Hear Albert Camus Deliver His Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (1957)

Albert Camus—polit­i­cal dis­si­dent, jour­nal­ist, nov­el­ist, play­wright, and philosopher—was born 100 years ago today in French Alge­ria. Camus’ mod­est child­hood cir­cum­stances, marked by the death of his father in WWI when Camus was an infant, and his devo­tion to his deaf, illit­er­ate moth­er, seem to have instilled in him a mod­esty that shrank from his unavoid­able lit­er­ary fame. In his 1957 Nobel accep­tance speech (above, in French with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles), Camus opens with an expres­sion of mod­esty. After thank­ing the dig­ni­taries present, he says:

I have not been able to learn of your deci­sion with­out com­par­ing its reper­cus­sions to what I real­ly am. A man almost young, rich only in his doubts and with his work still in progress, accus­tomed to liv­ing in the soli­tude of work or in the retreats of friend­ship: how would he not feel a kind of pan­ic at hear­ing the decree that trans­ports him all of a sud­den, alone and reduced to him­self, to the cen­tre of a glar­ing light? And with what feel­ings could he accept this hon­our at a time when oth­er writ­ers in Europe, among them the very great­est, are con­demned to silence, and even at a time when the coun­try of his birth is going through unend­ing mis­ery?

Camus’ con­cerns dis­play anoth­er defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic: his sense of writ­ing as a polit­i­cal act, which he honed as a jour­nal­ist for left­ist and anti-colo­nial news­pa­pers, most notably France’s resis­tance paper Com­bat, edit­ed by Camus from 1943 to 1947. It was dur­ing these war years that Camus pro­duced some of his most well-known work, includ­ing his essay The Myth of Sisy­phus and nov­el The Stranger, and struck up a friend­ship with Jean-Paul Sartre, who also wrote for Com­bat. The friend­ship even­tu­al­ly went sour, in part due to Camus’ unwill­ing­ness to accept the per­se­cu­tions and abus­es of state pow­er man­i­fest­ed by Com­mu­nist regimes (Camus had been kicked out of the Com­mu­nist par­ty years before, in 1937, for refus­ing its dog­mas).

Just as Camus could not place par­ty over peo­ple, he would not ele­vate art to a spe­cial sta­tus above the polit­i­cal. Says Camus in his Nobel speech above: “I can­not live with­out my art. But I have nev­er placed it above every­thing. If, on the oth­er hand, I need it, it is because it can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from my fel­low men… it oblig­es the artist not to keep him­self apart; it sub­jects him to the most hum­ble and the most uni­ver­sal truth.” Believ­ing strong­ly in the social duty of the artist, Camus describes his writ­ing as a “com­mit­ment” to bear wit­ness to “an insane his­to­ry.” After out­lin­ing the spe­cial mis­sion of writ­ing, the “nobil­i­ty of the writer’s craft,” Camus returns near the end of his speech to mod­esty and puts the writer “in his prop­er place” among “his com­rades in arms.” For a writer who iden­ti­fied him­self sole­ly with his “lim­its and debts,” Camus left a sin­gu­lar­ly rich body of work that stands out­side of par­ty pol­i­tics while active­ly engag­ing with the polit­i­cal in its most rad­i­cal form—the duties of peo­ple to each oth­er in spite of, or because of, the absur­di­ty of human exis­tence.

Read the full tran­script of the trans­lat­ed Nobel Prize Speech here, or below:

In receiv­ing the dis­tinc­tion with which your free Acad­e­my has so gen­er­ous­ly hon­oured me, my grat­i­tude has been pro­found, par­tic­u­lar­ly when I con­sid­er the extent to which this rec­om­pense has sur­passed my per­son­al mer­its. Every man, and for stronger rea­sons, every artist, wants to be rec­og­nized. So do I. But I have not been able to learn of your deci­sion with­out com­par­ing its reper­cus­sions to what I real­ly am. A man almost young, rich only in his doubts and with his work still in progress, accus­tomed to liv­ing in the soli­tude of work or in the retreats of friend­ship: how would he not feel a kind of pan­ic at hear­ing the decree that trans­ports him all of a sud­den, alone and reduced to him­self, to the cen­tre of a glar­ing light? And with what feel­ings could he accept this hon­our at a time when oth­er writ­ers in Europe, among them the very great­est, are con­demned to silence, and even at a time when the coun­try of his birth is going through unend­ing mis­ery?

I felt that shock and inner tur­moil. In order to regain peace I have had, in short, to come to terms with a too gen­er­ous for­tune. And since I can­not live up to it by mere­ly rest­ing on my achieve­ment, I have found noth­ing to sup­port me but what has sup­port­ed me through all my life, even in the most con­trary cir­cum­stances: the idea that I have of my art and of the role of the writer. Let me only tell you, in a spir­it of grat­i­tude and friend­ship, as sim­ply as I can, what this idea is.

