The Sea Close By Page 3
‘Man cannot do without beauty’
Albert Camus
Discover Albert Camus in his centenary year
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Caligula and Other Plays
Exile and the Kingdom
The Fall
The First Man
A Happy Death
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Outsider
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THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN CLASSICS
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‘The Sea Close By’ first published in L’Été (Summer) 1954
Copyright © 1954 by Editions Gallimard
Translation copyright © 1967 by Hamish Hamilton Ltd and Alfred A. Knopf Ltd.
‘Summer in Algiers’ first published in Noces (Nuptials) 1938
Translation copyright © Justin O’Brien 1955
This combined edition published in Penguin Classics 2013
Cover art by Alice Charbin
All rights reserved
The moral right of the translator has been asserted
Typeset by Jouve (UK), Milton Keynes
ISBN: 978-0-141-97801-7
* May I take the ridiculous position of saying that I do not like the way Gide exalts the body? He asks it to restrain its desire to make it keener. Thus he comes dangerously near to those who in brothel-slang are called involved or brainworkers. Christianity also wants to suspend desire. But, more natural, it sees a mortification in this. My friend, Vincent, who is a cooper and junior breast-stroke champion, has an even clearer view. He drinks when he is thirsty, if he desires a woman tries to go to bed with her, and would marry her if he loved her (this hasn’t yet happened). Afterwards he always says: ‘I feel better’ – and this sums up vigorously any apology that might be made for satiety.