{"id":124136,"date":"2018-04-11T11:00:23","date_gmt":"2018-04-11T15:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=124136"},"modified":"2018-04-11T11:12:48","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T15:12:48","slug":"illicit-love-letters-albert-camus-and-maria-casares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/11\/illicit-love-letters-albert-camus-and-maria-casares\/","title":{"rendered":"Illicit Love Letters: Albert Camus and Maria Casares"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Maria Casares and Albert Camus.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

For the past few weeks, I\u2019ve fixated on a collection of primary source material that reads like a tidy work of epistolary fiction. It\u2019s a big book, nearly 1,300 pages, transcribed from original letters, postcards, and telegrams sent between the French philosopher and writer Albert\u00a0Camus\u00a0and the Spanish French actress Maria Casares between 1944 and 1959. It\u2019s too heavy a book to bring on the subway, so I downloaded the electronic version on my phone. My camera roll is now nearly a hundred screenshots of exchanges in French between the two lovers. The book was published in France by Gallimard and has not yet been translated into English.<\/p>\n

The romance of\u00a0Camus\u00a0and Casares is richer, if not sadder, when considered alongside the narratives of each of their work. There is an eerie doubling of life and art. Absurdity is the only certainty, and this is confirmed over and over again by coincidence and chance.<\/p>\n

The two first met on June 6, 1944, the storied day the Allied forces landed in Normandy. Both were involved in the production of\u00a0Camus\u2019s play The Misunderstanding<\/em> (Le Malentendu<\/em>), which was being staged in Paris at the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre de Mathurins. Preproduction,\u00a0Camus\u00a0brought Casares to an evening hosted by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. (The latter remarked on the young actress\u2019s beauty and confidence.) It is said that that evening, the two began their love affair\u2014Casares twenty-one, Camus nine years her senior. Their fling ended abruptly when\u00a0Camus\u2019s wife, the mathematician and pianist Francine Faure, returned to Paris from Algeria after the Occupation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Afterward,\u00a0Camus\u00a0took over as editor in chief of Combat<\/em>, the underground newspaper of the Resistance, and his wife gave birth to twins, Catherine and Jean. Meanwhile, the in-demand Casares was cast in two of her most memorable roles, as a long suffering wife in\u00a0Les enfants du paradis<\/em>\u00a0and as a jilted lover in\u00a0Les Dames du bois de Boulogne<\/em>. Four years to the day after their first meeting, on June 6, 1948, Casares ran into\u00a0Camus by chance\u00a0on boulevard Saint-Germain. Their correspondence then continued uninterrupted for the next twelve years.<\/p>\n

In nearly nine hundred exchanges, the two relay details of their day-to-day with lighthearted playfulness. I wanted to cut out the lines from the early letters to see how they matched up with those a decade later in the affair. From the start,\u00a0Camus\u00a0assures Casares that little has changed, either in his feelings or in the city where they crossed paths a second time. He relays time-honored Parisian annoyances. Casares, always on the move for roles, pokes fun at the toxic smell of French fries throughout Belgium. Still, she finds time to detail her quotidian, which includes dozens of cigarettes and caring for her father and her kitten, Quat\u2019sous. Sometimes the notes are short, a quick hello before she goes to sleep, dashed off \u201cbetween spaghetti and grapefruit.\u201d Other times, they are quite long, filled with questions and updates. Casares often asks after\u00a0Camus\u2019s children. There is no denial of the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d like this house, the smell of the nights. It\u2019s quiet in the evenings,\u201d\u00a0Camus\u00a0writes to Casares. In a separate note, he sends a sprig of thyme from the local mountains. \u201cI am writing to you in the middle of a beautiful storm,\u201d he says at one point. \u201cThere\u2019s thunder, lighting, and rain. I passed the day playing with Jean and Catherine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camus\u00a0is aware that his marriage is an obstacle. \u201cThis unfortunate love is not what you deserve,\u201d he tells her. \u201cI found with you a life force I\u2019d thought I lost,\u201d\u00a0he writes another time. \u201c[You are] the only being that has given me tears.\u201d He is aware of his words and sometimes rereads the notes before sending them. \u201cI\u2019m tired and afraid to continue in this tone. This only to tell you the color of the day and my thoughts. It is heavy and hot. A day for silence, nakedness, shady rooms, abandonment. My thoughts are the color of your hair. Monday and a few days thereafter, they will be the color of your eyes.\u201d And later: \u201cI write your name in the night, Maria, dear.\u201d\u00a0Camus, too, is always busy. He talks of Sundays filled with writing, even when he feels it is nearly impossible. Casares encourages him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love you,\u201d she says. \u201cWrite, write. The days are long and difficult. I need your letters to live. Sleep. Lie down.\u201d She asks for his opinion on projects, and he responds with equal respect for her work.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour letter, my beauty, was a little sad. How can I help? Your loyal companion is there. You know that,\u201d\u00a0Camus\u00a0writes. He closes one note with: \u201cA crown of kisses to the queen of dreams.\u201d He praises her performances. \u201cYes, you can be happy, you are great, a very big actress.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the volume\u2019s introduction, Camus\u2019s daughter, Catherine, notes that Casares\u2019s spelling and language mistakes have been corrected in the transcription. Perhaps a little character is lost without them. It was Catherine who purchased the correspondence from Casares after her mother\u2019s death in 1979 and brought the book to Gallimard.<\/p>\n

