A Happy Death (Penguin Modern Classics)

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El primer libro conocido de Camus pero publicado póstumamente, aquí encontramos un antecedente del protagonista y a la historia de “el extranjero” con tintes muy similares y un primer esbozo de lo que sería más adelante su mejor obra, se refleja muy bien el talento de Camus para plasmar escenarios y sobretodo pensamientos y sensaciones, el problema del libro, que al ser el primero o de los primeros trabajos de Camus se notan todas las carencias de “el extranjero” que obviamente perfecciono con el tiempo y por eso se convirtió en unos de los grandes autores del siglo XX, pero en este libro las descripciones son en demasía y muy aburridas y pesadas, la verdad es que transmite muy poco, salvo algunas expresiones muy buenas el libro carece de mágica, habla mucho y dice poco y si se puede terminar es por su corta extensión, que aún así para lo que nos cuenta es muy largo, básicamente ese es el problema del libro, lo sumamente descriptivo que resulta y aunque sabemos que la narrativa de Camus más allá “de lo que te cuente” se trata sobre “cómo te lo está contando” en este libro no hay ese encanto, pero a pesar de todo eso resulta agradable poder leer este libro y compararlo con “el extranjero” y notar como el autor pudo mejorar su calidad para entregarnos una de las mejores obras del existencialismo. Camus’ first unpublished novel, A Happy Death – written between 1936 and 1938 – besides being semi-autobiographical is a sort of paean to his upbringing in Algiers and is, above all else, an exemplar of extraordinary writing. From the first chapter Camus introduces an earthy philosophical tone enmeshed with a lithe physicality that is rare to achieve and a joy to read. Hellenism implies that man can be self-sufficient and that he has within himself the means to explain the universe and destiny … The line of their hills, or the run of a young man on a beach, provided them with the whole secret of the world. Their gospel said: our Kingdom is of this world. Think of Marcus Aurelius’s: ‘Everything is fitting for me, O Cosmos, which fits your purpose’.”

There is little question that The Stranger is a better written novel. Camus' organizational structure, singular tone and compelling unity of the whole creates a powerful case for meaninglessness. A Happy Death on the other hand, while dealing provocatively with a fascinating theme -- money as necessary condition of happiness -- is not as flowing and unified as The Stranger. Wherever it is possible to live, it is possible to live well.’ ‘What prevents a work being completed becomes the work itself.’ ‘What bars our way makes us travel along it.’ Mutlu Ölüm yazarın Yabancı’sından önce bitirdiği söylenen bir romanı lakin yayımlanması için yazarın ölmesi beklenilmiş. Buradan da kolaylıkla çıkarılabilir ki Camus ölümle öyle cilveleşiyor, onu öyle betimliyor ki, romanındaki karakterin yerine hemen kendimizi koyuyoruz. Camus continues his Nietzschean themes in being able to will the eternal recurrence as proof of one's sincerity or authenticity. Mersault tell Catherine: I agree that the writing in Happy Death is less organised than in The Outsider,but it is livier and fresher and seems more autobiographical and depicts a lot more of Camus' lived life.It sets out its stool,has an agenda:how to get happiness? get money to buy the time that can lead to greater happiness.Because it's more of a willed performance,the structure is more improvised and awkward and deliberate but you don't get the excisions of The Outsider where the information surrounding the characters has been stripped away and it becomes mysterious and portentous.The character of Mersault seems more human in A Happy Death and we don't get the darkness of 'the arabs' or 'killing an arab' which makes Camus' position closer to the French colonists.In A Happy Death isn't he more of the working class l'homme moyen sensuel,hedonistic,believable,still able to murder,but the murder has a lighter tone to it and has a purpose,possibly aided by the victim,Roland Zagreus.This book,published after his death in 1972 is hardly ever spoken of.As you say it deserves to be better known.Incidently,

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bir gün geliyor ki, insan olması gerektiği yerde olmak istiyor. Ama kimi kez yaşamak için, intihar etmekten daha çok cesaret gerekiyor.” Mutlu ölüm, Yabancı’da olduğu gibi yine varoluşçuluk üzerine dayalı ve bu düşünceleri karakterin ağzından aktaran, sürükleyici ve etkileyici bir roman. Born in Algeria in 1913, Albert Camus published The Stranger-- now one of the most widely read novels of this century-- in 1942. Celebrated in intellectual circles, Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. On January 4, 1960, he was killed in a car accident.

isteyen bir sakata onu öldürerek yardım etmiş, onun mutlu olmasını sağlamış olur ve bir nevi kendi mutluluğunu satın alır. A Happy Death (original title La mort heureuse) is a novel by absurdist French writer-philosopher Albert Camus. The existentialist topic of the book is the "will to happiness," the conscious creation of one's happiness, and the need of time (and money) to do so. It draws on memories of the author including his job at the maritime commission in Algiers, his suffering from tuberculosis, and his travels in Europe.Albert Camus was born in Algeria in 1913. His childhood was poor, although not unhappy. He studied philosophy at the University of Algiers, and became a journalist as well as organizing the Théâtre de l'équipe, a young avant-garde dramatic group. The essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe ( The Myth of Sisyphus), 1942, expounds notion of acceptance of the absurd of Camus with "the total absence of hope, which has nothing to do with despair, a continual refusal, which must not be confused with renouncement - and a conscious dissatisfaction."

Carroll, David. Albert Camus, the Algerian: Colonialism, Terrorism, Justice. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Firstly, there is a cultivated attention to the present moment: “a continued presence of self with self . . . not happiness, but awareness”, as Camus says: “the present and the succession of presents before a constantly conscious soul . . .” Happiness itself, Camus remarks, is “a long patience.” Two persistent themes animate all of Albert Camus’s writing and underlie his artistic vision: One is the enigma of the universe, which is breathtakingly beautiful yet indifferent to life; the other is the enigma of man, whose craving for happiness and meaning in life remains unextinguished by his full awareness of his own mortality and of the sovereign indifference of his environment. At the root of every novel, every play, every essay, even every entry in his notebooks can be found Camus’s incessant need to probe and puzzle over the ironic double bind that he perceived to be the essence of the human condition: Man is endowed with the imagination to conceive an ideal existence, but neither his circumstances nor his own powers permit its attainment. The perception of this hopeless double bind made inescapable for Camus the obligation to face up to an overriding moral issue for man: Given man’s circumscribed condition, are there honorable terms on which his life can be lived? A Happy Death

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Zagreus (in Greek mythology a divine god who was to succeed Zeus but ended up being torn apart by Titans) and Mersault, as we discover in chapter 4, had discussed Zagreus’ death but also Mersault’s plight as a man suspended in time, meaninglessness. Camus, educated in philosophy at the University of Algiers, was an existentialist and so Mersault becomes a paragon of existential searching. One of the cardinal sins of existentialism is inauthenticity, letting things continue on without any agency; a refusal to grasp and construct the meaning of your own life, an embodied life. And this essentially is the crux of the story, can Mersault fashion a meaning out of his world. And it is in its imperfections that this book is so touching. Camus does not know exactly where he is going, sometimes seems a bit lost in his novel (which was, contrary to what one might think, well finished), and failing to have found his style, tries to style: hence the lyrical flights that often seem exaggerated and pseudo-poetic, as well as philosophical reflections that are sometimes a little dubious, as if the Camus of the Happy Death understood the path that his writing had to take (and will take) but does not take it. I had yet to find it. The story itself, similar in substance but very different from The Stranger in form, is not exciting and suffers from some heaviness. But when I read Camus, there are other criteria for judging.