Beschreibung:

CAMUS, ALBERT. Autograph manuscript signed of his "Sur une philosophie de l'expression," a critical essay on Brice Parain's writings on language. N.p., n.d. [ca. 1944]. 8 pages, 4to, closely written in black ink on the rectos only of grayish-lilac sheets, a final working draft with numerous revisions by Camus, signed by him at end. In French, with typescript of supplied English translation. Camus's philosophical discussion, primarily concerned with Parain's book Recherches sur la nature et les fonctions du langage (Paris, 1943), was first published in 1944 in the periodical Poésie 44 ; it was later collected in the Pléiade edition of his work. "What we need to know," Camus writes (supplied English translation), "is whether or not our language is false at the very moment when we think we are telling the truth, whether words have flesh or are merely empty shells, whether they mask a deeper truth or are merely part of a wild-goose chase...But the questions Parain asks are even more imperious. For the problem is to know whether our most accurate expressions, our most successful cries are not in fact empty of all meaning, whether language does not, in short, express man's final solitude in a silent universe. What this adds up to is a search for the essence of language, and a quest for words that can give us the same reasons we require of God. For Parain's basic premise is that if language is meaningless then everything is meaningless, and the world becomes absurd. We know only by means of words. If they are proved useless, then we are finally and irredeemably blinded..."