Sa tylko ludzie wybrani / There are only...

Albert Camus

Fajnie jest zrobic sobie od czasu do czasu dzien na relaksacje. Tak aby zregenerowac sily: uciec od swiata, pomarzyc, planowac i robic na co tylko sie ma ochote. Taki dzien dla duszy – dla tej czesci nas, do ktorej nikt inny nie ma dostepu I w ktorej zawsze jestesmy sami. To dzisiaj jest wlasnie taki dzien dla mnie.

Skonczylam czytam ‘Obcego’ Camus. Wczesniej ‘Dzuma’ naprawde mnie zafascynowala a teraz mialam okazje siegnac po cos nowego. Fantastyczna ksiazka, naprawde wyzwala nowe mysli.

Opowiada o Meursault, ktory zyje w izolacji od spoleczenstwa. Pewnego dnia zabija on czlowieka i jest za to potem sadzony. Cala powiesc ma w sobie duzo z kawkowego “Procesu”. Jest tutaj ktos, kto zyje w swiecie absurdu i jest wplatany w biurokracje spoleczna. Teksty napisany jest w pierwszej osobie i Meursault raportuje wszystko co mu sie przydarza, bez ujwniania jakichkolwiek emocji a czytelnik w pewien sposob interpretuje wydarzenia i tworzy swoj wlasny obraz zycia bohatera.

Meursault odmawia klamstwa, mowi czym jest, przechodzi przez granice prawdy, ktora spoleczenstwo jest w stanie zaakceptowac. Nie gra w ta gre, w ktora powinien.

“Matka zmarla dzisiaj. A moze wczoraj, nie wiem”

Jak czesto my sami, mowimy rzeczy ktore nalezy powiedziec albo zrobic (tak jak on powinien plakac na pogrzebie matki, bo takie sa zasady). Wypada powiedziec, ze jest nam przykro (czy jest nam przykro, czy uwazamy ze powinno byc), wypada pokazac ze jest sie smutnym (jestesmy, czy po prostu wszyscy tego od nas oczekuja, a my w to gramy?). Jestesmy jak marionetki, ktore odgrywaja role spoleczne – wypada byc przykro za dzieci w Afryce, albo za ofiary tsunami. A tak naprawde to gowno nas obchodzi tsunami. Ok, ale do tego sie nie mozna przyznac i wybieramy hipokryzje. Obejrzymy wiadomosci, powiemy sobie – kurcze, szkoda ze ci wszyscy ludzie tam zgineli, moze nawet scisnie sie nam serce. Ale zaraz potem i tak bedziemy zyc swoim zyciem, i swoimi problemami ktore w porownaniu do tamtych sa male, ale nie dla nas.

I to mi sie podoba w tym czlowieku, ze nie klamie. Ze zdaje sobie sprawy ze nic nie ma sensu, akceptuje to I jest szczery. Wklejam ponizej fragment tekstu, jest o angielsku, nie mam za bardzo czasu aby to przetlumaczyc.

“Egzystencjalizm polega na byciu swietym bez Boga; byciu twoim wlasnym bohaterem, bez tych wszystkich sankcji I wsparcia jakie daje religia albo spoleczenstwo” Anita Brookner (brytyjska pisarka I historyk sztuki)

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It’s great to have every now and then some time for relaxation. Just to regenerate strengths; escape from the world, dream, make plans and do whatever one wants; a day to be in touch with one’s soul – the place which no one else can access and where we are alone. Today is this kind of a day for me.

I’ve finished reading ‘The Outsider’ by Camus. ‘The Plague’ has fascinated me a lot and now I wanted to read something new. It’s a fantastic book and uncovers some hidden parts of human existence.

It tells a story of Meursault who lives in isolation from society, one day kills a man and is trialed for that. The novel has a lot in common with Kafka’s “Trial”. The character lives in the world of absurd and is entangled into social bureaucracy. The text is written in first person and Meursault reports everything that happens to him without showing any emotions. Here the reader in a way interprets events and creates his/her own picture of the character’s life.

Merisault refuses to lie, says what he is and crosses borders of truth that society can stand to accept. He doesn’t play this game that he should. 

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know”

How often each of us says thing or does things that one should (like Mersault should cry on his mother’s funeral because that are the rules)? We say that we are sorry (are we sorry, or do we think that we should be?), it is expected from us to look sad (are we really sad, or we just play this game?). Aren’t we like puppets playing social roles – we should be sorry for dying of hunger children in Africa, or for tsunami’s victims. But in reality don't we care about tsunami like about shit. Ok, but admitting this would be socially unacceptable and don’t we chose hypocrisy instead. We watch the news and we may feel that we are sorry for all of those people or that it hurts our hearts. But just after that we will continue living our own lives as if nothing has happened and we will be preoccupied with our own problems, which even though sometimes tiny in comparison to the test, are serious for us.

This what I like in Mersoult is that he doesn’t lie. That he realizes that nothing has any meaning, he accepts that and is honest with his feelings.

“According to him [Chaplain], human justice was nothing and divine justice was everything. I pointed out that it was the former that condemned me. He replied that it hadn’t washed away my sin for all that. I told him I didn’t know what sin was. I’d simply been told that I was guilty. I was guilty and I was paying for it and there was nothing more that could be asked of me”

“>I’m on your side. But you can’t see that because your heart is blind. I shall pray for you [chaplain] < Then, for some reason, something exploded inside me. I started shouting at the top of my voice and I insulted him and told him not to pray for me.[…] He seemed so certain of everything, didn’t he? And yet none of his certainties was worth one hair of a woman’s head. He couldn’t even be sure he was alive because he was living like a dead man. I might seem to be empty-handed. But I was sure of myself, sure of everything, surer than he was, sure of my life and sure of the death that was coming to me. Yes, it was all I had. But at least it was a truth which I had hold of just as it had hold of me. I’d been right, I was still right, I was always right. I’d lived in a certain way and I could just as well have lived in a different way. I had done this and I hadn’t done that. I hadn’t done one thing whereas I had done another. So what? It was as if I had been waiting all along for this very moment and for the early dawn when I’d be justified. Nothing, nothing mattered and I knew very well why. He too knew why. From the depths of my future, throughout the whole of this absurd life I’d been leading, I’d felt a vague breath drifting towards me across all the years that were still to come, and on its way this breath had evened out everything that was then being proposed to me in the equally unreal years I was living through. What did other people’s deaths or a mother’s love matter to me, what did his God or the lives people chose or the destinies they selected matter to me, when one and the same destiny was to select me and thousands of millions of other privileged people who, like him, called themselves my brothers. Didn’t he understand? Everyone was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others too would be condemned one day. He too would be condemned. What did it matter if he was accused of murder and then executed for not crying on his mother’s funeral?”

“Existentialism is about being saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanctions and support of religion or society” Anita Brookner (British novelist and art historian)