South Atlantic Modern Language Association

Camus' Dionysian Hero: "Caligula" in 1938

Author(s): A. James Arnold
Source: South Atlantic Bulletin, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Nov., 1973), pp. 45-53
Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3197082
Accessed: 02-03-2019 13:42 UTC

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3197082?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

South Atlantic Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

preserve and extend access to South Atlantic Bulletin

This content downloaded from 190.194.221.181 on Sat, 02 Mar 2019 13:42:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 CAMUS' DIONYSIAN HERO: "CALIGULA" IN 1938

A. JAMES ARNOLD
University of Virginia

The title of this article is intended to indicate-beyo

fact that it considers the first manuscript version of Albert
Caligula-that this first version constituted a very differen
from the Caligula which Camus staged, published and revise
1944 through 1958. Although Camus' play has attracted the
tion of several able scholars in recent years, all have conside
early versions as but preliminary steps in the direction
Caligula which the public first encountered in the 1944 ed
The major changes in the structure and orientation of t
were made by Camus between 1940 and 1944, in other
between the Fall of France and the Liberation. There can be no
doubt that these changes, like Camus' other preoccupations during
the Resistance, were tributary to the historical moment. But pre-
cisely because Camus studies have been so strongly influenced by
the historical/biographical theme of the "Resistant" it has been
easy for us to overlook the significance of an earlier Camus whose
development was interrupted by the war. We should bear in mind
that criticism which seeks to present Camus' theatre in terms of
the author's social commitment subordinates aesthetics to ethics.
It is time, I think, to reverse the direction of this dialectic; to con-
sider in depth the aesthetic which informed the original Caligula.
The thesis upon which the substance of this article rests is
that in 1938 Albert Camus had worked out an aesthetic of modern
tragedy and that this aesthetic derives directly from Nietzsche.
There has for some time now been an awareness that Albert
Camus had, during his student years, read sympathetically various
works of Nietzsche. It is characteristic of a current trend in Camus
criticism to consider Nietzsche something of a "bad influence" upon
Camus, an influence which Camus is supposed to have exorcised in
the course of the war years. It is of course true that Camus became
disenchanted with Nietzsche after 1940, but then so did all the
rest of non-Nazi Europe, and this fact of a biographical nature can
in no way illuminate for us the aesthetic of a play written in 1938.
We must then examine dispassionately the evidence at our
disposal concerning the nature and extent of the Nietzschean in-
fluence up to 1938 in order to establish the thesis that Camus' first
Caligula was conceived as a Dionysian hero.
It may be that Camus read Nietzsche as early as 1929, as Carina
Gadourek suggests, but we know that by 1932 Camus had reflected

This content downloaded from 190.194.221.181 on Sat, 02 Mar 2019 13:42:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 46 Camus

seriously on The B
in the Algerian rev
states the Nietzschea
and tragedy as it i
Birth of Tragedy.
ment on all major p
stresses the dialect
Dionysian elements
in the direction of
lonian characterizes
in La Mort he'ureus
develop elsewhere.)
Nietzsche in 1932 is
pagan mysticism. H
tragedy.
It is not until 1936 that we again find Camus working in a
Nietzschean vein, this time in his Dipl6me d'Etudes Supdrieures
entitled "M6taphysique chrdtienne et ndoplatonisme." The follow-
ing quote from that paper is in conformity with Nietzsche's argu-
ment in chapters 11 through 15 of The Birth of Tragedy:
Car si par ailleurs on en croit Nietzsche, si on accorde que
la Grkce de l'ombre que nous signalions au d6but de ce
travail, Gr&ce pessimiste, sourde et tragique, 6tait la
marque d'une civilisation forte, il faut convenir que le
Christianisme A cet 6gard est une renaissance par rapport
au socratisme et A sa sbr6nit6.1
Elsewhere in his Dipl6me, Camus, discussing the spiritual cli-
mate of Rome in the third century, introduces several themes which
lead directly toward his original conception of the tragedy of
Caligula:
Dans ce monde omh le d6sir de Dieu se fait plus fort,
le problkme du Bien perd du terrain. A l'orgueil de la
vie qui animait le monde antique se substitue l'humilit6
d'esprits en quete d'inspirations. Le plan esth6tique [read:
Apollonian] est recouvert par le plan tragique omh les
espwrances se bornent A l'imitation d'un Dieu. On joue le
drame douloureux d'Isis A la recherche d'Osiris, on meurt
avec Dionysos, on renait avec lui. . . . A Eleusis, Zeus
s'unit A D6m6ter dans la personne du grand pr&tre et
d'une hibrophantide.
Et dans le meme temps s'infiltre l'id6e que le monde
ne s'oriente pas vers le "Sunt eadum omnia sember" de
Lucr&e, mais qu'il sert de cadre A la trag6die de l'homme
sans Dieu. (Essais, pp. 1227-1228)

