notes from underground: According to the account, a well-known Czech poet confided to his diary that he had learned that Camus, a consistent and courageous critic of Communism, died after Soviet spies punctured a tire of the car he was traveling in, which then swerved off the road and wrapped itself around a tree.

A death, Camus noted, is not absurd or meaningless because it results from chance or a mishap, but instead because we refuse to accept the very possibility of senselessness. We insist upon meaning, even when we invent or impose it. It is our confrontation with the universe, not something inherent to the universe itself, that leads to absurdity. “The absurd,” he insisted, “depends as much on man as on the world.” It occurs when one combines the world’s silence with our need for understanding.

A Russian Plot? No, a French Obsession

By ROBERT ZARETSKY

matyus posted this

notes from underground

According to the account, a well-known Czech poet confided to his diary that he had learned that Camus, a consistent and courageous critic of Communism, died after Soviet spies punctured a tire of the car he was traveling in, which then swerved off the road and wrapped itself around a tree. →