The many quotes found on the Internet from Camus-French Noble Prize winner, novelist, playwright, essayist, journalist, and public intellectual-confirm he was a master of the aphorism, so a general reader might accept he crafted this one. The struggles between passion and reason, between abstract doctrine and life experience and the resulting confusion continue, making Camus’s insights as relevant today as they were over half-century ago.Ībstract art is “a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.” This cynical characterization of abstract art is attributed to Albert Camus (1913-1960) in over a half-dozen compilations of quotes on Internet web sites (accessed October 28, 2015). Meanwhile, the twentieth century nihilistic confusion so vividly represented in The Renegade, or a Confused Mind continues to be manifested in the twenty-first century in the clash of belief systems around the world. Unlike Camus, who learned to look back with love to his harsh youth and transform it into a life of creativity, the renegade ends up a “babbling slave” of his confused nihilistic passion. His life is a cycle of confusion propelled by hatred. His life is never a forward progression of a lucid consciousness encountering the world he immerses himself in totalizing belief systems that deny him the power and lucidity to achieve such an end. His adherence to belief systems did not diminish his hatred and confusion but fueled them, conjuring up visions of vindictive revenge. He never learned that “One cannot destroy everything without destroying oneself” (C, vi). There is no home, no promised land for him he remains a slave in exile. Having failed to create a unifying form to his life the renegade’s last wish was to go home but he cannot “His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of the promised land” (MS, 6).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |