MON CHER AMOUR

Passion on the page.

The correspondence between the French author Camus and the Spanish-born French actress Casarès contains some of the greatest love letters since those of Abelard and Heloise, the ill-fated medieval couple. When Camus and Casarès met, in 1944, he was 30 and she was 21. Their relationship lasted until Camus’ death, in a car accident, in 1960. In a translator’s note, Smith writes that Camus’ wife, Francine Faure, knew about the affair, “which caused him much guilt.” Camus—Resistance fighter, existentialist thinker, poet of modern alienation—writes with lasting power. “When I read Tolstoy, discovering an entire world of wonder on every page, how can I do that without you, in the flesh, to share it with me?” Or this: “Never more will I wash up on the terrible, deserted beaches where, deprived of you, I would die of thirst.” And this: “When you reach a certain degree of mutual passion, hearts meld together into something that can no longer be given a name, where boundaries disappear, and distinctions, something that makes you think of what eternity might be like, if that word could have a meaning.” Casarès is no less deep and deeply in love. She writes, “Resignation is giving way to an exhausting impatience, and the little personal philosophy I’d built for myself is crumbling before the vital need of you.” She then goes on to catalogue each bit of Camus’ body, each slice of his soul, until they will meet again, “among the flowers crushed against the curtains.” As we read, we realize that whatever we are learning from these long-dead lovers pales against what we can learn about ourselves. Read this book as a guide to loving and a guide to writing. Read it for sustenance after, as Casarès puts it, “one of those days when the heart weeps, despite all the hopes and joys that might be promised to it.”

A dazzling correspondence from long ago, revived in ardent English.