172 - Directing Albert Camus’ play “The Just”
N. Lygeros
Translated from the Greek by Despina-Myrto Drougka
Albert Camus was not made to write about an ephemeral winter. He was the writer of eternal summer. He whose writing is as bright as dawn, as beautiful as twilight. It was only in 1905, that Ivan Kaliayev met with him on this earth. And “The Just” represent this intellectual encounter. Without flourishes, without verbiage, Albert Camus is content to describe the essential, for fear of betraying this lost cause. This beauty in search of purity, of which reasoning seemed absurd. This is why the author of the “Myth of Sisyphus” could not be but interested in this revolution for life, this revolution which gave life a chance. Therefore, “The Just” is not an ex nihilo creation, nor a hymn to nihilism. This play is a recomposition of reality, a sensible rewriting of history, hence the will displayed in Albert Camus to make plausible what is true. The Just, those great shadows which support the sun of righteousness, are like columns of Greek temples. They are designed in such a way, that their mental projections emerge into the human eye as they are in reality: pure, direct and rigid. Conscious of being able to live up to the idea only through their sacrifice, they are fulfilled in this extreme concept. From this assemblage a necessity is emancipated; that of understanding the humane in its most profound. And through this irreversible process, through the man of the theater represented by Albert Camus, emerges the revolt of the first man who, through his death, attains immortality.