Le Malentendu est une pièce de théâtre en trois actes écrite par Albert Camus, elle fait partie du cycle de l'absurde. Sa première représentation date du 24 juin 1944, au théâtre des Mathurins, dans une mise en scène de Marcel Herrand.
L'acte I, scène 1, s'ouvre de la manière suivante :
Midi. La salle commune de l'auberge. Elle est propre et claire. Tout y est net.
Jan, jeune homme à qui la vie a réussi, riche et amoureux, décide de renouer le lien avec sa famille, qu'il a quittée des années auparavant. C'est ainsi qu'il retourne dans son village natal et plus précisément dans l'auberge tenue par sa mère et sa sœur. Ne sachant comment informer de sa vraie identité, Jan séjourne dans l'auberge, attendant une occasion propice à sa déclaration. Maria, sa femme, tente de dissuader son amant et se justifie par ses inquiétudes et l'absurdité du comportement de Jan; celui-ci d'ailleurs ne l'écoutera pas. Cependant, même si les inquiétudes de Maria sont infondées, elles ne sont pas moins justes. En effet, la mère et sa fille Martha ont pris l'habitude de tuer pendant leur sommeil les voyageurs qui séjournent auprès d'elles afin d'obtenir les moyens pour fuir cette région grise et trouver des terres plus ensoleillées. Jan, ne dévoilant pas son identité, souffrira du malentendu et sera victime du stratagème devenu mécanique.
Act 1: The reception hall of a small boarding house, noon
Martha and her Mother, together with a taciturn Old Man, run a guest-house in which they murder rich solitary travellers. Martha wants to get enough money to go and live by the sea. Mother is exhausted by killing.
Jan returns to the house he left 20 years ago. He has heard his father was dead and has returned with money for his mother. He expected to be welcomed as the prodigal son, but his mother does not recognise him. His wife Maria says a normal person would simply introduce himself, but Jan intends to observe his family from the outside and find what they really need to make them happy. Maria reluctantly agrees to leave him there for one night.
Jan registers under a false name. Martha is cold and refuses to answer personal questions. Mother fails to respond when Jan hints at his purpose in coming and asks if she had a son, but she begs Martha not to kill him.
Act 2: The bedroom, evening
Martha warms slightly towards Jan, but when he becomes interested in her she rejects the shared moment and determines to kill him. She brings him a drugged cup of tea. Mother tries to retrieve the tea but is too late. Jan tries to express his feelings to her, but Mother replies impersonally. When Jan falls asleep, Martha takes his money and they prepare to throw him in the river.
Act 3: The reception hall, morning
In the morning, Martha is happy but Mother just feels tired. The Old Man finds Jan’s dropped passport and they realise without emotion what they have done. Mother decides to drown herself, disregarding Martha’s protests. Martha is left alone with her anger.
Maria arrives, looking for her husband. Martha first says he has left, but then admits they drugged and drowned him for his money, saying it was “a slight misunderstanding” that led her to kill her own brother. Maria is distraught. Martha coldly compares it to her own loss of her mother. Then realising she is alone she decides to kill herself. She tells Maria to pray God turns her to stone or kill herself too, then leaves the house. Maria prays for mercy and the Old Man appears. Maria asks for help but he bluntly refuses.
Thèmes développés
Amour et manque d'amour constituent un thème central de la pièce. Qu'il s'agisse de l'amour filial, dont manque la mère, ou de l'amour dans le couple, dont débordent Jan et Maria, et dont Martha n'a jamais connu le frisson, ce sentiment fort est continuellement présent dans le discours. L'amour maternel défaillant se trouve également traduit par le suicide de la mère lorsqu'elle comprend qu'elle vient de tuer son fils, laissant ainsi sa fille seule.
Cette solitude, doublée du sentiment d'abandon, constituent la base de ce malentendu, et se trouvent perpétués au fil des événements tragiques.
Malentendu et incompréhension, tentative d'exprimer l'indicible ou impossibilité de réagir face à l'innommable… Ces difficultés sont à l'origine de tout le drame de la pièce - Jan ne sachant trouver les mots pour annoncer son retour. Elles perdureront tout au long de la pièce, les échanges devant se limiter aux conventions1 imposées par une définition de rôles erronée du fait du malentendu, une relation d'hôte à aubergiste que Jan essaye malgré tout de transgresser afin de se faire connaître de sa famille. Ces difficultés trouvent leur illustration finale avec l'apparente apathie de Martha lorsqu'elle comprend qu'elle a tué son frère.
Le voyage se trouve en toile de fond, les unes le rêvant, n'ayant jamais quitté leur contrée natale, les autres le vivant, tentant maladroitement d'apporter ce bonheur dans l'auberge triste et morne.
