(
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 The book remained unpublished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 )
