Modern Drama

108 MODERN DRAMA May work like Dona Rosita from the major achievement of the rural tragedies. As criticism , therefore, the book is ineffective; as a collection of facts and summaries it could be useful. RONALD GASKELL The University, Bristol, England NOTEBOOKS I935-I942 of Albert Camus, tr. from the French and with a Preface and Notes by Philip Thody, Knopf, New York, 1963, 225 pp. Price $5.00. The appearance of the first volume of Camus' notebooks (of three to be published ) poses again the literary problem that has become in our day more and more acute-the justification of publishing every scrap that is in a major author's handwriting. There is in this instance no question of literary indiscretion or impropriety , for Camus himself was preparing his notebooks for publication, had indeed offered bits of them to magazines. Following the example of several other leading French writers, he had begun to dig out his own notes, rough drafts, and incidental jottings, which were filed away in a collection of school copybooks . Their interest to scholars is obvious, and to make available any material capable of throwing light on an important writer's creative processes or the elaboration of his thought is a worthwhile undertaking, all the more so if it is expertly edited and annotated. Their interest to the general public is another matter, to be determined on the basis of intrinsic literary merit. The justification of translating such texts surely depend! on this, for one may suppose scholars or specialists can, and would prefer to, ~andle the material in the original. "A spiritual and intellectual autobiography," "a record of one of the most unusual minds of our time," we may read on the dust jacket. Yet, as Mr. Thody admits in his introduction, nonliterary considerations such as Camus' political activities or his personal life and problelUS figure very little-glimpses of the man behind the writer are few and far between. Not a private journal then or even a literary journal, since the notebooks present no complete picture of the writing and reading done at this time when Camus was working out in his mind some of his major books. Rather a potpourri of random thoughts, quoted aphOrisms, topical outlines of proposed compositions, and sketches for future works. These bits of writing, not all of which will be included in future works, are often very fine. There are landscapes whose pOignant sensuality anticipates L'Ete and Noces, street scenes and snatches of overheard conversation that reveal this brooding author's tenderness towards humanity and his revolt against man's fate. The Camusian themes are already here-loneliness, love of life and horror of death, human dignity, the importance of intellectual lucidity. But all this does not add up to a volume that can stand by the finished works of Camus, and it cannot be recommended except to those who, already dedicated readers of the plays, novels, and essays, long for more, even though it be bits and pieces. Mr. Thody's translation has been criticised for inaccuracies, particularly by the eminent Camus scholar, Germaine Bree .(New York Time Book Review, July 28, 1963). Without denying that there are examples of highly questionable rendering, I feel that the difficulty of the task somewhat attenuates the translator's culpability and that credit should be given for a general fidelity to the text and for general felicity of diction. Jottings such as we have here are often vexingly ambiguous and Mr. Thody's choices seem, in the main, judicious ones. In editing the work, he has gone beyond his predecessor, Roger Quilliot, o.f the French edition, 1964 BOOK REVIEWS 109 not only in the page notes, which are more frequent and more lengthy, but also in the appendix, where the biographical notes have been amplified and the bibliography extended to include newspaper articles. LAUlU!NT LESAGE The Pennsylvania State University DISCUSSIONS OF HENRIK IBSEN, ed. James Walter Mcfarlane, D. C. Heath and Company, Boston, 1962, 110 pp. Price $1.50. As a major writer whose works are written in a language that few people outside his native land, including some of his best-known apologists, are comfortably familiar with...