La puissance divine, en effet à l'extrême fin de la pièce, Maria qui appelle Dieu et est interrompue par le domestique qui entre dans la pièce,elle lui demande de l'aide et il répond : « Non ! ». Ainsi le domestique est assimilé à la puissance divine et la fin montre qu'il n'aide pas. On pourrait rapprocher cela à l'existentialisme qu'approuvait Jean-Paul Sartre. Cependant, Camus a dit lui même qu'il ne l'était pas.
Themes :
Camus’s theme is “the sauveur manqué, a savior who fails because of his inability to speak a clear language to those he would save”.[5]
Le Malentendu “depicts the destruction of a family fatally incapable of communicating with each other”.[6] Jan does not heed his wife Maria when she advises him to introduce himself plainly. His sister Martha accepts nothing but impersonal communication. Mother is too weary to respond to Jan’s hints.
The play contrasts the love between Jan and his wife with the absence of love from his sister and mother. Mother’s suicide when she realises her crime deprives Martha of the maternal love she also needs. Maria’s wish for divine love is also denied.
“One of the most important themes is the impossibility of attaining happiness”.[2] Despite the success of his marriage, Jan cannot be happy in exile, but wishes to return to his family and be happy together. Martha also longs to be somewhere else, and Mother longs for peace, but these desires are only met in death.
The misunderstandings and lack of comprehension that thwart these desires illustrate Camus’ philosophy of the Absurd. These difficulties create the drama – Jan’s choice to conceal his identity, Martha’s insistence on impersonal conventions, her misinterpretation of his determination to stay, Maria’s bewildered response to her cold confession, and the Old Man’s indifference.
When Camus revised the play in 1958, he added or modified four very short incidents to transform the indifference of the Old Man into something more sinister. For example, he distracts Martha when she is about to check Jan’s passport. Camus aimed to “intensify the effect of unrelieved metaphysical blackness, culminating in the very last crushing syllable of the play: ‘Non!””.[2]
The play expresses an antipathy to religion, but also a strong concern with religious ideas, including the parable of the prodigal son. “Camus had never cut himself off from conversation with Christian thinkers but stood in a relation of tension to Christianity”.[7]
The return of Jan from happiness in Africa to a murderous home, and the yearning of Martha to be in the sun, reflect an anththesis between Northern Europe and the Mediterranean, which informs all of Camus’ work.[2]
Origin
Camus wrote Le Malentendu in 1942 and 1943 in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in Nazi-occupied France. Originally the play was to have been entitled Budejovice after a city inCzechoslovakia where Camus stayed briefly during a European trip with his first wife in 1936.[1]
The play “is a highly subjective presentation by Camus of the human condition as he saw it in the desperate circumstances of 1942-43”.[2] It reflects several aspects of Camus’s life: he had left Algeria, to which he was deeply attached, leaving his second wife and friends behind; he was depressed with tuberculosis; as well as living under threat of execution as a propaganda agent of the French Resistance.[2] Camus once described Le Malentendu as “the play that resembles me the most”.[1]
The plot of Le Malentendu resembles the newspaper article that the protagonist of Camus' 1942 novel The Stranger finds under his mattress in his prison cell: it is the story of a man who became rich abroad and comes home to his village where his sister and mother have a hotel. He doesn't reveal his identity (in order to surprise them later), and books a room as a guest. Because he is wealthy, his mother and sister murder him while he is asleep.
The plot is also an ironic reversal of the classical theme of the recognition of the brother, from the ancient Greek Electra plays and the New Testament story of the Prodigal Son.
