The impassioned correspondence between the Nobel Prize–winning author and the renowned Spanish French actress who appeared in his plays, tracing the extreme highs and lows of their all-consuming love affair--a bestseller in France, translated for the first time into English It’s said that the affair began on June 6, 1944, the day the Allied forces landed in Normandy. The twenty-one-year-old Casarès was starring in a production of the thirty-year-old Camus’s play Though their fling would be cut short by the end of the Occupation--and the return to Paris of Camus’s wife, Francine--the two were destined to meet again: four years later, to the day, they crossed paths by chance on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Over the next twelve years, without interruption--until the car wreck of January 4, 1960, that stole Camus’s life--the author and actress would correspond furiously, their words swelling and shimmering and surging like the ocean.; Across 865 letters of immense and exquisite emotion, they cry and laugh and bicker and beg, make and break promises, talk Stendhal and Proust and Orwell, French theater, sickness, death, writer’s block, and, most of all, they pine--leaving behind a record of one of the great love stories of the twentieth century....

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Albert Camus

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Letters

1944

1. ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARÈS

[June 1944]

Chère Maria,

I have a business meeting at 6:30 p.m. at the NRF [offices of the Nouvelle Revue française] with an editor from Monte Carlo. From the NRF we’ll surely go to the Cyrano, which is on the corner of the rue du Bac and the boulevard Saint-Germain. I’ll wait for you there until 7:30 p.m. At 7:30, I’ll be at the Frégate, on the corner of the rue du Bac and the quayside, where Marcel and Jean are meeting me. At 8:00, the normal meeting place is at the Voltaire, on the corner of the rue de Beaune and the quayside. But I think you know that.

Forgive me for not being able to wait longer. Love,

AC

2. ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARÈS

4:00 p.m. [June 1944]

My little Maria,

I hoped to reach you now by calling you at home. But I don’t even have time. So, in between two meetings, I’m sending you this message. It means nothing, naturally. But I guess you’ll find it when you get home tonight and then you’ll think of me. I’m tired, I need you. But of course, I can’t say it this way: you would have to be in my arms.

Good night, ma chérie. Sleep well, think of me as much as you can. I send you kisses until tomorrow.

AC

3. ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARÈS

Thursday 10:00 [evening] [June 1944]

I’ve just read your dedication, mon chéri, and now something is trembling inside of me. Even though I tell myself that sometimes people write such things on impulse, without actually meaning them—at the same time, I think there are certain words you wouldn’t write unless you truly felt them.

I’m so happy, Maria. Is that even possible? What trembles within me is a kind of wild joy. Yet at the same time, there is the bitterness I felt after you’d gone, and the sadness of your eyes at the moment you left me. It’s true that what I keep of you always has the taste of happiness mixed with anxiousness. But if you love me as you’ve written, we must have something else. This is truly our time to love each other, and we must want it strongly enough and long enough to overcome everything.

I don’t like the clear way of looking at things you claimed to have this evening. When someone has a soul, they tend to call what frustrates them lucidity, and what eludes them, truth. But that lucidity is just as blind as anything else. There is only one type of clairvoyance: the kind that wants to grasp at happiness. And I know that even though it might be very short-lived, endangered or fragile, happiness awaits us, if we reach out our hands. But we must reach out our hands.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, to you, to your dear face. This evening, I was too tired to talk to you about how I feel: my heart is overflowing with love for you. Something exists that belongs only to us, and a place where I can be with you effortlessly. These are the hours when I fall silent and when you doubt me. But that doesn’t matter, my heart is full of you. Goodbye, chérie. Thank you for the few words that have given me so much joy—thank you for your soul that loves, that I love. I kiss you with all my might.

AC

4. ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARÈS

1:00 [in the morning] [June 1944]

My little Maria,

I just got home; I’m not at all tired, and I’m filled with such a yearning to be near you that I really must go to my desk to talk to you as best I can. I didn’t dare tell Marcel [Herrand] that I didn’t feel like going out to drink his champagne. And you were with so many people! But after half an hour, I’d had enough, all I needed was you. I felt such love for you, Maria, all evening, whenever I looked at you, heard your voice, which for me has now become irreplaceable. When I went up to Marcel’s, I found some pages of the play. I can no longer read them without hearing you, that is my own way of being happy with you.

I try to imagine what you’re doing and wonder in astonishment why you aren’t here. I tell myself that what is essential—the only essential thing I know, which is passion and life—would be if you came home with me tomorrow, so we might finish an evening together that we started together. But I also know that all that is in vain, apart from all the rest.

But at least, do not forget me when you leave me. Don’t forget, either, what I spent so long telling you one day, at my place, before everything started. On that day, I spoke to you from the depths of my heart, and I want, I want so much, for us to belong to each other the way I told you and the way it should be. Don’t leave me, I can imagine nothing worse than losing you. What would I do now without your face and all its overwhelming features, without your voice and your body pressed to mine?

And yet, that was not what I wanted to tell you today. Just your presence here, my desire for you, my thoughts about this evening. Good night, mon chéri. May tomorrow come quickly, and all the other days when you will belong more to me than to that damned play. I kiss you with all my might.

AC

5. ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARÈS

4:00 p.m. [June 1944]

My little Maria,

I don’t know if you will think of calling me. And I don’t know how to reach you at this time of day. Though I have nothing to tell you in particular, apart from the tide that has been carrying me since yesterday and my need for the trust and love that I have in you. It’s been so long since I’ve written to you!

If you find this telegram when you get home tonight, call me. Don’t forget me between now and Saturday. Think of me all the time during those days. Tell yourself that I am near you at every moment. Goodbye, my love, my dearest love. I kiss you as I did yesterday.

Albert

6. ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARÈS

Saturday 2:00 p.m. [July 1, 1944]

My little Maria,

The trip was fine and without any problems. We took the train at 7:20 and kept going until 9:00, then walked for seven kilometers to avoid a railway yard that had been bombed the day before; at 11:00, we got back on a train until noon. We waited at Meaux for two hours until we could get another train. After a new change three …