The Nobel Prize–winning author here adapts Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece for the stage--a rousing invective against nihilism that brings together two of the great literary minds of the last two centuries When Albert Camus first read Dostoyevsky as a twenty-year-old philosophy student, it was a “soul-shaking experience.” To complete this labor of love, Camus drew on hundreds of pages from Dostoyevsky’s When it was finally performed, in 1959--with Camus himself directing--the play ran to four hours long and was an artistic and technical triumph, featuring thirty-three actors and seven sets. The last finished work before Camus’s death, <The Possessed <stands as an enduring literary statement about human existence in which the conscience of the twentieth century meets and defines in contemporary terms the conscience of the nineteenth century.

Autorentext
Born in Algeria in 1913, ALBERT CAMUS published *The Stranger—*now one of the most widely read novels of this century—in 1942. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. On January 4, 1960, he was killed in a car accident.

Leseprobe
Scene 1

The curtain rises on Varvara Stavrogin’s drawing room. The narrator goes over and sits down at the table to play cards with stepan trofimovich.

STEPAN: Oh, I forgot to ask you to cut the cards. Forgive me, Anton, but I didn’t sleep well at all last night. How I regretted having complained to you of Varvara!

GRIGORIEV: You merely said she was keeping you out of vanity and that she was jealous of your education.

STEPAN: That’s what I mean. But it’s not true! Your turn. You see, she’s an angel of honor and sensitivity, and I’m just the reverse.

(varvara stavrogin comes in, but stops at the door.)

VARVARA: Cards again! (They rise.) Sit down and go on. I am busy. (She goes over to look at some papers on a table at the left. They continue playing, but stepan trofimovich keeps glancing at varvara stavrogin, who finally speaks, avoiding his eyes.) I thought you were to work on your book this morning.

STEPAN: I took a walk in the garden. I had taken Tocqueville under my arm—­

VARVARA: And you read Paul de Kock instead. But you have been announcing your book for fifteen years now.

STEPAN: Yes, I have gathered the material, but I have to put it together. It doesn’t matter anyway! I am forgotten. No one needs me.

VARVARA: You would be less forgotten if you played cards less often.

STEPAN: Yes, I play cards. And it’s unworthy of me. But who is responsible? Who nipped my career in the bud? Ah, que meure la Russie! I’ll trump that.

VARVARA: Nothing keeps you from working and from proving by your work that people were wrong to neglect you.

STEPAN: You are forgetting, chère amie, that I have published a great deal.

VARVARA: Indeed? Who remembers that now?

STEPAN: Who? Why, our friend here certainly remembers it.

GRIGORIEV: Of course I do. To begin with, your lectures on the nature of the Arabs, then the start of your study on the exceptional moral nobility of certain knights at a certain period, and, above all, your thesis on the importance that the small city of Hanau might have achieved between 1413 and 1428 if it had not been prevented from doing so by half-­hidden causes, which you analyzed brilliantly.

STEPAN: You have a memory like a steel trap, Anton. Thank you.

VARVARA: That is not the point. The point is that for fifteen years you have been announcing a book and you haven’t written a single word of it.

STEPAN: Of course not, that would be too easy! I want to be sterile and solitary! That will teach them what they have lost. I want to be a living reproach!

VARVARA: You would be if you spent less time in bed.

STEPAN: What?

VARVARA: Yes, to be a living reproach one has to stand on one’s feet.

STEPAN: Standing up or lying down, the important thing is to personify the idea. Besides, I am active, I am active, and always according to my principles. This very week I signed a protest.

VARVARA: Against what?

STEPAN: I don’t know. It was . . . oh, I’ve forgotten. Il fallait protester, voilà tout. Oh, in my time everything was different. I used to work twelve hours a day. . . .

VARVARA: Five or six would have been enough. . . .

STEPAN: I used to spend hours in the library gathering mountains of notes. We had hope then! We used to talk until daybreak, building the future. Oh, how noble we were then, strong as steel, firm as the Rock of Gibraltar! Those were evenings truly worthy of Athens: music, Spanish melodies, love of humanity, the Sistine Madonna . . . O ma noble et fidèle amie, have you any idea of all I gave up?

VARVARA: No. (She rises.) But I know that if you talked until dawn you couldn’t work twelve hours a day. Besides, all this is mere talk! You know that at long last I am expecting my son, Nicholas, any moment. . . . I must have a word with you. (grigoriev gets up, comes over, and kisses her hand.) Thank you, Anton, you are discreet. Stay in the garden and you can come back later.

(grigoriev leaves.)

STEPAN: Quel bonheur, ma noble amie, de revoir notre Nicholas!

VARVARA: Yes, I am very happy. He is my whole life. But I am worried.

STEPAN: Worried?

VARVARA: Yes—­don’t act like a male nurse—­I am worried. By the way, since when have you been wearing red neckties?

STEPAN: Why, just today I—­

VARVARA: It doesn’t suit your age, in my opinion. Where was I? Yes, I am worried. And you know very well why. All those rumors . . . I can’t believe them, and yet I can’t forget them. Debauchery, violence, duels, he insults everybody, he frequents the dregs of society! Absurd, absurd! And, yet, suppose it were true?

STEPAN: But it isn’t possible. Just remember the dreamy, affectionate child he was. Just remember the touching melancholies he used to fall into. No one but an exceptional soul can feel such melancholy . . . as I am well aware.

VARVARA: You are forgetting that he is no longer a child.

[STEPAN: But his health is poor. Just remember: he used to weep for nights on end. Can you imagine him forcing men to fight?

VARVARA: He was in no way weak! What has made you imagine that? He was simply high-­strung, that’s all. But you got it into your head to wake him up in the middle of the night, when he was twelve years old, to tell him your troubles. That’s the kind of tutor you were.

STEPAN: Le cher ange loved me. He used to ask me to confide in him and would weep in my arms.

VARVARA: The angel has changed. I am told that I wouldn’t recognize him now, that his physical strength is exceptional.]

STEPAN: But what does he tell you in his letters?

VARVARA: His letters are few and far between but always respectful.

STEPAN: You see?

VARVARA: I see nothing. You should get out of the habit of talking without saying anything. And, besides, the facts speak for themselves. Did he or didn’t he have his commission taken away from him because he had seriously wounded another officer in a duel?

STEPAN: That’s not a crime. He was motivated by the warmth of his noble blood. That’s all very chivalrous.

VARVARA: Yes. But it is less chivalrous to live in the vilest sections of St. Petersburg and to enjoy the company of cutthroats and drunkards.

STEPAN (laughing): Oh, that’s simply Prince Harry’s youth all over again!

VARVARA: What do you mean by that?

STEPAN: Why, Shakespeare, ma noble amie, immortal Shakespeare, the genius of geniuses, great Will, in short, who shows us Prince Harry indulging in debauch with his friend Falstaff.

VARVARA: I shall reread …