Novels, Fiction, Facts, Allegories and Covid-19
Following on from resonant extracts from Daniel Defoe,
here's something similar from Albert Camus, The Plague
Well, what a revolution in interpretation!
From metaphor for the Nazi Occupation of France,
To a literal reading of the text;
From figurative to literal,
Just like that!
Revolutions do happen!
It’s not always incremental gradualism!
And if revolutions can happen in literature so easily,
Then …
‘You might say that the death of the concierge marked the end of this period full of troubling signs, and the start of another, comparatively more difficult, in which the original sense of surprise gradually gave way to panic.’
‘The word ‘plague’ had just been spoken for the first time … Pestilence is in fact very common, but we find it hard to believe in pestilence when it descends upon us. There have been as many plagues in the world as there have been wars, yet plagues and wars always find people equally unprepared … A pestilence does not have human dimensions, so people tell themselves that it is unreal, that it is a bad dream which will end. But it does not always end and, from one bad dream to the next … The people of our town were no more guilty than anyone else, they merely forgot to be modest and thought that everything was still possible for them, which implied that pestilence was impossible. They continued with business, with making arrangements for travel and holding opinions. Why should they have thought about the plague, which negates the future, negates journeys and debate? They considered themselves free and no one will ever be free as long as there is plague, pestilence and famine.’
‘The doctor was still looking out of the window. On one side of the glass was the cool, fresh sky of spring; on the other was the word that still resounded round the room: plague. The word contained not only what science had seen fit to put in it, but a long series of extraordinary images that had nothing to do with this grey and yellow town …’
‘It is true that the word ‘plague’ had been spoken. It is true that at that very moment the pestilence was tossing and beating down one or two victims. But that could end, couldn’t it? What he must do was to acknowledge clearly what had to be acknowledged, drive away all needless shadows and take whatever measures were required. After that, the plague would cease because plague was inconceivable, or because it was wrongly conceived. If it did stop, as was most likely, then all would be well. Otherwise, they would understand what it was and know if there was some means by which they might come to terms with it, so as to eventually overcome it.’
‘… he knew very well it was plague, but that, of course, if they were to acknowledge the fact officially, they would have to take stern measures. He knew that, underneath, this was what held his colleagues back …’
‘From this poster it was hard to reach the conclusion that the authorities were confronting the problem. The measures were far from draconian and it appeared that a good deal had been done to avoid upsetting public opinion.’
‘Houses of sick people were to be closed and disinfected, their relatives put into preventive quarantine and burials organised by the authorities … A day later the serum arrived by plane. There was enough for the cases currently being treated, but not if the epidemic were to spread. In reply to Rieux’s telegram, he was told that the emergency supply was exhausted and they had started to manufacture new stocks.
Meanwhile, from all the surrounding districts, spring was arriving in the market-place. Thousands of roses withered in the flower-sellers’ baskets on the pavements … The trams were always full in the rush hours …’
‘On the day when the death-toll once more reached more than thirty, Bernard Rieux looked at the telegram which the Prefect had held out to him, saying: ‘They’re scared.’ The telegram read:
DECLARE A STATE OF PLAGUE STOP
CLOSE THE TOWN
‘From that point on, it could be said that the plague became an affair of us all. Up to then … everyone had gone on with his business … But once the gates were closed, they all noticed they were in the same boat, including the narrator himself, and they had to adjust to the fact. This is how, for example, a quite individual feeling such as being separated from a loved one suddenly became … the feeling of a whole people and together with fear, the greatest agony of that long period …’
‘One of the most remarkable consequences … was, indeed, a sudden separation of people who were not prepared for it. Mothers and children, wives, husbands, lovers, who had imagined a few days earlier that they were embarking on a temporary separation, who had embraced on the platform of a station … found themselves abruptly and irremediably divided …’
‘… the plague left them idle, reduced to wandering round and round in their mournful town, day after day, engaged in only illusory games of memory; for in their aimless walks it was likely that they would pass along the same paths, and, more often than not, in such a small town these paths were precisely the ones in earlier times they would have taken with their loved ones.
Thus, the first thing that the plague brought to our fellow-citizens was exile … In short, from then one, we accepted our status as prisoners; we were reduced to our past alone and even if a few people were tempted to live in the future, they quickly gave it up, as far as possible, suffering the wounds that the imagination eventually inflicts on those who trust in it.’
‘For some of our fellow-citizens … they were now subjected to another form of slavery that made them subservient to the sun and the rain. Seeing them, you would have thought for the first time they were experiencing a direct impression of the weather. Their faces would light up at the simple appearance of golden light, while rainy days would cast a thick veil across their features and thoughts.’
‘At first people had agreed to being cut off from the outside as they might have accepted any temporary irritation that would only interfere with a few of their habits. But, suddenly becoming conscious of incarceration beneath the lid of the sky in which summer was beginning to crackle, they felt in some vague way that this confinement threatened their whole lives …’
‘…a turning point in the epidemic was marked by the radio no longer announcing some hundreds of deaths per week, but 92, 107 and 120 deaths a day. ‘The newspapers are engaged in a battle of wits with the plague. They think that they are scoring points against it, because 130 is a lower figure that 910.’ … peppermints had vanished from chemists’ shops because a lot of people sucked them as a defence against infection.’
