ALBERT CAMUS WROTE "RECONCILE HINDU SAGE WITH WESTERN HERO"

  

                                         

 

              ( Swami Siddeshwarananda of France  Ashram  )

“Reconcile the Hindu Sage and the Western Hero”: Who Was the Hero in Camus’s May 1937 Notebook?

 

In May 1937, Albert Camus entered into his notebook one of the most intriguing formulations of his early intellectual life:

 “La conciliation entre le sage hindou et le héros occidental.”

 In English, this may be rendered as:

 “Reconcile the Hindu sage and the Western hero.”

 The sentence is extraordinarily compressed. Camus does not explain who the “Western hero” is, nor does he attach the phrase explicitly to the title of a projected book. Yet the entry deserves serious attention because Camus’s notebooks of this period were not simply private diaries. They were working books in which philosophical ideas, descriptions, projected essays, fragments of dialogue, character sketches and plans for fiction existed beside one another. A sentence entered into the notebook could therefore migrate into a novel, an essay or a later philosophical formulation.

 The question is consequently legitimate. When Camus wrote of reconciling the Hindu sage and the Western hero in May 1937, was he thinking of the hero who would become Meursault in The Stranger, of Sisyphus, of a future character in The Plague, or of another fictional figure? Chronology provides the first and most reliable means of answering the question.

 The decisive importance of May 1937: The date must be kept firmly in view. The notebook entry belongs to May 1937. At that moment Camus was twenty-three years old. The Stranger had not been published. The Myth of Sisyphus did not yet exist in its finished form. The Plague was still years away. Camus was, however, actively developing the novel that became La Mort heureuse, A Happy Death.

 This is the crucial fact.

 A Happy Death was written substantially between 1936 and 1938. Its central character is Patrice Mersault. The book remained unpublished during Camus’s lifetime and appeared only posthumously, in 1971. It nevertheless represents Camus’s first sustained attempt at a novel and belongs exactly to the period in which the notebook statement about the Hindu sage and Western hero was written.

The notebooks themselves confirm that La Mort heureuse was occupying Camus’s imagination during these years. They contain plans and fragments explicitly identified with the novel. Later, in September and December 1937, Camus continued recording material for La Mort heureuse. One December entry is specifically marked as a “Fragment for La Mort Heureuse”. This makes Patrice Mersault the strongest candidate if the phrase “Western hero” is understood as referring to a fictional protagonist then under construction. That conclusion, however, must be expressed carefully. Camus never wrote beside the phrase: “By the Western hero I mean Mersault.” There is therefore no documentary warrant for presenting the identification as an established fact. What can be said securely is that Mersault was the principal fictional hero Camus was developing at precisely this time.

 Patrice Mersault before Meursault

 The distinction between Mersault and Meursault is important. Patrice Mersault is the protagonist of A Happy Death. Meursault, with the additional “u”, is the protagonist of The Stranger. The relationship between the two characters is obvious, but they are not identical. The earlier novel already contains several elements that Camus would later reshape. Both protagonists are clerks living in French Algeria. Both are strongly associated with physical sensation, sunlight, the sea, solitude and death. Both commit killings. Both confront existence without conventional religious consolation. Yet their philosophical and psychological structures differ.

Patrice Mersault is much more consciously preoccupied with happiness.

 He wants to possess his life. He seeks freedom from economic dependence and attempts to create the conditions in which he can experience existence fully. His journey is active and purposive. He is searching for happiness through conscious mastery of circumstances. That quality makes him particularly interesting in relation to the phrase “Western hero”. The Western hero traditionally acts. He wills, chooses, struggles, travels, conquers circumstances and attempts to shape his destiny. The sage, by contrast, seeks inward mastery. Camus’s formula proposes not a rejection of one by the other, but a conciliation. That word is central. The emerging Camusian figure would have to combine action with detachment, intensity with lucidity, participation with inward freedom. Patrice Mersault is much closer to such a problem than the later Meursault of The Stranger.

 Why the Hindu sage matters?