Style
Le Malentendu “is austere in its plot and characterization and claustrophobic in mood”.[2]
Camus “deliberately contrived an effect of polished, articulate, non-colloquial discourse”, as in a classical tragedy.[2] Through the necessity of writing while under occupation, “the play is cloaked in metaphor, trailing a train of symbols, with Camus styling the drama with all the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. In the Greek style, each character gives the argument for his or her actions, whether for good or ill. Thus Camus is able to air his thoughts on innocence, grief, guilt, betrayal, punishment, integrity, and silence, wrapping all these in what is essentially an existential debate. Although Camus' arguments come thick and fast, the play moves at a deliberate pace as it develops into more of a treatise than an organic drama".[3]
“It is the most poetic of all the works Camus wrote for the stage, but one cannot claim that speech and situation always match perfectly”.[4]
The characters “unwittingly express ambiguities that escape their awareness”, and indirectly express philosophical ideas. Le Malentendu is “so heavily laden with ambiguities and multiple levels of meaning that it borders on caricature, a fact that may explain its relative failure as a tragedy”.[5]
Philosophy
"The vision is bleak, with Camus' absurdist creed summed up by one of his characters: 'This world we live in doesn't make sense'"
Le Malentendu “focused on Camus’ idea of the absurd. The core of this idea is that human desire is in perpetual conflict with a world that is arbitrary, illogical and unfair. A central theme of this play is that life does not distinguish between those who pursue a ‘bad’ path and those who pursue a ‘good’ path. Life, as Camus sees it, is equally cruel to the innocent and the criminal; this is the absurdity of existence” [1]
“In The Myth of Sysiphus, Camus defines 'The Absurd' … as the feeling of being radically divorced from the world and thus a stranger to both others and oneself. The sense of constantly living in a state of exile produces a profound skepticism or distrust in the myths and universal systems of belief, which are alleged to give meaning and purpose to existence but in fact devalue and even negate it” [8]
“Although seen by a number of critics as a bleak piece of work, Camus did not regard Le Malentendu as pessimistic. He said: ‘When the tragedy is done, it would be incorrect to think that this play argues for submission to fate. On the contrary, it is a play of revolt, perhaps even containing a moral of sincerity’” [1] It implies that everything would have worked out all right if Jan had done what his wife begged him to do, or if Martha had responded to Jan’s personal questions or Mother had remembered when asked about her son.[2] The family is destroyed through “failing to realise that values are not dreamed up in isolation but discovered communally”.[6]
“Camus himself remarked that he considered the play to have been a failure for the simple reason that everybody he met kept asking him what he meant. If they needed to ask, he argued, then the play itself was not clear, and he had not been successful as a playwright”.[9]
Philosophy
Camus presents the reader with dualisms such as happiness and sadness, dark and light, life and death, etc. He emphasizes the fact that happiness is fleeting and that the human condition is one of mortality; for Camus, this is cause for a greater appreciation for life and happiness. In Le Mythe, dualism becomes a paradox: we value our own lives in spite of our mortality and in spite of the universe's silence. While we can live with a dualism (I can accept periods of unhappiness, because I know I will also experience happiness to come), we cannot live with the paradox (I think my life is of great importance, but I also think it is meaningless). In Le Mythe, Camus investigates our experience of the Absurd and asks how we live with it. Our life must have meaning for us to value it. If we accept that life has no meaning and therefore no value, should we kill ourselves?
In Le Mythe, Camus suggests that 'creation of meaning', would entail a logical leap or a kind of philosophical suicide in order to find psychological comfort.[19] But Camus wants to know if he can live with what logic and lucidity has uncovered – if one can build a foundation on what one knows and nothing more. Creation of meaning is not a viable alternative but a logical leap and an evasion of the problem. He gives examples of how others would seem to make this kind of leap. The alternative option, namely suicide, would entail another kind of leap, where one attempts to kill absurdity by destroying one of its terms (the human being). Camus points out, however, that there is no more meaning in death than there is in life, and that it simply evades the problem yet again. Camus concludes, that we must instead 'entertain' both death and the absurd, while never agreeing to their terms.
Meursault, the absurdist hero of L'Étranger, has killed a man and is scheduled to be executed. Caligula ends up admitting his absurd logic was wrong and is killed by an assassination he has deliberately brought about. However, while Camus possibly suggests that Caligula's absurd reasoning is wrong, the play's anti-hero does get the last word, as the author similarly exalts Meursault's final moments.[20]
Camus made a significant contribution to a viewpoint of the Absurd, and always rejected nihilism as a valid response.
"If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning." Second Letter to a German Friend, December 1943.
Camus's understanding of the Absurd promotes public debate; his various offerings entice us to think about the Absurd and offer our own contribution. Concepts such as cooperation, joint effort and solidarity are of key importance to Camus, though they are most likely sources of 'relative' versus 'absolute' meaning. In The Rebel, Camus identifies rebellion (or rather, the values indicated by rebellion) as a basis for human solidarity.
"When he rebels, a man identifies himself with other men and so surpasses himself, and from this point of view human solidarity is metaphysical. But for the moment we are only talking of the kind of solidarity that is born in chains."[21]
Religious beliefs and absurdism
While writing his thesis on Plotinus and Saint Augustine of Hippo, Camus became very strongly influenced by their works, especially that of St. Augustine. In his work,Confessions (consisting of 13 books), Augustine promotes the idea of a connection between God and the rest of the world. Camus identified with the idea that a personal experience could become a reference point for one's philosophical and literary writings. Camus later came to the idea that the absence of religious belief can simultaneously be accompanied by a longing for "salvation and meaning". This line of thinking presented an ostensible paradox and became a major thread in defining the idea of absurdism in Camus's writings.[22]