A few pieces of name-stamped stationery are reproduced as facsimiles in the book, a drawing here and there. Messages that were sent as telegrams appear dated and in all caps. I would have liked to have seen more of the facsimiles, the aura captured in each lover\u2019s own furious handwriting. At the end of one letter, there is a note that\u00a0Camus\u00a0included a drawing of a sun. I would have liked to see it. At the back of the book is typed-out evidence of\u00a0Camus\u2019s sense of humor: four silly letters he pretended to write on Casares\u2019s behalf in search of a summer rental. One reads, \u201cMadame, two words: I\u2019m hot and dirty, but I\u2019m not alone. So: the beach, water, two rooms, wood, and for nothing\u2014or almost.\u201d<\/p>\n

As time passes, there is little palpable written worry that their love has faded, that the usual contempt or familiarity has taken hold. Perhaps this is due to the suspended illusion of long-distance love. \u201cI hold you like the first time,\u201d Casares writes. \u201cI love your heart and all that you are \u2026 When I think of us it seems absurd to not believe in eternity.\u201d\u00a0Camus\u2019s wife, aware of his brutal affairs (Casares was not the only one), suffered from depression and tried to kill herself in 1954.<\/p>\n

In the letters, desire is sustained through fragments, concentrated moments spent together mythologized during those apart. In their memories, those moments grow more elastic, more mythic than any day-to-day relationship could ever be.<\/p>\n

One thing changes over time: in later letters, Casares no longer pleads with Camus to write but offers gentleness instead. \u201cLive like you\u2019re always wanted. If you don\u2019t feel like writing, don\u2019t do it. You know enough that now we can\u2019t help but repeat ourselves.\u201d She asks him to send her a note that his laziness is going well, even a single word. \u201cI\u2019ll know just what I need to know. And on my side, I\u2019ll do the same.\u201d She repeats in later letters that she\u2019s already said everything to him, that she can\u2019t imagine life without him, but that she has to. She\u2019s resigned to his absence, through which he will always be present for her. \u201cThat\u2019s it. Whatever may come, you are forever in all my life,\u201d she tells him.<\/p>\n

Camus\u2019s last letter announces itself as just that: \u201cGood. Last letter. Just to tell you that I arrive Tuesday \u2026 Soon, my Superb.\u201d He tells her that when they are reunited on Tuesday, they will begin their romance anew, start over.<\/p>\n

Their correspondence ends here.<\/p>\n

Days after sending his \u201clast letter,\u201d on January 4, 1960, Camus died in a car crash. As the story goes, there was a train ticket in his pocket.\u00a0Casares lived on another thirty-six years. She died the day after her seventy-fourth birthday, at her country home in France.<\/p>\n

The resonances between life and art continued: a year after Camus\u2019s death, Casares reprised her role as the Princess, the female face of death, in the final installment of Cocteau\u2019s Orphic Trilogy. In the play, there is a love triangle between the Princess, the poet, and his wife, the pregnant Eurydice. The story is set in a dreamlike postwar Paris.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Stephanie LaCava is a New York\u2013based writer and the founder of Small Press Books.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  For the past few weeks, I\u2019ve fixated on a collection of primary source material that reads like a tidy work of epistolary fiction. It\u2019s a big book, nearly 1,300 pages, transcribed from original letters, postcards, and telegrams sent between the French philosopher and writer Albert\u00a0Camus\u00a0and the Spanish French actress Maria Casares between 1944 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[3783,33688,24621,9734,33689,33687,8941],"class_list":["post-124136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-albert-camus","tag-boulevard-saint-germain","tag-francine-faure","tag-jean-paul-sartre","tag-les-enfants-du-paradis","tag-maria-casares","tag-simone-de-beauvoir"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIllicit Love Letters: Albert Camus and Maria Casares<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The correspondence of Albert Camus and one of his lovers, the actress Maria Casares, has been published by Gallimard in a 1,300-page book. 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