For myself, I can­not live with­out my art. But I have nev­er placed it above every­thing. If, on the oth­er hand, I need it, it is because it can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from my fel­low men, and it allows me to live, such as I am, on one lev­el with them. It is a means of stir­ring the great­est num­ber of peo­ple by offer­ing them a priv­i­leged pic­ture of com­mon joys and suf­fer­ings. It oblig­es the artist not to keep him­self apart; it sub­jects him to the most hum­ble and the most uni­ver­sal truth. And often he who has cho­sen the fate of the artist because he felt him­self to be dif­fer­ent soon real­izes that he can main­tain nei­ther his art nor his dif­fer­ence unless he admits that he is like the oth­ers. The artist forges him­self to the oth­ers, mid­way between the beau­ty he can­not do with­out and the com­mu­ni­ty he can­not tear him­self away from. That is why true artists scorn noth­ing: they are oblig­ed to under­stand rather than to judge. And if they have to take sides in this world, they can per­haps side only with that soci­ety in which, accord­ing to Nietzsche’s great words, not the judge but the cre­ator will rule, whether he be a work­er or an intel­lec­tu­al.

By the same token, the writer’s role is not free from dif­fi­cult duties. By def­i­n­i­tion he can­not put him­self today in the ser­vice of those who make his­to­ry; he is at the ser­vice of those who suf­fer it. Oth­er­wise, he will be alone and deprived of his art. Not all the armies of tyran­ny with their mil­lions of men will free him from his iso­la­tion, even and par­tic­u­lar­ly if he falls into step with them. But the silence of an unknown pris­on­er, aban­doned to humil­i­a­tions at the oth­er end of the world, is enough to draw the writer out of his exile, at least when­ev­er, in the midst of the priv­i­leges of free­dom, he man­ages not to for­get that silence, and to trans­mit it in order to make it resound by means of his art.

None of us is great enough for such a task. But in all cir­cum­stances of life, in obscu­ri­ty or tem­po­rary fame, cast in the irons of tyran­ny or for a time free to express him­self, the writer can win the heart of a liv­ing com­mu­ni­ty that will jus­ti­fy him, on the one con­di­tion that he will accept to the lim­it of his abil­i­ties the two tasks that con­sti­tute the great­ness of his craft: the ser­vice of truth and the ser­vice of lib­er­ty. Because his task is to unite the great­est pos­si­ble num­ber of peo­ple, his art must not com­pro­mise with lies and servi­tude which, wher­ev­er they rule, breed soli­tude. What­ev­er our per­son­al weak­ness­es may be, the nobil­i­ty of our craft will always be root­ed in two com­mit­ments, dif­fi­cult to main­tain: the refusal to lie about what one knows and the resis­tance to oppres­sion.

For more than twen­ty years of an insane his­to­ry, hope­less­ly lost like all the men of my gen­er­a­tion in the con­vul­sions of time, I have been sup­port­ed by one thing: by the hid­den feel­ing that to write today was an hon­our because this activ­i­ty was a com­mit­ment – and a com­mit­ment not only to write. Specif­i­cal­ly, in view of my pow­ers and my state of being, it was a com­mit­ment to bear, togeth­er with all those who were liv­ing through the same his­to­ry, the mis­ery and the hope we shared. These men, who were born at the begin­ning of the First World War, who were twen­ty when Hitler came to pow­er and the first rev­o­lu­tion­ary tri­als were begin­ning, who were then con­front­ed as a com­ple­tion of their edu­ca­tion with the Span­ish Civ­il War, the Sec­ond World War, the world of con­cen­tra­tion camps, a Europe of tor­ture and pris­ons – these men must today rear their sons and cre­ate their works in a world threat­ened by nuclear destruc­tion. Nobody, I think, can ask them to be opti­mists. And I even think that we should under­stand – with­out ceas­ing to fight it – the error of those who in an excess of despair have assert­ed their right to dis­hon­our and have rushed into the nihilism of the era. But the fact remains that most of us, in my coun­try and in Europe, have refused this nihilism and have engaged upon a quest for legit­i­ma­cy. They have had to forge for them­selves an art of liv­ing in times of cat­a­stro­phe in order to be born a sec­ond time and to fight open­ly against the instinct of death at work in our his­to­ry.

