The Stranger

Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957

Notebooks
1942–1951 (Carnets,
janvier 1942–mars 1951)
1965

Notebooks
1935–1942 (Carnets,
mai 1935–février 1942)
1963

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death
(Actuelles
—a selection) 1961

The Possessed
(Les Possédés)
1960

Caligula and Three Other Plays
(Caligula,
Le Malentendu, L’Etat de siège,
Les Justes)
1958

Exile and the Kingdom
(L’Exil
et le Royaume)
1958

The Fall
(La Chute)
1957

The Myth of Sisyphus
(Le Mythe de Sisyphe)
and Other Essays 1955

The Rebel
(L’Homme Révolté)
1954

The Plague
(La Peste)
1948

The Stranger
(L’Etranger)
1946

The Stranger
demanded of Camus the creation of a style at once literary and profoundly popular, an artistic sleight of hand that would make the complexities of a man’s life appear simple. Despite appearances, though, neither Camus nor Meursault ever tried to make things simple for themselves. Indeed, in the mind of a moralist, simplification is tantamount to immorality, and Meursault and Camus are each moralists in their own way. What little Meursault says or feels or does resonates with all he does not say, all he does not feel, all he does not do. The “simplicity” of the text is merely apparent and everywhere paradoxical.

Camus acknowledged employing an “American method” in writing
The Stranger
, in the first half of the book in particular: the short, precise sentences; the depiction of a character ostensibly without consciousness; and, in places, the “tough guy” tone. Hemingway, Dos Passos, Faulkner, Cain, and others had pointed the way. There is some irony then in the fact that for forty years the only translation available to American audiences should be Stuart Gilbert’s “Britannic” rendering. His
is the version we have all read, the version I read as a schoolboy in the boondocks some twenty years ago. As all translators do, Gilbert gave the novel a consistency and voice all his own. A certain paraphrastic earnestness might be a way of describing his effort to make the text intelligible, to help the English-speaking reader understand what Camus meant. In addition to giving the text a more “American” quality, I have also attempted to venture farther into the letter of Camus’s novel, to capture what he said and how he said it, not what he meant. In theory, the latter should take care of itself.

When Meursault meets old Salamano and his dog in the dark stairwell of their apartment house, Meursault observes, “Il était avec son chien.” With the reflex of a well-bred Englishman, Gilbert restores the conventional relation between man and beast and gives additional adverbial information: “As usual, he had his dog with him.” But I have taken Meursault at his word: “He was with his dog.”—in the way one is with a spouse or a friend. A sentence as straightforward as this gives us the world through Meursault’s eyes. As he says toward the end of his story, as he sees things, Salamano’s dog was worth just as much as Salamano’s wife. Such peculiarities of perception, such psychological increments of character
are
Meursault. It is by pursuing what is unconventional in Camus’s writing that one approaches a degree of its still startling originality.

In the second half of the novel Camus gives freer rein to a lyricism which is his alone as he takes Meursault, now stripped of his liberty, beyond sensation to enforced
memory, unsatisfied desire and, finally, to a kind of understanding. In this stylistic difference between the two parts, as everywhere, an impossible fidelity has been my purpose.

No sentence in French literature in English translation is better known than the opening sentence of
The Stranger
. It has become a sacred cow of sorts, and I have changed it. In his notebooks Camus recorded the observation that “the curious feeling the son has for his mother constitutes
all
his sensibility.” And Sartre, in his “Explication de
L’Etranger
,” goes out of his way to point out Meursault’s use of the child’s word “Maman” when speaking of his mother. To use the more removed, adult “Mother” is, I believe, to change the nature of Meursault’s curious feeling for her. It is to change his very sensibility.

As Richard Howard pointed out in his classic statement on retranslation in his prefatory note to
The Immoralist
, time reveals all translation to be paraphrase. All translations date; certain works do not. Knowing this, and with a certain nostalgia, I bow in Stuart Gilbert’s direction and ask, as Camus once did, for indulgence and understanding from the reader of this first American translation of
The Stranger
, which I affectionately dedicate to Karel Wahrsager.

