MARIA CASARES: THE LOVE CAMUS TOOK TO THE GRAVE

                                     

Maria Casares: The Love Camus Took to the Grave:

Who was Maria Casares Maria Casares was born María Victoria Casares Perez in 1922 in A Coruna, Galicia. Her father, Santiago Casares Quiroga, was the last Prime Minister of the Spanish Republic. When Franco’s troops entered Madrid in 1936, the family fled to Paris. In exile Maria trained at the Conservatoire and became one of the great voices of post war French theatre. She was not pretty in a soft way. She was striking. Tall, with dark eyes and a voice that filled a theatre without effort. She worked with Jean Cocteau, with Jean Genet, and with Albert Camus. Off stage she was quiet, bookish, and loyal. She never married. She never chased fame. She chased truth in a part, and honesty in a life. How they met, and how the affair began She met Albert Camus in 1944 during rehearsals for Le Malentendu at the Theatre des Mathurins. He was 31, already known for L’Étranger and Le Mythe de Sisyphe, and married to Francine Faure, a mathematician and pianist from Oran( Algeria) . She was 22. It began in work. Late nights, arguments about absurdity and responsibility, coffee gone cold. Then came letters. Then walks and hotels on rue de Seine. Then 15 years. Camus called her his Cherokee. She called him her Albert. What started in the theatre became one of the most tender and most painful correspondences of the century. Between 1944 and 1959 they wrote more than 800 letters. They were published in 2017 as Correspondance Albert Camus Maria Casarès 1944 1959, after both families agreed. Their lives ran side by side. Camus was in Paris, and from 1958 until his death he lived with Francine and their twins, Catherine and Jean, at Le Mas in Lourmarin in Provence. Maria was in Paris, on stage. Distance made the letters their real home. Camus’s predicament Camus was torn in two. He loved Maria with an intensity that frightened him. He also loved Francine, and he loved his children. He did not want to destroy his home. He did not want to lie. He spoke openly to his friend and mentor Jean Grenier. He also wrote directly to his wife. In a letter to Francine in the 1950s, one of the few times he admits guilt so plainly, he wrote: " Francine, I am ashamed and I am tired. What I want is not to hurt you. What I want is the life we had, simple, with work in the morning and you in the evening. Forgive me if you can." To Jean Grenier he later said that Francine had forgiven him. They never divorced, and in the 1950s they slowly rebuilt things. In 1958 he bought Le Mas in Lourmarin after the Nobel Prize. For the last two years of his life that was home. He could not give her that. And he could not give it up either. So he carried both. Francine and the weight she carried While this was happening, Francine, Camus's wife was holding the centre. She ran the home. She brought up the twins. She managed the silences, the absences, the strain of being married to a man the world claimed as its own. The cost was heavy. In those years Francine suffered a serious depression and nervous breakdown. She spent time in clinics. She recovered, and she stayed. She kept the family together in Lourmarin. She kept the house, the routines, the ordinary things that let a writer work. When Camus died she was the one who had to receive the world at the door, while carrying her own grief. That is a kind of love too. Steady, daily, and almost invisible. Without it there would have been no Le Mas, no quiet for writing, no place for the children to grow. The letters :15 years, 800 letters The correspondence is where their life really happened. It is not only romantic. It is two intelligent people trying to be honest about love and duty. In October 1944, early on, Camus wrote: "You are my joy. I need you. I love you as one loves a country one has lost." Maria replied in 1945: "When I am with you I am not afraid of anything. When I am not, I am afraid of everything." In 1948 during a separation, Camus wrote: "I miss you like one misses air. Without you, the days are just a waiting room." Maria answered: "Write to me. Even if it is only to say you are alive. I need your voice on paper." In 1953 after a bad quarrel: Camus: "I am a man who needs two lives and I have only one. Forgive me. " Maria: "I do not forgive you. I love you. It is not the same thing." You can feel his bind in the letters to Maria. In 1957 he wrote: "I love you with everything that is not reason in me. And reason tells me I must not destroy what I have." And Maria answered in 1956: "Do you think we could have had a life together? A real one? With mornings and groceries and quarrels about nothing?" Their last letters in 1959 are quieter. Camus was working on The First Man. Maria was touring. They spoke of meeting in the spring. The spring did not come. Camus died in winter carrying with him the "summers that he held within ". Her visit to Lourmarin in January 1960 On 4 January 1960 Camus died in a car crash near Villeblevin. Maria was in Paris, rehearsing. A journalist rang. She went to Lourmarin for the funeral on 8 January. She stood apart. She did not speak to anyone. She did not go to the family. Francine and the children noticed her. Rene Char and Jean Grenuer saw her coming alone and leaving alone . The Diary She kept a diary. She never meant to publish it. Extracts later appeared in her memoir Résidente privilégiée and in interviews. The diary records this : 5 January 1960, the day she heard: "Albert is dead. In a car accident. I cannot write. I cannot breathe. It’s not possible. It’s not possible." 8 January 1960, the day after the funeral in Lourmarin: "I saw him in his coffin. So small. So pale. The sun was on the stones of Lourmarin. The same sun he loved. Francine was there. The children. I stood far away. I had no right to cry out loud. 15 years. 15 years of letters, of hotels on rue de Seine, of theatre, of I love you. And now stone." 12 January 1960: " People talk about the writer Camus, the Nobel Camus. For me he was just Albert. The one who made me laugh in dressing rooms. The one who said, Come, let’s go to the sea. What do I do with all the future we planned? What do I do with the letters?" End of January 1960: "I will not go to Lourmarin again. Not while she is there. But I will never leave him either. He is in every role I play now." What happened after Maria never married. When asked why she said, "After Albert, how?" She kept the letters. In 2017 they were published, with careand permission. They show a partnership as much as a romance. Two people arguing about art and politics, and trying to find a way to be good. She acted into the 1990s. Cocteau, Genet, Racine, Shakespeare. On stage she said she could still talk to him. She died in 1996 at her home in La Vergne, near Alloue. Francine had Lourmarin, the house bought in 1958, the daily work of keeping a family, the right to mourn in public, and the private courage of staying. Maria had Paris, the letters, the theatre, and the long work of grieving alone. Both loved him. Both were at the funeral, one at the graveside, one at a distance. Both were marked by it. In a late interview Maria was asked if she regretted it. She said no. To have loved Albert was to have lived twice. She never got over January 1960. She learned to live through it. And in every role afterwards people saw not only Maria Casarès, but the woman to whom Camus once wrote:

"You are the only place where I am not alone."

( Avtar Mota )

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