This content downloaded from 190.194.221.181 on Sat, 02 Mar 2019 13:42:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 South Atlantic Bulletin 47

Only one detail in this rather extraordin

traced to the work of the Hellenist Paul Foucart, Camus' avowed
source of information on the Eleusinian Mysteries. That detail is
the supposed identity of Osiris and Dionysus, of Isis and Demeter,
a claim which is peculiar to the work of Foucart. For the rest, and
particularly for the metaphysical implications of the Eleusinian
Mysteries, Camus is indebted to the Nietzsche of The Birth of
Tragedy. I note in passing that the cult of Osiris was first prac-
ticed openly in Rome, not during the period which Camus is
ostensibly discussing here, but two centuries earlier, during the
reign of Gaius Caligula. A further detail which suggests the unity
of inspiration between this passage and the original Caligula is the
incestuous union between Zeus and his sister Demeter which I see
as the prototype of the relations between Caligula and Drusilla in
1938. We may complete the analogies between the spiritual climate
of Caligula and that of Camus' Dipl6me by noting that the latter,
in Camus' words "sert de cadre A la tragdie de I'homme sans Dieu."
Here Camus' vision of the tragic situation clearly rejoins Nietzsche's.
For man, born into a world where all are condemned to death, the
only hope is a mystical reintegration into the life-giving force of
the universe. It is at this point that Camus looks directly to
Nietzsche for a model of the tragic hero. He found it in Nietzsche's
interpretation of the myth of Zagreus, dismembered by the Titans,
and born again through the incestuous union of Zeus and Demeter.
The rebirth of the hero is of course not well suited to the
modern stage. Therefore, Camus in the original Caligula will pre-
sent to his public the suffering Dionysus whose purgatory is to
know the torment of individuation (or human personality). The
following passage goes to the heart of Nietzsche's conception of
the tragic hero. (I am quoting from the Mercure de France edition
of L'Origine de la tragddie, the text with which Camus was familar.)
Pour employer la terminologie de Platon, on pourrait
expliquer les figures tragiques du th,&tre grec a peu pres
ainsi: le seul vritablement r6el Dionysos apparait dans
une pluralit6 des figures sous le masque d'un h6ros com-
battant et se trouve en meme temps enlac6 dans les rets
de la volont6 particulibre. Le dieu se manifeste alors, par
ses actes et par ses paroles, comme un "individu" expos6
a I'erreur, en proie au dsir et 'a la souffrance. Et, qu'il
apparaisse ainsi, avec cette pr6cision, et cette clart6, ceci est
I'oeuvre d'Apollon, interpr&te des songes, qui r6vble au
choeur son- 6tat dionysiaque par cette apparence symbo-
lique. Mais, en r6alit6, ce hros est le Dionysos souffrant
des MystLbres, le dieu qui i prouve en soi les douleurs de

