[sending Dedicace] Camus (albert) - Actuelles / Actuelles Ii.

Camus (Albert). Current / Current II. Paris, Gallimard, (1959 and 1960). 2 vol. in the format in-12 (188 x 118 mm) of 267 and 186 pp. Uniform contemporary bindings of bottle-green leather half-shagreen, vertical blind fillet on each cover, spine ribbed with fat fillets in black, gilt title, gilt supra libros in the tail, speckled heads, preserved covers. Copies covered in pleasant contemporary bindings. The first opens with a business card laminated at the top of the first sheet embellished with this autograph mention of Albert Camus: ''November 4, 1951 / Albert Camus [printed] / thank you wholeheartedly and you / address his very grateful thoughts''. The much noticed articles published by Camus in the journal Combat - of which he was to become the editor-in-chief - are collected under the title of Actuelles. They reveal the danger of the post-war period and warn against any temptation to be lax, to return to the past. In addition, Actuelles I contains an important chapter entitled Morale et Politique with the eleven editorials that compose it. In these times of war, in an article dated October 12, 1944, he takes up this formula from Goethe which he had already taken up in 1943 in his study of the classic novel 'The Intelligence and the Scaffold': "Better is a injustice than a mess. Finally, the collection also contains the famous editorial of August 8, 1945 when the atomic bomb had just exploded on Hiroshima. And that day, Camus did not hesitate to write: “Mechanical civilization has just reached its last degree of savagery. We will have to choose, in the more or less near future, between collective suicide or the intelligent use of scientific conquests. In the meantime, it is permissible to think that there is some indecency in celebrating a discovery in this way, which is first of all at the service of the most formidable rage for destruction that man has shown for centuries. The second volume brings together texts written from 1948 to 1953 and is therefore presented as a chronological continuation of Actuelles I with a hyphen, a continuity that constitutes the series of articles entitled Neither victims nor executioners. It is mainly centered on the controversies which followed the publication of L'Homme révolté. (The chapter entitled Letters on the Revolt which takes up almost half of the book takes up Camus's responses to the attacks on L'Homme révolté). The book reveals a biting Camus, the journalist and the committed man who does not shrink from controversy. Back slightly lightened. Discreet rubbing affecting the nerves of the first volume. Slightly oxidized paper. However, very good condition.