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Article: Camus's "The Silent Men" and "The Guest": Depictions of Absurd Awareness.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Studies in Short Fiction
- Article date:
- June 22, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Studies in Short Fiction. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In Le Mythe de Sisyphe,(1) Camus commends the profundity of Kierkegaard's perception regarding despair: "[There is] nothing more profound than Kierkegaard's view that despair is not an act but a state: the very state of sin. For sin is what separates from God. The absurd is the metaphysical state of the conscious man.... Perhaps this notion will become clear if I hazard this outrageous remark: the absurd is sin without God" (127-28).(2)
Both Kierkegaard's and Camus's emphasis here, of course, is that despair is not an act but a state of being in the same way sin is not an act but a state of being. The state of despair, along with its consequent anguish, results ...
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