Camus' Nobel Prize Acceptance speech

In French but with English caption



"Just as Camus could not place party over people, he would not elevate art to a special status above the political. Says Camus in his Nobel speech above: “I cannot live without my art. But I have never placed it above everything. If, on the other hand, I need it, it is because it cannot be separated from my fellow men… it obliges the artist not to keep himself apart; it subjects him to the most humble and the most universal truth.” Believing strongly in the social duty of the artist, Camus describes his writing as a “commitment” to bear witness to “an insane history.” After outlining the special mission of writing, the “nobility of the writer’s craft,” Camus returns near the end of his speech to modesty and puts the writer “in his proper place” among “his comrades in arms.” For a writer who identified himself solely with his “limits and debts,” Camus left a singularly rich body of work that stands outside of party politics while actively engaging with the political in its most radical form—the duties of people to each other in spite of, or because of, the absurdity of human existence."
 source


Full Transcript of speech in English: here