It's Sunday. The day is almost beautiful, with wind. They are playing boules on the road below and I can hear the clash of the balls from my room. The world is peaceful. How nice it would be to have the heart of a boule player in a Provençal village on a Sunday! But I promised myself to tell you the facts.

It's not much, it's true. Life continues with one more guest at the meals, Michèle Halphen who has moved to the hotel. I think she's leaving tomorrow. I like her but her sadness adds to the inertia of the days here. Yesterday, after a week's absence, Dolo came to liven up the house. I took her home in the evening. Sad too: she has been waiting for S[artre] for weeks, he said he would come at the end of this month and he announces that it will be at the beginning of the next. In short, things are not going well for her. Cheerful, isn't it?

I was repeating to myself Vigny's verse: "Separated lovers were united at the altars"! Come on, it's not for tomorrow. More important news: my brother is coming tomorrow. As the G[allimard]s are still here (they leave on the 20th) I will lodge him at the hotel. I will go tomorrow afternoon to Cannes to look for him. I am happy to see him again, but worried about him. I would like him to get well again. What else? A doctor from Grasse came to dinner with his wife. She had lost her mother following an operation that had caused an intestinal obstruction. The mourning was eight days old. Now you know that the company of more than four people exhausts me. Moreover, you can't count on the G[allimard]s to animate the conversation. So I made a great effort to talk about anything. The result was that I spoke successively about the cemetery in Cabris, about surgeons who are butchers, and about intestinal obstruction (all this without thinking of the deceased, of course). To finish, I told the story of Chamfort, where a doctor talking about his deceased patient said: "He is dead, no doubt, but he died cured."

On Wednesday Gide, who is in Juan-les-Pins where he is translating an English play for Barrault invited us all to lunch. Cartier, the producer I told you about and about whom you didn't tell me anything (but you are answering less and less to the questions I ask you. Linotte!) writes to me about his projects. I don't know why I trust him. After all, maybe we'll see The Plague on the screen. Now it's my turn. I've been muddy for two days. Headaches, vague nausea, I feel like I'm pregnant. I've even lost my rested complexion, but I guess it will pass. It is true that this waiting, it is silly to say, is so anxious that it ends up tiring me even physically. I exhaust myself imagining you and living our meeting in advance. Yet I behave wisely: a well-organized schedule, regular work (which does not necessarily mean fruitful work. There are good days and bad days, that's all). But the deprivation of happiness sometimes has the effect of under-nourishment, of asphyxiation too.

All my hope, all my courage comes finally from what I expect as a total reunion, love, emotion, joy, absolute freedom between us, bodies and soul, transparency and naturalness. And I do not wait for it as a utopia. I wait for it because I am sure of it. And it is not so far, no, it is not so far. Because listen carefully: yesterday in the mountain I saw the first flowers of the almond tree. The tree was still black. But at the ends of the branches a dozen or so frail and soft flowers were already rustling in the wind. You understand, my love, Maria dear! It was the extreme point of the extreme beginning of spring. And a great impulse came to my eyes and heart, which I can call no more than an impulse of adoration. I made a vow. I looked for a long time at the crying petals. And I went home, my heart full of love. Goodbye, my beautiful and wonderful love. I kiss my Valentine and give her the few flowers that we should give on Valentine's Day to the one that we love. You are the one I love, before every spring, and I kiss you deeply, with all my love.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, February 12, 1950 [#187]

"Brutal physical desire is easy. But desire, along with tenderness, takes time. You have to cross the whole land of love before you find the flame of desire. Is that why it's always so hard to desire what you love?"

Albert Camus: Notebook 1942

📷 Albert Camus with his wife Francine Faure ☆~ Collection of Catherine and Jean Camus ~☆ quote credit: albertcamusofficial instagram

All my hope, all my courage comes finally from what I expect as a total reunion, love, emotion, joy, and absolute freedom between us, bodies and soul, transparency and naturalness. And I do not wait for it as a utopia. I wait for it because I am sure of it. And it is not so far, no, it is not so far. Because listen carefully: yesterday in the mountain I saw the first flowers of the almond tree. The tree was still black. But at the ends of the branches a dozen or so frail and soft flowers were already rustling in the wind. You understand, my love, Maria dear! It was the extreme point of the extreme beginning of spring. And a great impulse came to my eyes and heart, which I can call no more than an impulse of adoration. I made a vow. I looked for a long time at the crying petals. And I went home, my heart full of love. Goodbye, my beautiful and wonderful love. I kiss my Valentine and give her the few flowers that we should give on Valentine's Day to the one that we love. You are the one I love, before every spring, and I kiss you deeply, with all my love.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, February 12, 1950 [#187]

Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus”

I received your letters of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in one go. I don't know what the interruption yesterday was due to, but it certainly shook me up a lot, at least for part of the day. It is madness, no doubt, but it is also true that we are living in insane conditions. Separated at the moment of our profound and definitive reunion, at times it seems unimaginable. You are not very reasonable either, judging by your letters on Tuesday and Wednesday. Writing you a friendly letter? I don't quite understand. You mean a letter in which I detach myself from us and try to talk coldly about what interests us? Maybe I can do that later. But right now I can't.