This content downloaded from 190.194.221.181 on Sat, 02 Mar 2019 13:42:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 48 Camus

l'individuation, e
que, dans son enfa
les Titans, et ado
16gende signifie q
v6ritable souffran
m6tamorphose en
par consequent, c
la source et l'orig
What then is the
ceived by Camus to
by Nietzsche? I shall
ing a synthesis of m
The 1938 manuscr
Act I is concerned w
calls the "Jeu de Ca
until 1939.) The fin
de Caligula." The m
rendered schematica
the death of the suf
is motivated entirel
Drusilla. What littl
tuous union of this
As in later versions
Patriciens) make nu
for his sister. These
character of the Sgn
as reprehensible cha
the play, appears a
1938 version by de
other Sdnateurs.
The true significance of Caligula's union with Drusilla becomes
apparent in Act I, scene xi of the 1938 version. There Caligula, in
the presence of his former mistress Caesonia, plays out an extra-
ordinary love duo in which he speaks the part of Drusilla as well
as his own. The emotional tension of this scene is rendered in a
prose of remarkably lyrical quality. The effect is to present the
pure, all-encompassing love of Caligula and Drusilla as a primordia
union beside which all else pales. (Indeed Caesonia's exchange
with Scipion-Act I, scene v---on the omnipotence of unqualified,
unrepressed desire serves essentially to prepare us for Caligula'
lyrical duo.) There is, then, no common measure between Cali-
gula's love as observed by the Sgnateurs and as he himself present
it. Camus is here elaborating two mutually exclusive, and hostile,
views of the relationship between desire and reality.

This content downloaded from 190.194.221.181 on Sat, 02 Mar 2019 13:42:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 South Atlantic Bulletin 49

Act I of the 1938 version-which was entire

1940-plays out the origin of Caligula's desp
cifically to the loss of primordial union in th
In terms of Nietzsche's rendering of the myth
we see Caligula in Act I as evoking the disinte
In the final scene of Act I-characterized by a
emotion-Caligula is entering, very much a
world of suffering humanity, the world of i
of all human ills, to paraphrase The Birth o
the close of Act I Caligula cries out, "Faites en
he is speaking objectively, since all are con
the moment of their birth, and setting the s
will be his "Play."
If we wish to consider Caligula from a pe
permit us to grasp the psychological (as well
namics of its relationship to Nietzsche's myth
valuable insights in Herbert Marcuse's Ero
Marcuse argues that alienated man expresses h
the principium individuationis through the v
sions. This is precisely what Caligula does i
Caligula. He makes homosexual advances to
he makes love with Mucius' wife off-stage
stand by in impotent horror; we learn furth
sleeping with the wife of Cherea, whose only
Il n'y a pas grand mal. Elle m'a dit qu
du plaisir.-Lui aussi, selon toute proba
Those few scholars who have in passing
1938 version of the play have dismissed this
an adolescent phenomenon, as an insignifican
tracts from the essential movement of the p
trary, for Camus in 1938 the development of
the ever increasing exacerbatioin of the Sdnate
pursuit of perverse behavior. Moreover, th
amply prepared by scene xi of Act I, in the l
cludes on this note:
Ne me quitte pas Drusilla. J'ai peur. J'ai peur de
l'immense solitude des monstres.
Very simply put, in Act II Camus carries this theme of mon-
strous solitude from the individual to the social plane. Camus
does not, however, abandon the aesthetic posture of Act I for an
ethic of revolt in Act II. Caligula's revolt remains a metaphysical
one, expressed aesthetically.
This is surely what Camus intended in designating Act II
"Jeu de Caligula": an aesthetic expression of a metaphysical revolt.

This content downloaded from 190.194.221.181 on Sat, 02 Mar 2019 13:42:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 50 Camus

