Baron Wormser: On a Sentence by Albert Camus

   I seem to have waited a lifetime for this sentence: “When nature ceases to be an object of contemplation and admiration, it can then be nothing more than material for an action that aims at transforming it.” Sometimes, the illness of our world, the death-in-life that turns nature into nothing more than the source of raw material, seems so boundless that throwing the lasso of language on it seems impossible. But that’s not true, as Camus’ sentence from his book The Rebel testifies. I suppose the sentence struck me too because I am a poet, which means I practice an art that encourages contemplation and, perhaps, admiration. In college, I was taught to go in fear of subjectivity. Mere appreciation based on contemplation was not enough, however much the poem resonated for me, compared to the heady wiles of explication. The poem was a knowledge site, a sort of ore waiting to be assayed. 

   The sentence comes from a passage where Camus is defending the Mediterranean outlook on life, the sanity of being first and last with the life-supporting sun—the wisdom of olive trees and vineyards. Transformation, of course, is exciting, even when in a techno-capitalist society numerals with decimal points are trotted out for machines, as if an annunciation were occurring. Version 17.2! The ancient Greeks saw life as cyclical not linear, but we are the captives of historical dynamism, a mania that swallows every human endeavor under the greedy aegis of progress. Camus noted of Hitler that he needed to compulsively act, even when he acted in ways that were counter to his goals. There was nothing inside of him beyond compulsion which could only be allayed by actions—except that compulsion can’t be allayed. It goes without saying that nature was dead for Hitler in the way nature has been dead for millions of people in modern times. Human interests ruled everything, however deeply wrong-headed and vicious those interests might be, however death obsessed. The notion of harmony did not sit well with historical dynamism. Looking at the newsreels, you can see how Hitler literally saw himself as an actor on the stage of history. This meant that unless he kept acting, he might lose his purpose. This may remind you of someone in the news each day in the United States whose conceit is boundless and for whom nature is nothing more than something to pillage and profit by. 

   Contemplation requires stillness, a willingness to submit oneself to what is outside oneself and cannot be subsumed by ego, no matter how much ego tries. Ego wants to be busy in the hope that another novelty will come along and titillate the sense of self-importance. This is a joke in a mass society where novelties are presented with machine-like efficiency but that doesn’t stop anyone’s ego. Busyness is self-flattery, an imperishable business in and of itself. Anyone who has contemplated nature knows that the same events happen over and over, that novelty is not needed because the deep fascination lies precisely in the over and over quality, the harmony that has persisted for millennia and millennia. Time is nothing to nature. All our counting is juvenile. You can’t even say that nature is old since myths all over the world have pointed to the perennial refreshment of spring, a coming to life that proceeds from the stillness of winter, a long contemplative season in Vermont where I live. 

   The desperation that Thoreau called “quiet” made itself terribly known in Camus’ lifetime. Such desperation had no use for contemplation and reserved its admiration for human situations, often hyperactive ones—I see Hitler gesticulating and the files of marching troops—that were far removed from those natural ones that might have a humbling import. Nature may console us but its enormity and complexity don’t flatter us. Some people despise nature on those grounds, preferring whatever lies politics too often proffers. Nature’s voices are there speaking whatever they speak—a bird call, a wind before a storm, the murmur of a stream. Everything is already there in such voices. Human neediness does not enter into such situations. Rather, nature asks us whether we can be that whole and speak so unreservedly without any unseemly grasping.

    As for admiration, that too calls for the ego to take a back seat. If a society believes in assertion simply for the sake of assertion (see the current American president) then a distinct emptiness enters the social sphere. The notion of quiet admiration becomes repugnant or nonsensical, something, to use the much-bruited word, for “losers.” This ignores the depth of feeling that makes a human being truly human. Anyone can snort and bellow. One pleasure of being a sensitive human is the ability to sit and take in whatever nature is presenting at a given moment. Nature doesn’t need applause. Popularity is beside the point. Beauty is everywhere. Ignoring or despising that beauty because it comes free is a sad commentary on how thoroughly socialized by the forces of money and opinion people may be. What Camus felt acutely and attempted to remedy was the absence of generational wisdom. Too much of the preening ideology of the twentieth century wound up as a prelude to mass murder. Whereas many turned their backs on that connection or brushed it aside with an analogy (breaking eggs to make an omelet), Camus acknowledged it as fully as he could. 

   The political realm in Camus’ era was rife (as ours has been) with ghastly examples of attempted transformations of whole populations, the most basic one being from life to death. “Human raw material” was the phrase that came into play. Working people to death made sense since raw material could be exploited and discarded. The cult of work the Nazis commended (and admired in various industrialists such as Henry Ford) spoke to a world where people existed in the service of whatever tasks were imposed on them. The sustenance that Camus pointed to was irrelevant. All that mattered were human goals and objectives. Whether people were worked to death in the name of capital or ideology wound up not mattering in an era characterized by a relentless, organized war on nature. The bombs did not just obliterate people and their structures. A very lucrative glee on the part of various corporations characterized the world wars (and more recent wars) as new fatal chemicals came into play. Yet the war against the earth was long-standing. To raise the issue that the earth deserved consideration, not the least because it sustained life, seemed almost fantastical. Seeming practicality after seeming practicality reared its efficacious head. Napalm and defoliants—why not?

   “Action” speaks to those leaders who insist on how dynamic they are, how they can transform whatever situation is at hand according to whatever dictates they favor. The febrile and terribly partial nature of those minds unfortunately excites many people. Nature’s calendar is slow whereas leaders can make changes overnight. Orders can be given and some reality can be dispensed with in the name of a new order. Modern times have enshrined this sort of action as every conceivable way has been invented to exploit what the earth offers. What Camus is pointing to is that something is dead in people for whom the earth exists merely to be exploited. That attitude may be the chief crime of modern times, for a crime it is and one that has created countless crimes. The thoughtlessness of such an attitude speaks to the power of money, technology, prejudice, and corporatism, especially if the thoughtlessness promotes convenience and a “better” life. The outcome of such a way of thinking is the endless sell that a “better” earth is being created through whatever means can be employed. 

   The Nazis were overt in their allegiance to Satanic forces but most of the war against the earth has seemed rational, as in “We can do this, so we’ll do it.” That is a very poor substitute for reason and one that scants what it means to be a human being in the senses that Camus is pointing to. Contemplation and admiration are crucial human abilities. To scant them is to invite the horrors Camus knew too well, horrors we cannot dismiss however much we try to in the name of distraction or some very hypothetical progress, whether material or political. As Camus noted, “Pure conquest is an expression of tyranny.” Words that bear considering in the United States—and elsewhere—in 2025. 

~~~~

Copyright 2025 Baron Wormser

Baron Wormser’s many books include a collection of poems The History Hotel (Cavan Kerry 2023). He currently resides in Montpelier, Vermont.