Caligula (Camus)

A little History

Wire of Germanicus and Agrippine Elder the, Caligula is the great-grandson of the emperor Auguste and the great nephew of the Tibère emperor whom it succeeds the head of the Senate.

Camus took as a starting point the work of the Latin historian Suétone, Vie of the twelve Césars , which describes Caligula become suddenly tyrannical and whimsical after only six months of reign right, but this version of the “insane emperor” seems to be cancelled by recent archaeological discoveries.

The topic

Here the topic of the part presented by the author himself (in the American edition of the Theater in 1957):

“Caligula, prince relatively pleasant until there, realizes with dead of Drusilla, his/her sister and her mistress, that " the men die and they are not heureux". Consequently, obsessed by the search of the absolute, poisoned contempt and of horror, it tries to exert, by the murder and the systematic perversion of all the values, a freedom of which it will discover to finish that she is not the good one. He challenges the friendship and the love, the simple human solidarity, the good and the evil. He takes with the word those which surround it, he forces them with logic, he bubble all around him by the force of his refusal and the rage of destruction where its passion of living involves.

But, if its truth is to revolt against the destiny, its error is to deny the men. One cannot all destroy without destroying oneself. This is why Caligula depopulates the world around him and, faithful to its logic, fact what it is necessary to arm against him those which will end up killing it. Caligula is the history of a higher suicide. It is the history of most human and most tragic of the errors. Infidel with the man, by fidelity with itself, Caligula agree to die to have understood that no being can run away itself all alone and that one cannot be free against the other men. ”

Two versions of Caligula de Camus

The final version is the version in four acts of 1944, initially published jointly with the Misunderstanding then published only the same year. There exists a version of 1941 in three acts, published in 1984, in the Cahiers Albert Camus .

Between the two versions, the war and the Occupation; and the demonstration by the horror that a absolute Nihilisme is not justifiable Camus force to reforge its part, more political perhaps, in particular while making take more weight with the character of Cherea, which includes/understands Caligula and its logic relentless of the Absurde but refuses to adhere to it, because it cannot deny the man, it cannot deny the life in the name of its intelligence.

Important representations

Often played in France and abroad, Caligula will be the most durable success of Camus to the theater.

The creation of Caligula in 1945 revealed Gerard Philippe.

March 26th, 1955, Camus does itself of it a reading, with the theater of the Night birds, impressive evening, because he plays rather than he does not read.

Let us note that the version of 1941 it was also played, put in particular in scene by the author at the Festival of Angers in June 1984.

At the beginning of 2006, Charles Berling put in scene and interprets a Caligula with the Theater of the Workshop in Paris.

Epilog

Let us quote Camus in its Carnets revealing a project of epilog for Caligula which informs us on the range of this work for its author:

“Not, Caligula did not die. It is there, and there. It is of each one of you. If the capacity were given to you, if you had heart, if you like the life, you would see it breaking out, this monster or this angel which you carry in you. Our time dies to have believed in the values and that the things could be beautiful and cease being absurd. Good-bye, I return in the history where hold me locked up since so a long time those which fear to like too much. ”

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