Each gen­er­a­tion doubt­less feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is per­haps even greater. It con­sists in pre­vent­ing the world from destroy­ing itself. Heir to a cor­rupt his­to­ry, in which are min­gled fall­en rev­o­lu­tions, tech­nol­o­gy gone mad, dead gods, and worn-out ide­olo­gies, where mediocre pow­ers can destroy all yet no longer know how to con­vince, where intel­li­gence has debased itself to become the ser­vant of hatred and oppres­sion, this gen­er­a­tion start­ing from its own nega­tions has had to re-estab­lish, both with­in and with­out, a lit­tle of that which con­sti­tutes the dig­ni­ty of life and death. In a world threat­ened by dis­in­te­gra­tion, in which our grand inquisi­tors run the risk of estab­lish­ing for­ev­er the king­dom of death, it knows that it should, in an insane race against the clock, restore among the nations a peace that is not servi­tude, rec­on­cile anew labour and cul­ture, and remake with all men the Ark of the Covenant. It is not cer­tain that this gen­er­a­tion will ever be able to accom­plish this immense task, but already it is ris­ing every­where in the world to the dou­ble chal­lenge of truth and lib­er­ty and, if nec­es­sary, knows how to die for it with­out hate. Wher­ev­er it is found, it deserves to be salut­ed and encour­aged, par­tic­u­lar­ly where it is sac­ri­fic­ing itself. In any event, cer­tain of your com­plete approval, it is to this gen­er­a­tion that I should like to pass on the hon­our that you have just giv­en me.

At the same time, after hav­ing out­lined the nobil­i­ty of the writer’s craft, I should have put him in his prop­er place. He has no oth­er claims but those which he shares with his com­rades in arms: vul­ner­a­ble but obsti­nate, unjust but impas­sioned for jus­tice, doing his work with­out shame or pride in view of every­body, not ceas­ing to be divid­ed between sor­row and beau­ty, and devot­ed final­ly to draw­ing from his dou­ble exis­tence the cre­ations that he obsti­nate­ly tries to erect in the destruc­tive move­ment of his­to­ry. Who after all this can expect from him com­plete solu­tions and high morals? Truth is mys­te­ri­ous, elu­sive, always to be con­quered. Lib­er­ty is dan­ger­ous, as hard to live with as it is elat­ing. We must march toward these two goals, painful­ly but res­olute­ly, cer­tain in advance of our fail­ings on so long a road. What writer would from now on in good con­science dare set him­self up as a preach­er of virtue? For myself, I must state once more that I am not of this kind. I have nev­er been able to renounce the light, the plea­sure of being, and the free­dom in which I grew up. But although this nos­tal­gia explains many of my errors and my faults, it has doubt­less helped me toward a bet­ter under­stand­ing of my craft. It is help­ing me still to sup­port unques­tion­ing­ly all those silent men who sus­tain the life made for them in the world only through mem­o­ry of the return of brief and free hap­pi­ness.

Thus reduced to what I real­ly am, to my lim­its and debts as well as to my dif­fi­cult creed, I feel freer, in con­clud­ing, to com­ment upon the extent and the gen­eros­i­ty of the hon­our you have just bestowed upon me, freer also to tell you that I would receive it as an homage ren­dered to all those who, shar­ing in the same fight, have not received any priv­i­lege, but have on the con­trary known mis­ery and per­se­cu­tion. It remains for me to thank you from the bot­tom of my heart and to make before you pub­licly, as a per­son­al sign of my grat­i­tude, the same and ancient promise of faith­ful­ness which every true artist repeats to him­self in silence every day.

Pri­or to the speech, B. Karl­gren, Mem­ber of the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, addressed the French writer: «Mr. Camus – As a stu­dent of his­to­ry and lit­er­a­ture, I address you first. I do not have the ambi­tion and the bold­ness to pro­nounce judg­ment on the char­ac­ter or impor­tance of your work – crit­ics more com­pe­tent than I have already thrown suf­fi­cient light on it. But let me assure you that we take pro­found sat­is­fac­tion in the fact that we are wit­ness­ing the ninth award­ing of a Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture to a French­man. Par­tic­u­lar­ly in our time, with its ten­den­cy to direct intel­lec­tu­al atten­tion, admi­ra­tion, and imi­ta­tion toward those nations who have – by virtue of their enor­mous mate­r­i­al resources – become pro­tag­o­nists, there remains, nev­er­the­less, in Swe­den and else­where, a suf­fi­cient­ly large elite that does not for­get, but is always con­scious of the fact that in West­ern cul­ture the French spir­it has for cen­turies played a pre­pon­der­ant and lead­ing role and con­tin­ues to do so. In your writ­ings we find man­i­fest­ed to a high degree the clar­i­ty and the lucid­i­ty, the pen­e­tra­tion and the sub­tle­ty, the inim­itable art inher­ent in your lit­er­ary lan­guage, all of which we admire and warm­ly love. We salute you as a true rep­re­sen­ta­tive of that won­der­ful French spir­it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Camus Writes a Friend­ly Let­ter to Jean-Paul Sartre Before Their Per­son­al and Philo­soph­i­cal Rift

Albert Camus Talks About Adapt­ing Dos­toyevsky for the The­atre, 1959

The Fall by Albert Camus Ani­mat­ed

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness