛逆者》中（1951年；1954年，英译本），加缪研究了自18世纪欧洲个人和历史革命的概念，结论是革命发展到为其战争和谋杀辩护的逻辑极端，例如像斯大林的俄国，从而摧毁了它原本想要赢得的全部自由。这一观点在左翼艺术家中引发了广泛论战，并导致了加缪与赞成共产主义的萨特分裂。

Among Camus’ later works is the novel La chute (1956; Eng. Tr., The Fall, 1957), a powerfully satiric work in which the author frees himself from an obsessional involvement with history to indict those who take an intellectual delight to denouncing the corruption of Western man. Clamence, a former Parisian lawyer, reveals his guilty conscience as a man who has spent his life professionally seeking justice for others but who when personally confronted with woman’s attempt at suicide does nothing to save her.

在加缪的后期作品中是小说《堕落》（1956年；1957年，英译本），一部强烈的讽刺作品，在其中，作者将自己从对历史的痴迷中解脱出来，控告以智力愉悦来谴责西方人腐败的那些人。克拉门切，一位前巴黎律师，揭露了他作为毕生致力于为他人伸张正义的一个男人，但当他亲自面对企图自杀的女人时却没有救她的负罪感。

With L’ete (1954), a collection of personal, lyrical meditations, and L’exile et le royaume (1957, Eng. Tr., Exile and the Kingdom, 1958), a collection of short stories, Camus returned to his Algerian inspiration. He also adapted and directed plays taken from the works of William Faulkner and Dostoyevsky. However, his new ventures were cut short by his death in an auto accident near Sens France, on Jan. 4, 1960.

还有《夏》（1954年），一部个人的抒情沉思录合集，以及《流放与国王》（1957年；1958年，英译本），一部加缪恢复了他阿尔及利亚灵感的短篇故事集。他还改编和导演了取自威廉·福克纳和陀思妥耶夫斯基作品的戏剧。然而，他的新事业却因他在1960年1月4日在法国桑斯附近的一次交通事故中的死亡戛然而止。

                             GERMAINE BREE, Author of “Camus”

                               杰曼·布瑞，“加缪”的作者

                                           2023年6月17日译

（译者注：该词条位列《大美百科全书》1985年版，第5卷，第309页至310页）