Source : Times of India
Unveiling one of the most sensational love affairs of the French literary history, a series of letters between the Nobel prize winning author, Albert Camus and the Spanish actress Maria Casares were published on Friday.
The passionate love affair between one of the most acclaimed modern authors and a remarkable and headstrong actress continued for 13 long years leading to an exchange of more than 860 letters.
Brought together by Camus’ daughter, Catherine Camus, the letters were exchanged while he was married to the beautiful pianist and mathematician, Francine Faure.
In the introduction to the 1,300-page volume, Catherine Camus wrote, “Their letters make the world a bigger, brighter place; the air is lighter simply because they exist.” The volume consisting of all the letters will be published by Gallimard, who played an important role in his life.
The love affair began when they met on June 6, 1944, the day liberation of France was initiated with the landing of allied troops on the Normandy beaches. It sparkled when they kissed for the first time after a rehearsal for his play The Misunderstanding.
With the arrival of Camus’s wife in newly liberated Paris and Camus’s return to his marital bed, the love affair could not survive. But in less than a year, Camus went back to Casares and his infidelity soon drove Francine to distraction and depression.
Four years to the day after they first met, their paths crossed on Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris, and their passion took flight again. Letters were exchanged after this meeting, almost every day talking about every aspect of their life from their work to their friends. “Simone Signoret had an abortion… (Yves) Montand is very down,” wrote Casares in one of her letters to him in 1951.
A major part of the letter covered their love for each other and their desire to consummate it. Camus lovingly called her, “little seagull”, “my black trout”, “my tasty one”. “I’m pacing the floor. I keep imagining the moment we close your bedroom door,” he told her. She reciprocated writing, “I am boiling inside and out. Everything is burning, my soul, body, outside, inside, heart, flesh… Do you understand? Do you really understand?”
