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The Sea Close By Page 3


  ‘Man cannot do without beauty’

  Albert Camus

  Discover Albert Camus in his centenary year

  The Adulterous Woman

  Caligula and Other Plays

  Exile and the Kingdom

  The Fall

  The First Man

  A Happy Death

  The Myth of Sisyphus

  The Outsider

  The Plague

  The Rebel

  Selected Essays and Notebooks

  www.penguinclassics.com

  THE BEGINNING

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  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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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.