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Paris from Camus’s Notebooks

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  The Paris Review Subscribe Paris from Camus’s Notebooks By Alice Kaplan September 19, 2016 Arts & Culture Albert Camus. Photo: Robert Edwards The myth is tenacious: an unknown writer on the verge of international fame, not suspecting that the scattered pages on his or her desk will become that miracle, a first published novel and a passport to glory. From March to May 1940, Albert Camus was that man, finishing a draft of the book he was calling The Stranger . The city, eerily calm, overtaken with a sense of dread, was weeks from the German invasion. Paris has changed enormously since 1940, but you can still walk in Camus’s footsteps through places that a few literary specialists have put on the map and come close to a moment of artistic creation. Camus finished a first draft of his novel alone in a hotel room in Montmartre. The former Hôtel du Poirier on the rue Ravignan sits atop one of Paris’s “buttes” or hills, whose cleaner air might have benefitted the young writer, who...

SN/GCC/2017

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SN_GCC_2017   To Alexander Pushkin I dearly, dearly long to be with you, to sit and chat with you, drink tea with you. You'd do the talking - I would be all ears; your voice grows ever dearer with the years. You, too, knew grief and fury and disdain; you, too, died slowly, slowly and in pain. Georgy Ivanov (1894-1958) The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (1958) Translated by Robert Chandler Gửi ông nhà thơ của GCC Gấu thèm ơi là thèm lại ngồi với ông anh nhà thơ Ở Quán Chùa chứ ở đâu nữa Thèm ly cà phê, cái bánh sừng bò Ông anh nói, Thằng em dướn dài cổ nghe Giọng ông anh ngày càng âm u Cái gì gì, Tên tội đồ, đứa con tư sinh, trở về cố quận... Nhất là sau khi ra tù Ông anh, tất nhiên thì rất rành đau thương, giận dữ, Và khinh bỉ, chán chường Lũ chó Từ từ đi xa, từ từ đi, trong đau đớn. * No more brushing of teeth or shaving of cheeks. 'There are things you must say before you die.' Eternity's door stands open wide. And 'It's time, my friend, it's time!' Ti...