Water Images – Towards a Bachelardian Reading of Albert Camus

Abstract

Despite a sober and “economic” prose, the entire oeuvre of Albert Camus is surprisingly full of images of nature, be it memories of the Mediterranean sun and soil or experiences of man’s bodily fusion with nature. This article aims to question the signification of these nature descriptions in Camus by opting for an “elementary” approach, which is more attached to “material imagination” than to symbolical and allegorical interpretations. Rather, the descriptions of nature in Camus’ philosophical essays as well as in his narratives seem to go beyond representation, in so far as they speak a more “elementary” language, the language of the four elements: earth, water, air, fire. Unlike the prevalent picture of Camus as a poet of the sun, a closer reading points to the predominance of the element of water. Accordingly, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard is consulted in order to demonstrate how the representation of nature in Camus is dissolved or deconstructed into a kind of poetics of elements where water is the aesthetic secret horizon.