The phrase should also be read from the other direction. Camus did not merely write “Western hero”. He deliberately placed this figure beside the “sage hindou”, the Hindu sage. By the mid-1930s, Camus was already showing interest in Indian ideas. His notebooks contain references to India, Indian wisdom and later the Vedas, Upanishadic thought and other Indian materials. The Hindu sage therefore cannot simply be dismissed as a decorative Oriental metaphor. For Camus, the figure seems to suggest a consciousness capable of detachment from ordinary ambition and illusion.The sage possesses himself. The hero acts upon the world. Camus wanted a human being capable of both. The difficulty is immediately recognisable as Camusian. Pure withdrawal would abandon the world. Pure heroic action might become conquest without wisdom. The reconciliation would require someone capable of entering life completely while remaining inwardly free from the illusion that worldly achievement can provide ultimate meaning.This becomes one of the permanent problems of Camus’s work.The May 1937 formula is therefore potentially much more important than a passing notebook remark.

Was the “Western hero” Meursault of The Stranger?

 The answer should be: not directly, although the connection is important. The Stranger was published in 1942. More importantly, the distinct fictional world of The Stranger emerged after the period in which Camus was developing A Happy Death. The published notebooks themselves contain editorial indications tracing the gradual emergence of themes and scenes that would later belong to The Stranger. They also identify plans explicitly connected with La Mort heureuse. This means that in May 1937 one should not simply take the famous Meursault of 1942 and project him backwards into the notebook. The more historically responsible approach is developmental. Patrice Mersault comes first. Meursault emerges later. There is both continuity and transformation. The alteration of the name itself is suggestive. Mersault becomes Meursault. More substantially, the purposeful search for happiness that characterises Patrice is stripped away. Meursault does not organise his life around a philosophical project of happiness. He experiences the world immediately and sensuously. His eventual lucidity comes through confrontation with death. This transformation may reveal Camus revising what a modern Western hero could be. Patrice still possesses something of the traditional heroic will.Meursault is far less heroic in the conventional sense. He does not conquer society. Society condemns him.He does not master events. Events accumulate around him.His final achievement is inward rather than outward. At the conclusion of The Stranger, what remains is lucidity. In that respect, one might argue that Meursault eventually moves closer to the “sage” side of Camus’s 1937 formulation.But this is a retrospective interpretation. It should not be used to claim that Camus had the finished Meursault specifically in mind in May 1937.

 Could the hero have been Sisyphus?

Sisyphus is philosophically an even more compelling possibility, but chronologically he is not the immediate answer. The Myth of Sisyphus was published in 1942. It is an essay, not a novel, and Sisyphus is a figure inherited from Greek mythology rather than a fictional character invented by Camus. Yet Sisyphus eventually becomes perhaps the purest expression of the “Western hero” as Camus would understand him. He acts. He struggles. He does not withdraw. Most importantly, he acts without illusion. He knows that the stone will fall again. His awareness does not stop his action. This is precisely where the hypothetical reconciliation with the Hindu sage becomes philosophically fascinating. The sage possesses knowledge without attachment. Sisyphus possesses action without hope of ultimate victory. Both have surrendered illusion. Yet Sisyphus continues to labour.

Camus’s mature philosophy of the absurd consequently creates a figure who combines something resembling contemplative detachment with relentless activity. The 1937 notebook passage can therefore be regarded as anticipating the philosophical structure of The Myth of Sisyphus. But anticipation is different from identification. There is no basis for saying that Camus wrote “Western hero” in May 1937 while specifically thinking of the finished Sisyphus of the 1942 essay.The more defensible claim is that the philosophical intuition contained in the 1937 entry later reaches one of its clearest forms in Sisyphus.

 The Plague is too late.

The Plague can be excluded much more confidently as the immediate source of the notebook phrase. The novel was published in 1947. Its substantial development belongs to the early 1940s. Camus was gathering plague material by 1941 and in March 1942 told André Malraux that he was working on a novel about the plague. This places the serious conception of the novel several years after May 1937. Doctor Bernard Rieux therefore cannot reasonably be identified as the particular Western hero Camus had in mind when he made the earlier notebook entry. Yet, as with Sisyphus, Rieux later embodies the principle remarkably well. Rieux knows that plague cannot be defeated permanently.He does not act because he expects final victory. He acts because suffering exists before him. This distinction is fundamental. Rieux possesses lucidity without resignation. He recognises limits without using those limits as an excuse for inactivity. He refuses metaphysical consolation while remaining absolutely committed to human solidarity. Thus the hero who acts and the sage who knows the limits of action finally seem to inhabit the same person. If Sisyphus represents the existential development of the 1937 formula, Rieux represents its ethical development.

