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Loading... Caligula and Three Other Plays (1958)by Albert Camus
![]() None No current Talk conversations about this book. Kaligula është një dramë e shkrimtarit francez , Alber Kamy , që është bërë manifest krijues origjinal i letersisë ekzistencialiste franceze e që deri tani në ditët tona vazhdon të shfaqet në skenat e gjithë botës.Sipas fjalëve tv J.P.Sartrit, ajo është një dramë, në të cilën "liria shndërrohet në dhembje , kurse dhembja të cliron". Interesting slice of early 20th century theatre, most of it concerned with socialist and nihilist themes. The meaninglessness of life is on display as a collection of characters who are hard to like and somewhat hard to sympathize with manage to thoroughly destroy themselves in the name of honor or principle, but for the most part, leaving nothing much changed. The plays are talky and overwrought, rather pedantic, and with far too much exposition and far too little that happens onstage, except perhaps in The State of Siege, where there is actually quite a bit happening. The idea of having the Plague represented on stage as a rather eccentric businessman, with a secretary, no less, is interesting and compelling. I actually think that most of these would stage better than they read, but they would be quite difficult to stage in 21st century theatre, due to large casts and frequent set/costuming changes. Overall, a worthwhile read, but you probably don't want to read it while depressed. It is a bit of a downer, and the depiction of the human condition is more honest that I suspect many would like. no reviews | add a review
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"Four thought-provoking masterworks for the theater by the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Stranger and The Plague, in a restorative new American translation by Ryan Bloom that brings together, for the first time in English, Camus's final versions of the plays, along with deleted scenes and alternate lines of dialogue. Though known for his novels that plumb the depths of absurdism, it was the theater stage that Camus called "one of the only places in the world I'm happy." After forming two troupes in his early twenties in Algeria, the prolific author moved to Paris for work, where between 1944-1949 he would go on to stage the four original plays gathered in this collection. Caligula, his first full-length work for the stage, begins with the infamous Roman emperor in the throes of grief at the death of his sister Drusilla and tugs at the same essential question that haunts so much of Camus's work: Faced with the nullifying force of time, which snuffs out even our grandest emotions, how does one go on living? And is there a limit to the hardness of the human heart? Here too are The Misunderstanding, a murderous tangle of the longing for home and the longing for elsewhere; The Just, depicting the 1905 assassination of a Grand Duke in Moscow and testing the ethical limits of one's belief in a political cause; and State of Emergency, an allegorical romp where The Plague itself appears as a central character, shedding new light on our current battles with viral disease and authoritarian regimes"-- No library descriptions found. |
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)842.91Literature French French drama 1900- 20th centuryLC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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When he is accused of murdering people, he responds that he has started no wars, which would have led to much greater numbers of deaths. Despite his arbitrary actions, he denies that he is a tyrant. He defines a tyrant as a man who sacrifices his people to his ideas or to his ambition. He claims he has no ideas (i.e., political ideals) and has no need for further honors or power.
Camus first began work on this play in 1937 but it was not published until 1945 because he rewrote it several times. In terms of theme, Camus placed it alongside the Stranger and the Myth of Sisyphus despite its later publication date and denied that it was inspired by Sartre’s existentialism, noting that it was originally written before Sartre published his philosophical works.
Much of the play has an almost comic tone because many of Caligula’s actions play on the hypocrisy of the patricians who are his most frequent victims. Other characters (Scipio, Cherea, Caesonia) appear to understand Caligula’s motives and response to the absurd, but reject Caligula’s “logic” in favor of other solutions to the issue of the absurd. The play both succeeds as entertainment and articulates the issues an individual faces after recognizing the absurd. Meursault in The Stranger lived the absurd and when faced with execution began to understand what that meant. Caligula articulates his response to the absurd and enters into dialogue with other characters in justifying his pursuit of its “logic.” The play involves a more intellectual dialogue that goes deeper into the analysis of the absurd than does the Stranger, but it also succeeds as a dramatic work. (