{"id":1184,"date":"2016-07-03T12:36:20","date_gmt":"2016-07-03T12:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=1184"},"modified":"2016-07-03T12:36:20","modified_gmt":"2016-07-03T12:36:20","slug":"camus-small-middle-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=1184","title":{"rendered":"Camus’ Small Middle Ground"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"photo-13\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s surprising how obscure Albert Camus\u2019 grave is, outside the small town of Lourmarin in the French Luberon.<\/p>\n

If we hadn\u2019t had to make a U-turn on a Provencal country road, and turned into the cemetery while being hounded by a fast driver, we never would have found the grave. Even at the cemetery gates, we got out of the car on a whim. We don\u2019t usually say, \u201cLet\u2019s walk around the cemetery!\u201d but the elegant cypress looked so bright and alluring in the sun.
\nThen we saw a small sign with\u00a0the simplicity of his name and an arrow.<\/span><\/p>\n

We were chuffing over the wrong turn at the fork of the road turning right. We\u2019re big fans of Camus. Not only the Camus, famous author of \u201cL\u2019Etranger,\u201d \u201cThe Rebel\u201d and \u201cMyth of Sisyphus.\u201d But also the thinker who continued to evolve and fell afoul of the French intellectual wars in the late ’50s. Camus didn\u2019t hew to Sartre\u2019s strict camp – he despised the totalitarianism\u00a0that Stalin made of Marxism; in the ideological battle over Algeria, he refused to stamp his thinking with strict intellectualized polarization. Camus’ sympathy and gravity went to people. Ideology that would make them slaughter neighbors violated his concept of being human. His conscience led him to nuance the French Algerian \u201cpied noir\u201d away from a stereotype of exploiters, and Muslims as incapable innocents.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Camus took the dreaded middle path, which earned him enemies on both sides. He wanted to facilitate dialog between soon-to-be enemies, but there were outrages, errors, scandals, and he never got there. He fell into disgrace, then suffered his fatal car accident on a country road. He died at age 46. As we discovered, his grave is soft with weeds and lichen. Nicholas Sarkozy, when President of France, had wanted to move his remains to the Pantheon, but Camus’ son opposed the political co-option. Camus would remain independent of glorification for the sake of any country or cause. His legacy stands for us to revisit, now, when the middle ground is so very small.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s surprising how obscure Albert Camus\u2019 grave is, outside the small town of Lourmarin in the French Luberon. If we hadn\u2019t had to make a U-turn on a Provencal country road, and turned into the cemetery while being hounded by … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[459,466,462,460,461,465,468,467,464,463],"class_list":["post-1184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-albert-camus","tag-algerian-war","tag-letranger","tag-lourmarin","tag-luberon","tag-myth-of-sisyphus","tag-nobel-prize","tag-sartre","tag-the-rebel","tag-the-stranger"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4D5qU-j6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1185,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184\/revisions\/1185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}