 A Happy Death remains the closest contemporary context.When all the evidence is arranged chronologically, A Happy Death assumes central importance.Camus was working on this novel between 1936 and 1938. His notebooks from the same period contain plans and passages for the work. They explicitly identify M. with Mersault in plans for La Mort heureuse and include material later incorporated into the novel. The May 1937 entry therefore sits inside the creative period of Patrice Mersault. This is stronger evidence than resemblance alone. Had the sentence been written in 1942, Sisyphus would have been an obvious contender. Had it been written in 1945, Rieux might have been considered. But it was written in May 1937. Chronology directs us towards La Mort heureuse.

 What kind of hero was Camus seeking?

The deeper question is not simply “Who was the hero?” but “What did Camus mean by a hero?” His early notebooks repeatedly reveal dissatisfaction with passive existence. He was concerned with strength, experience, self-possession, happiness, death and lucidity. Patrice Mersault embodies many of these concerns. He wants not merely to exist but to possess his existence consciously. Yet Camus was already suspicious of conquest in any naive sense. Death destroys every worldly victory. Happiness cannot become immortality. Achievement cannot solve the metaphysical problem of human existence. Hence the need for the sage. The sage modifies the hero. The hero prevents the sage from becoming pure withdrawal.The reconciliation produces something distinctly Camusian: action without metaphysical illusion. This theme eventually becomes fundamental to Camus’s philosophy. One acts while knowing that no final victory is possible. One loves while knowing that death exists. One struggles while recognising limits. One refuses resignation without inventing eternal consolation. That structure can already be sensed in the mysterious notebook sentence of May 1937.

 From Mersault to Meursault to Sisyphus to Rieux

 Seen across Camus’s development, the formula acquires extraordinary resonance. Patrice Mersault seeks happiness through conscious possession of life. Meursault eventually possesses lucidity before death. Sisyphus converts lucidity into ceaseless action. Rieux converts lucid action into solidarity.These figures should not be collapsed into one another. Each belongs to a distinct literary and philosophical moment. Yet a line can legitimately be traced through them.Patrice Mersault belongs closest chronologically to the 1937 entry. Meursault transforms the problem. Sisyphus provides its philosophical formulation. Rieux gives it an ethical and social form. What begins as “the Hindu sage and the Western hero” thus becomes one of the hidden structures of Camus’s mature thought.

 

In May 1937, when Camus recorded the phrase “Conciliation du sage hindou et du héros occidental”, the principal fictional hero he was developing was Patrice Mersault of La Mort heureuse. Since the notebooks of this period contain plans and material for that novel, Mersault is the strongest identifiable fictional candidate for the “Western hero”. The phrase, however, is formulated as a general philosophical proposition rather than as an explicit character note, and its meaning subsequently expands beyond Mersault into the figures of Meursault, Sisyphus and Rieux.

Conclusion

The chronology points decisively away from 'The Plague' and makes a direct identification with the mature Meursault of The Stranger equally problematic. The immediate literary environment of the May 1937 entry is 'La Mort heureuse' . Camus was then working on the novel whose protagonist was Patrice Mersault. The book was composed during 1936 to 1938, exactly encompassing the date of the notebook entry. The Stranger would be published in 1942 even though Camus's Notebooks suggest it's planning and conceiving much earlier .The Myth of Sisyphus would also appear in 1942. The Plague would emerge substantially during the early 1940s and be published in 1947.

Therefore, if the “Western hero” refers to a particular fictional figure Camus was then imagining, Patrice Mersault is by far the strongest candidate. But the notebook sentence is greater than Mersault alone. It announces a problem that Camus would spend much of his career resolving: how can the human being retain the hero’s commitment to action while acquiring the sage’s freedom from illusion? Patrice Mersault offers the first experiment. Meursault deepens the experience of lucidity. Sisyphus gives it philosophical shape. Rieux carries it into the moral world of suffering and solidarity.

The deceptively brief sentence entered in May 1937 may therefore be read as an early key to the entire development of the Camusian hero. The Western hero must not simply conquer. He must know the limits of conquest. The sage must not merely withdraw. He must remain capable of action.Between these two figures, Camus gradually created his own distinctive human type: lucid without resignation, active without illusion, solitary without abandoning solidarity, and capable of confronting an indifferent world without ceasing to live fully within it.

( Avtar Mota )

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