The Plague
Albert Camus wrote The Plague,
which I want to re-read this week
(now that the frogs, the lice,
and the locusts are upon us)
because his hypothesis is
that the bubonic plague
has broken out in Algeria,
in the coastal town of Oran,
in the 1940s. The plague
he has in mind is bubonic,
the Black Death of the fourteenth century,
which killed a third of Europe.
Fleas from infected rodents transmitted it.
In The Plague the bureaucrats muddy things,
it's a false alarm, says one, and let's not call it
a plague but an unusual type of fever.
Lots of plagues in history, yet each comes as a surprise.
The will -- the competitive desire to live
while others are dying -- is most intense in a calamity.
Nine months from now more babies will be born.
3 / 15 / 20
We're on the same wavelength---I just located my ancient copy of this today. I happened to open it to a phrase I had marked off when I first read this book in the '60s: "...the frantic desire for life that thrives in the heart of every great calamity."
Posted by: Terence Winch | March 16, 2020 at 03:05 PM
Funny, I just started reading it for the first time two days ago!
Posted by: Michael C. Rush | March 16, 2020 at 09:26 PM
Have been reading this brilliant book for the first time. Astonishing. Characters, language, slow accretion of details, and all the sense of daily life, going on, or not.
Posted by: Helen Wickes | March 21, 2020 at 02:31 PM