I am trying to understand your condition. You are taking off from the current life, you are in a state of suspense and in a nature like yours, so richly irrigated by life generally, this makes a deep disarray. This confusion would be compensated if you found absolute confidence and security at the base of your love. But there is this part of the unknown in my life that you talk about and that will always make you suffer. So you float and wither. The remedy? Believe. But you won't believe, or rather your certainty will always be crossed by doubts as long as this unknown part exists, or at least as long as a total light is not shed on it.

That is why I deeply believe that it is necessary to make this light, that is to say to speak and to wait for the results. That is why I will do it - because I love you and I am sorry for your unnecessary but profound suffering. This is one of the things I know and can say even now when I am exasperated and tense. There may be other reasons for your condition. But I don't see them right now or I wouldn't know how to say them. All I know is that I need to get it over with, to find you and lose myself in your love. I will try to write to you as to a friend whom I cherish and respect, when I have conquered the real calm that has been eluding me since my arrival here.

It is true that the hardened and dried up desire does not help, I know. Why don't you choose a sport? Go swimming in a pool, however unpleasant it may be. And then what to do? Let's suffer, let's shout, let's wait, let's become dull, but be mine, let's love each other without respite, without reservations, with the whole soul until the moment when our bodies become entangled. My love, my dear, my hard love, my painful, my delicious love, I dream tirelessly of our meeting. What tenderness, what sweetness, what marvelous desires, what satisfactions especially. Ah! Everything we have not yet experienced...

Tomorrow I will write you a letter in which I will tell you the news, the facts, the time we have, etc. But for today I would like to put here all the strength of my love to wake you up durably, to make you hold on a little longer, to find you ready for my return, in love, open, melting... Oh! I beg you, say that you can, write me the joy, the brightness, the glory... I am dying here and I have a need, a terrible need for happiness. I kiss you, I put on your face an olive tree of kisses and on you all the caresses of desire. I love you. Be strong and wait. It is an order, you see. But it is an order charged with love, my small victory...

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, February 11, 1950 [#186]

Albert Camus

Albert Camus, from a diary entry featured in Notebooks, 1935-1942

Today I would like to put here all the strength of my love to wake you up durably, to make you hold on a little longer, to find you ready for my return, in love, open, melting... Oh! I beg you, say that you can, write me the joy, the brightness, the glory... I am dying here and I have a need, a terrible need for happiness. I kiss you, I put on your face an olive tree of kisses and on you all the caresses of desire. I love you. Be strong and wait. It is an order, you see. But it is an order charged with love, my small victory...

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, February 11, 1950 [#186]

'Together once more! But never like tonight, and in spite of all the obstacles, I overflowed with gratitude, pride and tenderness. And when it's over in the hour of fatigue, your face that I cherish... To live at last! And life has no other face than yours. I'm holding your hand, very tightly, all this time.'

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, December 17th 1949 (#107)

~~♡♥︎~~

quote credit: @acknowledgetheabsurd •~ photo credit: Emile Muller 1953

P.S. I'm aware of the fact how much poorer my life would have been if I hadn't come across translations of @acknowledgetheabsurd Camus-Casarès Correspondance. My bow down for your knowledge, persistence and love for Camus. And the biggest Thank You that our planet Earth (full of jealousy, ignorance and ungrateful people) can handle. In our world gratitude equals to absurdity. Isn't that absurd in its purest form? ;)

Let's suffer, let's shout, let's wait, let's become dull, but be mine, let's love each other without respite, without reservations, with the whole soul until the moment when our bodies become entangled. My love, my dear, my hard love, my painful, my delicious love, I dream tirelessly of our meeting. What tenderness, what sweetness, what marvelous desires, what satisfactions especially. Ah! Everything we have not yet experienced...

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, February 11, 1950 [#186]

. . . she gave a single, long, full-throated howl, as if she wanted to rid herself at once of all the cries that pain had stored up in her.

Albert Camus ǁ The First Man (1960)

:)

I love you more than ever.  Ah, you don't know how much! What I wouldn't give to have you with me tonight! My love, my darling, I am burning, my temples hurt, my palms are on fire and my throat is dry. I will not go out anymore: I miss you too much everywhere and when I come back your absence becomes intolerable for me. Oh this spring! My darling. I kiss you hard, I kiss you as long as I wish to kiss you tonight.

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Correspondance, February 11, 1950 [#185]

Albert Camus with his daughter Catherine

Albert Camus, from The Myth of Sisyphus