The special circumstances under which this translation was completed require that I thank my editor at Knopf, Judith Jones, for years of patience and faith. Nancy Festinger and Melissa Weissberg also deserve my gratitude.

Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: “Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.” That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.

The old people’s home is at Marengo, about eighty kilometers from Algiers, I’ll take the two o’clock bus and get there in the afternoon. That way I can be there for the vigil and come back tomorrow night. I asked my boss for two days off and there was no way he was going to refuse me with an excuse like that. But he wasn’t too happy about it. I even said, “It’s not my fault.” He didn’t say anything. Then I thought I shouldn’t have said that. After all, I didn’t have anything to apologize for. He’s the one who should have offered his condolences. But he probably will day after tomorrow, when he sees I’m in mourning. For now, it’s almost as if Maman weren’t dead. After the funeral, though, the case will be closed, and everything will have a more official feel to it.

I caught the two o’clock bus. It was very hot. I ate at the restaurant, at Céleste’s, as usual. Everybody felt very sorry for me, and Céleste said, “You only have one
mother.” When I left, they walked me to the door. I was a little distracted because I still had to go up to Emmanuel’s place to borrow a black tie and an arm band. He lost his uncle a few months back.

I ran so as not to miss the bus. It was probably because of all the rushing around, and on top of that the bumpy ride, the smell of gasoline, and the glare of the sky and the road, that I dozed off. I slept almost the whole way. And when I woke up, I was slumped against a soldier who smiled at me and asked if I’d been traveling long. I said, “Yes,” just so I wouldn’t have to say anything else.

The home is two kilometers from the village. I walked them. I wanted to see Maman right away. But the caretaker told me I had to see the director first. He was busy, so I waited awhile. The caretaker talked the whole time and then I saw the director. I was shown into his office. He was a little old man with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor in his lapel. He looked at me with his clear eyes. Then he shook my hand and held it so long I didn’t know how to get it loose. He thumbed through a file and said, “Madame Meursault came to us three years ago. You were her sole support.” I thought he was criticizing me for something and I started to explain. But he cut me off. “You don’t have to justify yourself, my dear boy. I’ve read your mother’s file. You weren’t able to provide for her properly. She needed someone to look after her. You earn only a modest salary. And the truth of the matter is, she was happier here.” I said,
“Yes, sir.” He added, “You see, she had friends here, people her own age. She was able to share things from the old days with them. You’re young, and it must have been hard for her with you.”

It was true. When she was at home with me, Maman used to spend her time following me with her eyes, not saying a thing. For the first few days she was at the home she cried a lot. But that was because she wasn’t used to it. A few months later and she would have cried if she’d been taken out. She was used to it. That’s partly why I didn’t go there much this past year. And also because it took up my Sunday—not to mention the trouble of getting to the bus, buying tickets, and spending two hours traveling.

The director spoke to me again. But I wasn’t really listening anymore. Then he said, “I suppose you’d like to see your mother.” I got up without saying anything and he led the way to the door. On the way downstairs, he explained, “We’ve moved her to our little mortuary. So as not to upset the others. Whenever one of the residents dies, the others are a bit on edge for the next two or three days. And that makes it difficult to care for them.” We crossed a courtyard where there were lots of old people chatting in little groups. As we went by, the talking would stop. And then the conversation would start up again behind us. The sound was like the muffled jabber of parakeets. The director stopped at the door of a small building. “I’ll leave you now, Monsieur Meursault. If you need me for anything, I’ll be in my office.
As is usually the case, the funeral is set for ten o’clock in the morning. This way you’ll be able to keep vigil over the departed. One last thing: it seems your mother often expressed to her friends her desire for a religious burial. I’ve taken the liberty of making the necessary arrangements. But I wanted to let you know.” I thanked him. While not an atheist, Maman had never in her life given a thought to religion.