Gauloises and Silence

I am making my way through Albert Camus' The Fall again. I read it a few years ago, which resulted in a trip to Amsterdam in December 2007. The book is a gem, and I will reproduce one insightful passage here, appended with my comments:

Something must happen—and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen, even loveless slavery, even war or death. Hurray then for funerals!

The character speaking is Jean-Baptiste Clemence, and this self-described "judge-penitent" is issuing a confession on our behalf. The passage above reminds me of a theme that runs through Emil Cioran's work. That is, we are slaves of history—shackled in time and condemned to fits of action. The substance of this action is rather immaterial, so long as we are doing something. The following, an excerpt of a piece called "Nonsense" from Cioran's book On the Heights of Despair, is one example among many of his view of history and the "human commitments" of which Clemence speaks:

When the ticking of a watch breaks the silence of eternity, arousing you out of serene contemplation, how can you help resenting the absurdity of time, its march into the future, and all the nonsense about evolution and progress? Why go forward, why live in time?

And these words from All Gall Is Divided, in which Cioran directly confronts humankind's incessant flailing:

If History had a goal, how lamentable would be the fate of those who have accomplished nothing! But in the universal purposelessness, we stand proud, ineffectual streetwalkers, riffraff well-pleased with having been right.

Camus, of course, traffics in the absurd, and it is interesting to note how his and Cioran's responses differ. Camus believes in existential revolt, perhaps most clearly outlined in The Myth of Sisyphus. Cioran, on the other hand, assumes a less active role, choosing instead to contemplate, among other things, a return to the unborn state.

Arthur Schopenhauer also has some words to say in Parerga concerning our need for things to happen:

Men need some kind of external activity, because they are inactive within. Contrarily, if they are active within, they do not care to be dragged out of themselves; it disturbs and impedes their thoughts in a way that is often most ruinous to them.

There is clearly a pessimistic strain in the work of Camus, Cioran, and Schopenhauer, but this pessimism does not necessarily signal defeat. Ultimately, the choice of response is ours. How will we choose to craft a life in direct opposition to the absurd? Perhaps we first need to redefine what constitutes action, as Cioran does in The Trouble with Being Born:

In the days when I set off on month-long bicycle trips across France, my greatest pleasure was to stop in country cemeteries, to stretch out between two graves, and to smoke for hours on end. I think of those days as the most active period of my life.

Perhaps there will come a day when we no longer feel the need for something to happen, when we are content with the smoke of a Gauloise bathed in silence.

Works discussed in this piece:

Camus, Albert. The Fall. Translated by Justin O'Brien. New York: Vintage Books, 1956.

———. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Translated by Justin O'Brien. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.

Cioran, E. M. All Gall Is Divided. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Arcade, 1999.

———. On the Heights of Despair. Translated by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

———. The Trouble with Being Born. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Arcade, 1998.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. Suffering, Suicide and Immortality. Translated and edited by T. Bailey Saunders. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2006.