Return to Tipasa. Albert Camus (1952) [English]

This text means a lot to me because Tipaza is my hometown and Albert Camu's work is home. "But if one forgoes a part of what is, one must forgo being oneself; one must forgo living or loving otherwise than by proxy. There is thus a will to live without rejecting anything of life, which is the virtue I honor most in this world. From time to time, at least, it is true that I should like to have practiced it. Inasmuch as few epochs require as much as ours that one should be equal to the best as to the worst, I should like, indeed, to shirk nothing and to keep faithfully a double memory. Yes, there is beauty and there are the humiliated. Whatever may be the difficulties of the undertaking, I should like never to be unfaithful either to one or to the others. But this still resembles a moral code, and we live for something that goes farther than morality. If we could only name it, what silence!"