Once again we see Ca

schean. If Act I of t
disintegration of Zagr
ing god Dionysus su
which Nietzsche, like
Le dieu se manif
paroles, comme un
au d6sir et ii la souffrance.4
Nietzsche adds that as play this manifestation of the god is
the work of Apollo, who provides the aesthetic dimension. None-
theless:
... Ce hdros est le Dionysos souffrant des Myst&res,
le dieu qui 6prouve en soi les douleurs de l'indivi-
duation... 5.
We can now see more clearly why, in the original versi
Camus' play had but one central character, suffering intense p
and expressing his suffering as the negation of society and all
institutions. (Camus' use of sexual perversions serves to bri
home to his audience or reader that Caligula's negation of socie
is total. In the words of the Deuxibme Stnateur-Act II, scene
ii-: ". . . Les bases de notre soci6t6 branlkes.") In the same
scene Cherea, who in this version appears as a lucid cynic, states
quite clearly that Caligula's actions are dangerous because they
are based on an aesthetic understanding of life:
Si Caligula est dangereux, s'il vous fait la vie insup-
portable, ce n'est point par ses gestes obschnes, ses cruaut6s
et ses assassinats.-Mais c'est par une passion plus haute et
plus mortelle qu'il ne faut pas craindre d'appeler podsie.
... Par Caligula et pour la premi&re fois dans l'histoire,
la pens&e agit et le reve rejoint l'action.
We can measure the distance which separates this first Caligula
from the postwar versions by the total transformation of Cherea
between 1938 and 1944. In 1938 Cherea concludes his remarks on
Caligula as poet with this cynical remark to the other S6nateurs:
Moi ... je suis avec vous-avec la soci6th. Non par
goat. Mais parce que je n'ai pas le pouvoir et que vos
hypocrisies et vos lichet6s me prothgent plus sirement que
les lois les plus 6quitables. Tuer Caligula, c'est 6tablir
ma s6curit6.
By 1944 Camus had entirely changed the perspective of the
play, and the motivations of the principal characters. At precisely
the same point in Act II, scene ii Cherea speaks in the name of
social justice and equity. Here Cherea becomes, as the critics have
rightly observed, the spokesman for the postwar Camus:

This content downloaded from 190.194.221.181 on Sat, 02 Mar 2019 13:42:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 South Atlantic Bulletin 51

II faut agir. Mais vous ne d6truirez pas ce

injuste en l'abordant de front, alors qu'el
vigueur. On peut combattre la tyrannie, il
la mdchancet6 d6sint6ress&e. I1 faut la pou
sens, attendre que cette logique soit deve
Mais encore une fois, et je n'ai parlk ici que
comprenez que je ne suis avec vous que p
Je ne servirai ensuite aucun de vos intdrets,
ment de retrouver la paix dans un mon
coh6rent.
Careful study of the variants in the succes
Caligula reveals that the entire play underwent
ilar in scope and direction to those of Chere
difficult to grasp why Camus' play after World
bears any resemblance to a Nietzschean tragedy.
ever, subsist some doubt whether the original p
quite so closely as I have claimed to a Nietzsch
cussion of the significance of the final act, "Mor
conclude my analysis.
The last act is constructed on the previously
sion between Caligula and the S6nateurs. The l
conspiracy to assassinate the emperor, and he gi
tion of driving them to it. The movement of th
comes convulsive, with tension building towar
horror in which the S6nateurs rush at Caligul
daggers into his body. Schematically rendered, t
to Caligula's death reveal a distinct element of
Critics working on the postwar versions of the pl
this in terms of Caligula's supposed madness
1938 version Caligula is at no point mad, althoug
he undergoes drives him to frenzy, and to the b
We see his self-immolation at the hands of the S
has consciously provoked, not as madness but as
In the final scene Caligula is alone on the stag
is an expression of utter solitude and we are awa
of that solitude is the loss of Drusilla, the loss o
ness with the universe. Caligula is the Nietzsc
the end of his sufferings. He is here addressing
Je suis vide et creux comme un arbre se
tu dis aussi que j'ai le coeur dur. Mais non e
qu'il ne peut pas etre dur, puisque ia l'endro
etre, je n'ai rien--qu'un grand trou vide o
ombres de mes passions .... Je sais pourta
aussi qu'il a suffi d'un etre. Un etre. Je l'ai