‘… a new paper has been launched, The courier of the Epidemic with the aim of “informing our fellow citizens, in a spirit of total objectivity, about the advances or decline of the illness; to provide them with the most authoritative accounts of the future of the epidemic, to lend the support of its columns to all those, well-known or otherwise, who may be able to fight this pestilence; to sustain the morale of the inhabitants, to pass on directives …’
‘Trams have become the only means of transport and they can hardly move, their footboards and rails loaded to breaking point. An odd thing, however: all the passengers, as far as possible, turn their backs on one another …’
‘” You must come to the hospital tomorrow,” he said. “To get your preventative vaccine. But, once and for all, before you become involved, tell yourself that you have a one-in-three chance of surviving.”’
‘Rieux and he hoped that a serum made with cultures from the very microbe that was infecting the town would be more directly effective than any serum brought in from outside, since the microbe differed very slightly from the bacillus of plague as traditionally defined. Castel hoped to have the first serum quite soon.’
‘So, week in, week out, the prisoners of the plague struggled along as best they could. As we have seen, a few … even managed to imagine that they were acting as free men and that they could still choose. But in reality one could say, at that moment, in the middle of August, that the plague had covered everything. There were no longer any individual destinies, but a collective history that was the plague, and feelings shared by all. The greatest of these were the feelings of separation and exile, with all that that involved of fear and rebellion.’
‘Inside the town someone had the idea of quarantining certain districts which had been especially hard hit and only allowing people whose services were indispensable to leave them. Those who had lived there until that time were bound to consider this measure as a form of victimization particularly directed against them; in any case they considered the inhabitants of other areas as free … people from these other areas found some consolation in hard times in the idea that there were those still less free than themselves. “There’s always someone more captive than I am,” was the statement that summed up the only possible hope at that time.’
‘The authorities tried in vain to introduce a hierarchy into this levelling and had the idea of decorating prison warders who had died carrying out their duties … it might be said that prison warders were on active service, they were awarded a military medal, posthumously.’
‘The coffin was brought out … it was dragged along, slipped, hit the bottom of the grave … In this way everything really happened with the greatest speed and the minimum of risk. And needless to say, at least at the start, it is clear that the natural feelings of the relatives were offended. But in time of plague, these are considerations which cannot concern us: everything was sacrificed to efficiency.’
‘During the months of September and October the plague kept the town beneath it … many hundreds of thousands of people were still kicking their heels for endless weeks. Mist, heat and rain followed one another in the sky. Silent flocks of starlings and thrushes, coming from the south, flew overhead … members of the health teams could no longer overcome their tiredness.’
‘It was in the last days of October that they tried out Castel’s serum. In practical terms this was Rieux’s last hope. In the event of a failure the doctor was convinced that the town would have to surrender to the whims of the disease and either the epidemic would continue for many long months yet or it would decide to call a halt for no reason.’
‘At the start, quarantine had been a strict formality; now Rieux and Rambert organised it very strictly. In particular, they demanded that members of a family should always be isolated from one another. If one person in a family had been infected without realising it, they should not increase the chances of the illness spreading. Rieux explained this to the magistrate who was persuaded by the argument. However, the magistrate and his wife were looking at one another in such a way that the doctor felt how devastating this separation would be for them.’
‘…newspapers had reported that two hundred years earlier, in the great plagues in the South of France, doctors used oilcloth for their own protection. The shops took advantage of this to unload a supply of clothes that were no longer in fashion, and from which everyone hoped to gain immunity.’
‘…the bonfires of the plague burned ever more cheerfully in the crematorium. Admittedly the number of dead from one day to the next was not rising. But it seemed that the plague had settled comfortably into its peak and was carrying out its daily murders with the precision and regularity of a good civil servant. In theory, in the opinion of experts, this was a good sign. The graph of the progress of the plague, starting with its constant rise, followed by this long plateau, seemed quite reassuring – to Dr Richard, for example. ‘Good, good, an excellent graph,’ he said. He reckoned the disease had reached what he called a ceiling. From here on, it could only decrease … Old Castel did not contradict him, but felt that one could not predict anything for certain, since the history of epidemics showed that they could flare up unexpectedly.’
‘However, there might be other reasons for increasing anxiety because of difficulties in getting food supplies. Speculators were involved, and vital necessities, unobtainable on the ordinary market, were being offered at high prices. Poor families consequently found themselves in a very difficult situation, while the rich lacked for practically nothing.’
‘Naturally, the newspapers followed the order they had been given, to be optimistic at any cost. Reading them you would think that the main characteristic of the situation was ‘the moving example of calm and courage’ shown by the people. But in a town shut in on itself, where nothing could remain secret, no one had any illusions about the ‘example’ given by the people.’
‘” It’s scientific,’ Tarrou told the administrator,
“Yes,” he replied with satisfaction as they shook hands. “It’s scientific.”’
‘Of course the plague was not yet over and it would prove as much. Yet in everyone’s minds, weeks before the real events, trains were whistling as they left on endless tracks, and ships ploughed the shining sea. The following day, spirits would be calmed and doubts return.’
‘Indeed, as he listened to the cries of joy that rose above the town, Rieux recalled that this joy was always under threat. He knew that this happy crowd was unaware of something that one can read in books, which is that the plague bacillus never dies or vanishes entirely, that it can remain dormant for dozens of years in furniture or clothing, that it waits patiently in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, handkerchiefs and old papers …’
