Camus in Istanbul
Carol Cosman's new translation of the story collection "Exile and the Kingdom" (Vintage, 196 pages, $13.95) gives us a fresh opportunity to rediscover Albert Camus. The first thing to notice is the atmosphere of Camus's Algeria. We are in a silent world, surprisingly cold and invigorated by a whispering wind and the odd colorful detail. The starkness of Camus's philosophical vision lends itself to this realistic depiction of the desert. In "The Adulterous Wife," a French-Algerian named Janine observes the interior for the first time:
Below her, the blue and white roofs of the Arab village overlapped, stained by the blood-red spots of peppers drying in the sun. There was no one to be seen, but from the courtyards rose a pungent aroma of roasting coffee along with laughing voices and incomprehensible shufflings [...] Above the desert, the silence was immense, like space.
Janine, leaning her whole body against the parapet, was speechless, incapable of tearing herself away from the void opening before her.
Camus shows us how easily the modern European turns away from tedious or baffling details, and throws her consciousness into the sky. This romantic nihilism, however, does not preside over the collection. It is only a starting point for characters who, in the end, make discoveries not only human but, if it could be said without prejudice, subhuman. In these late stories, written between 1949 and 1955, the center of existence is the heart, an animal heart that wants warmth. The land, or its emptiness, challenges the human to respond with warmth.
The most socially realized story here, "The Mute," is about the bitterness of men in a failing workshop. "At forty," Camus writes, the old worker Yvar "although he was still dry like the branch of a vine, his muscles didn't warm up as quickly." The workers give their boss the silent treatment, but out of that emptiness Yvar's deep yearnings emerge: "Ah that's the trouble!" exclaims Yvar, at the story's end, without explaining himself. Evocative dread, seated lower than the brain, gives these stories authority and power. Janine, chilled by the desert, feels "the sap" rise again in her body.
Packaged for its 50th anniversary with a refreshing essay by Ms. Cosman and a clever preface by Orhan Pamuk, "The Exile and the Kingdom" becomes a framework for thinking existentialism from a postcolonial point of view. Mr. Pamuk remembers how in the 1950s his father ordered each Camus volume from Gallimard, surmising that the author's "marginal" origins heightened his appeal with a Turk. Atthe same time, Mr. Pamuk recalls the optimism of postwar France, which he believes made possible the prestige of existentialism:
It was this kind of youthful optimism that prompted Camus to consider the thoughtless murder of an Arab by the French hero of "The Stranger" a philosophical rather than a colonial problem.
To say that Camus misread his own character's action puts the cart before the horse. But the problem of "The Stranger" — irrational violence — has little to do with this later story collection. The best moments are reflective and summarizing and deeply emotional. A new emphasis on Camus might look beyond "The Stranger," to the warmth of feeling present in this artist's later work.
***
Colum McCann's new historical novel, "Zoli" (Random House, 333 pages, $24.95), finds an appealing mix of Eastern European color and Soviet-era intrigue. Zoli, a Gypsy singer and poet, becomes through the circumstances of history the first Roma to give the old songs up for transcription, to scholars. "I don't know what careful means," Zoli says, but her foolhardiness pervades the plot, in which her artistic gifts eventually betray her tribe. No wonder this book resembles a collection of rueful apothegms: "When you fall, Zoli thinks, you never fall halfway."
Stránsky´ , the Soviet poet who discovers her, describes the Roma community as "an adorned world." The long fingernails, the harps, and even the rags have a stylish air, and it is to Mr. McCann's credit that Zoli, coal-eyed and wild, is much more than a Bjorkian tidbit. Indeed, the book's plot bends over backwards, to lampoon any man who falls for her — putting the reader in an awkward position.
Zoli becomes a tale about adaptability—about "turning sideways" in the stream of history. In the end, Zoli pities the scholar who, after 40 years, still insists on his love for her — "he did not know the meaning of what it was to turn and change," she says, when she sees him, by chance, at an academic conference "from wheel to parliament: romani memory and imagination."
