What about the man? He is more inclined to good than to evil

The writer Maurizio Cucchi comments on two extraordinary books by Albert Camus: L’étranger and La peste

by Maurizio Cucchi

Albert Camus (1913–1960)

While being in the mood to read again something, I come back to my twenty years and I read again L’étranger and La peste. Wonderful the first, even at the third reading, praiseworthy the second.

As a benefit and encouragement to who do not remember the end of the first book, I report and translate it: “Very close to death, mom probably felt herself free and close to live again everything. […] So that everything could be consumed, and in order to feel myself less alone, I hope that many onlookers will be present at my execution and that they will welcome me with hatred shouts”.

And in La peste, very noble novel in which everything is controlled by the intention, Camus expresses the firm belief, that I share (and that is against the widespread commonplace), that the man is more inclined to do the good than the evil, even if the pest bacillus never dead and disappears.