My Debt to Spain

CAMUS, ALBERT

My Debt to Spain By Albert Camus This speech by Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus, author of The Fall, was delivered at dinner of the Mediterranean Friendship League. Here Camus not only restates...

...Then because it was these very men—and this is what I wanted to tell you this evening—who sustained me in those periods of discouragement which marked the practice of an often difficult craft...
...The Right will criticize him for writing too badly...
...I only want to tell you that I shall go on trying to be worthy of that friendship...
...Let us admit I owe almost everything to these friendships...
...In the life of a militant writer there must be wellsprings of warmth from which courage to combat the despair I spoke of, the drying-up process, can be drawn...
...These men are of all parties and from all countries: Friends from France who know I can't mention them publicly...
...the Left, for writing too well...
...In a word, they threaten to take from me that great force of joy and life without which an artist is nothing...
...For this is a difficult craft...
...Yet for that alone I have received for years—and still receive in such looks as I have met this evening—the loyal friendship of these Spaniards, which has literally helped me to go on living...
...But I know they threaten to dry me up, to infect me with a bitterness alien to my nature...
...This is what I conceive my job to be...
...You have offered me those wellsprings: I have always found your active, generous friendship along my path...
...To tell the truth, it is the only reward I could want...
...Then there are the friends from South America, and particularly from Colombia, freed at last by the unflagging efforts of a few men who are with us this evening—and for whom we all feel respect and affection...
...A certain sector of the Right will blame him for signing too many manifestoes, while the Left (the new Left, that is —and I belong to the old) will cavil because he hasn't signed enough...
...The main thing is that we live it together in warmth and loyalty, in the same spirit I feel today as I thank you a last time and tell you how grateful I am to be your faithful friend...
...The last time I was here with you, at the invitation of the Mediterranean Friendship League and of Spanish organizations, I definitely felt more at ease...
...I have accepted them in the past and I'll go on accepting them...
...And I want to thank you, and together with you the many others who have fed in me a hunger men do not find it easy to admit they have, a hunger I need not spell out for you who meet here this evening...
...I had to do this in the midst of sometimes exhausting quarrels which have cost me and, I admit it, still cost me dear...
...On this point my indifference borders on conviction: I know why I do this, but my reasons are irrelevant to this evening's concerns...
...this Left, as an aristocrat...
...Friends from Israel, that model Israel others would like to destroy in the name of anti-colonialism but whose right to life we must all defend, we who have witnessed the massacre of millions of Jews and who think it only right and proper that the survivors create that homeland we have not known how to give them or how to preserve for them...
...But I have another indebtedness toward you, whose sorrow and misery have not yet ceased, one you do not and cannot know...
...Spain in Exile has often shown me disproportionate gratitude...
...I don't know if I've given too many or too few signatures, if I'm nobleman or democrat...
...Such friendship, however ill-deserved, is the pride of my life...
...nor is it because this ghost of liberty which survives among us, surrounded as it is by masters of the servitude of others, is enough for me...
...It will be easier for me to accept the sort of reputation that has just been attached to my name by the free academy of a free country, if I know I can put it at your service...
...Once having recognized this, having decided that these were good things above all others, it seemed to me that they should be assured everyone and that, until that state of affairs was achieved, one must fight for these things without respite and with all one's strength...
...Recently I have read that I am a man who walks by himself...
...I am not one of those lovers of liberty who seek to load her with chains, nor one of those servants of justice who believe that justice can only be well served by condemning several generations to injustice...
...But for a single evening—I feel sure—you will give me leave to symbolize all these friendships in Spain in Exile...
...I live as best I can, in an unhappy land rich in its people and its youth, poor (temporarily) in its leadership, determined to achieve an order and a rebirth in which I believe...
...Go on being an artist or be ashamed of being one, speak out or keep still, whichever you do, you'll be damned for it...
...It is also untrue, however, for I walk alone only as do millions of other men who are our brothers and whose footfall I have made my own...
...But at least I refuse to add to its weaknesses...
...I am not given to proclaiming victories or holidays...
...We know our struggle is endless but it is part and parcel of our very life...
...This results in displeasing everyone, and you just have to be resigned to it...
...I cannot live without true freedom and a certain degree of honor...
...But if I live in this country I love despite its misfortunes, and in this society I don't like despite its cultural prestige, if I believe it inevitable and just that I must suffer from the common ills, this is not because I can't imagine any other life...
...I would like to talk to you freely about it, and I could easily do so...
...Here Camus not only restates his attachment to the cause of Republican Spain, but also expresses his gratitude to .. culture...
...I have tried particularly to respect the words I have written since, through them, I was respecting those who might read them and whom I did not wish to dupe...
...The Spaniards in exile fought for years and then proudly accepted" the interminable pain of exile, whereas all I did was to write that they were right...
...The speech was translated by Frances Keene...
...I just wanted to admit that this embarrassment exists so that you would overlook certain occasional reticences on my part and forgive my clumsiness in thanking you...
...Whether I am a lonely man or not, I try to do my job and sometimes I find it a hard one, chiefly because of our pretty awful intellectual society wherein reflex has taken the place of reflection, where whole coteries consider disloyalty a point of honor, and where malice too often passes itself off as intelligence...
...I will not leave you...
...But I do know that I have tried to respect my work, since I could not naively respect myself...
...I will keep faith...
...What is there left, then, except to trust in your star and plod blindly, hesitantly forward along the road of all artists, a stubborn, stumbling profession that is only justifiable if you hold to a clear picture both of the grandeur of your calling and of your own limited resources...
...Spanish friends, we are kindred spirits and I recognize a debt to your country, its literature, its people, its traditions, a debt I can never repay...
...The truth of the matter is that I first started feeling this embarrassment last October [when Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize...
...At this stage of my life, nothing is sacrosanct—no party, no church, nor any of the conformities which throttle our society: I can speak truth in whatever measure I know it...
...Although I have now decided on a fairly long withdrawal from public activity, I wanted to accept your invitation—because, first of all, there are among you certain kindred spirits to whom I can never refuse anything, and because I knew with what warmth these men would welcome me...
...We had assembled to pay tribute to men we all loved and respected, and it was my task to tell them our shared feelings...
...Nevertheless, while I suffer cruelly from the corruption of society, I can't consider myself apart from it and include myself in this accusation...
...I have never sought honors and I've refused them whenever I could, not out of virtue but because of my very faults...
...If I have managed to extricate myself from this danger—and this is the point I wanted to come to—it is due to friendships I have with certain among you...
...If a writer likes to read and to hear what is being said, he hardly knows which way to turn...
...This Right will reproach him as a humanitarian...
...I am not one of those Christians who set fire to a church in order to get there ahead of the materialists...
...I could speak from the heart, and without the embarrassment I feel this evening...
...Such quarrels, such struggles are inevitable...
...This is true, if it means that I am independent...

Vol. 41 • June 1958 • No. 23


 
Developed by
Kanda Sofware
  Kanda Software, Inc.