Beauty and the Humiliated
“Yes, there is beauty and there are the humiliated. Whatever the difficulties the enterprise may present, I would like never to be unfaithful either to one or to the other.” ALBERT CAMUS · RETURN TO TIPASA
Returning as an older man to the sunlit ruins of Tipasa, where he had been so happy in his youth, Camus faces the deepest tension in his whole life and work, and refuses to resolve it in the easy way. There is beauty, he says, the sea and the light and the joy of simply being alive. And there are the humiliated, the poor and the wronged and the crushed. He will not be unfaithful to either one.
Most of us pick a side without meaning to. Some people give themselves so fully to fighting injustice that they come to distrust joy, as if a sunset were an insult to the suffering. Others protect their private happiness so carefully that they stop seeing the humiliated at all. Both are forms of infidelity. Camus wants the harder, fuller thing. To keep the capacity for delight and the refusal of cruelty alive in the same heart, at the same time.
He admits it is difficult, this enterprise. Of course it is. The claims pull against each other constantly. But faithfulness to both is exactly what keeps a person whole. Joy without conscience turns shallow. Conscience without joy turns bitter.
Today, hold both. Let yourself be struck by something beautiful, and do not apologize for it. And keep your eyes open to someone who has been humiliated, and do not look away. Be faithful to both.