This content downloaded from 190.194.221.181 on Sat, 02 Mar 2019 13:42:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 52 Camus

limites du monde,
mes mains (crian
rencontre, toujour
Toi, devant l'huile
un soir comme ce
et tu m'es comme
mes ongles pour q
sortent a gros bo
laisse rien derrier
mon impuissance
toire, Caligula, M I
In the 1938 version
struck down by his a
Je suis encore viva
This last apparentl
mentators of the pla
intact, despite fund
versions. If we repl
the Dionysian contex
place. Caligula/Diony
by human personalit
silla/D6m6ter. The c
Camus has taken Ca
through the sufferin
of Zagreus, followed
schean myth). Final
erated from the torm
undifferentiated Bein
That this is a funda
seems inescapable. Ca
Dionysus poetically
tragedy of great be
nounced his tragic vi
of view of ethics, bu
visions of Caligula rep
tragedy.

NOTES

1. Albert Camus, Essais (Gallimard, 1965), p. 1309.

2. Fr6dkric Nietzsche, L'Origine de la tragddie, ou helldnisme et p
(Mercure de France, 1901), pp. 96-97. Concerning the growing in
Nietzsche's influence on Camus one may consult F. C. St. Aubyn's
on Nietzsche and Camus," Comparative Literature, XX, no. 2 (Spri
110-115. R. Gay-Crosier has published a study of Camus' theatre u

This content downloaded from 190.194.221.181 on Sat, 02 Mar 2019 13:42:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 South Atlantic Bulletin 53

title Les Envers d'un drhec (Minard, 1967) which argues

influence of Nietzsche on Camus in Caligula: "Caligula n
ient parler une application des canons nietzscheens, m
contre leurs formiules extr6mes et leurs cons6quences ab
argument is consistent with the currently dominant vie
of Caligula succeed one another without a fundamenta
vision. Consequently the author considers Nietzsche as a
rather than as an aesthetician and his conclusions are bas
structure of post-1944 versions of the play. At about the s
original version of the present article was read at the 19
E. Freeman published a new study of T]he Theatre of
England (Methuen, 1971). Freeman's chapter on Caligu
to move one step nearer my own thesis. He, too, connec
sur la musique" with The Birth of T7"agedy bhit conclud
that it is this very Apollonian note "which will find a dire
a few years later. . ." (p. 51). His argument thus short
gressive modifications of Camus' view of Nietzsche as th
"M'taphysique chrltienne et n6oplatonisme" (1936) and
(1938). (In my view it was the failure of the sentimental
pretation of the myth of Dionysus which led to the fail
abandonment of La Mort heureuse. The first Caligula
double shift in Camnus' aesthetic in 1938: in genre, fro
ceived "*ducation sentimentale" of his abandoned nov
humously in 1971-to a tightly structured tragedy; in in
the optimism of Apollonian radiance to the Dionysian
One also finds sosme interesting comments on Nietzsche
J. Clayton's Etapes d'un itindraire spirituel-Albert Cam
published by Minard in 1971 as the second volume of th
Camus. Whereas Gay-Crosier and Freeman have taken
of versions of the play which results in judgments assu
view of a later Cainus, Clayton tends to read the play as
relegates it to the juvenilia: "Dans l'oeuvre de Camus e
Caligula represente une reaction spontanee, juvenile et do

I'absurdit6
celle du jeuned'une mort
Camus primature-reraction
lui-mnme. . ." (p. 48). qui fut sans le moindre doute
3. Albert Camus, Caligula in Thddtre, Rdcits, Nouvelles (Gallimard, 1962), p.
1763. This and all future references to the 1938 version of Caligula desig-
nate the text presented as Ms. 1 by R. Quilliot in the notes to the Pleiade
edition. Quilliot printed in toto Act I and scenes i-ii of Act II as well as
inportant variants of the final act of the 1938 Ms. It is my intention to
publish a critical edition of Caligula based upon the 1938 text in order to
demonstrate
siderable merit.conclusively that it is a substantially different play of con-

4. L'Origine de la tragddie, p. 96.

5. Ibid.

This content downloaded from 190.194.221.181 on Sat, 02 Mar 2019 13:42:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms