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“As the years go by, I am becoming more and more tender and sentimental. When I’m fifty, I’ll literally melt in your arms.”

— Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Correspondance, March 7, 1950 [#236]

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Albert Camus, from a diary entry featured in Notebook V; Notebooks, 1935-1942

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"... his most fruitful nostalgia, his sudden need for bareness and sobriety, his yearning also to be nobody."

Albert Camus ☆–The First Man

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The sky is still resplendent. And the air remains fresh. This makes a cold and brilliant light, a light for intelligence. I read, work and think, slowly, but well. And then your letter. I’m glad the performance went well at the Cité. The students are sometimes stupid and vulgar. But there is something in them that is intact, that can serve as a reference for a work. Yes, my dear heart, my love, I too was thinking and I am thinking about the little apartment in Rome. But there is nothing lost. And maybe it will be possible. 

I also understand that you can’t turn to happiness if you feel that I’m not happy. But this is not true. It is true that I feel guilty sometimes. But my progress at the moment is to free myself from these sterile feelings, to escape from mutilation, to accept only “positive” feelings. I am trying to get back to what I was. And this sky, this climate helps me every day. I also know that you love me, that you will stay close to me, and that I will find in you all the joy I need. So don’t worry. I am working in spite of everything. 

I won’t finish my essay. But I will continue to work on it and when it is finished, I will have already found that inner freedom that I lack, the freedom of noon, the strength, the silent joy, the one that goes beyond happiness and unhappiness. So let all this mature. On the other hand, what I really need is to find you whole and as far as possible, offered to life. That’s why you have to take care of yourself, relax, be beautiful, live generously, as you know how to do. If I have not worked as much as I hoped, I have worked deeper. And I have huge projects that are burning in my head, from works, a thought, the realization of a style of being. It is here that I need you, as one needs the sun and the earth, so as not to lose oneself. But it is necessary that you find yourself alive, valiant and beautiful. 

In three weeks I will be in Paris. That’s what’s important. I can’t believe it, by imagination, I mean. But I know that I will be able to put my hand on you and this certainty makes me melt with happiness. And you, my beautiful, my brunette, my sweet, are you also trembling like I am? Come on, courage! The real spring is going to begin. Write, tell me about yourself. Love me, live for me, tell me too that you are mine. Ah! I want to possess everything of you, to demand everything… I love you. 

Don’t be worried or sad. Forgive me if my letters have saddened you. You are my confidante, my friend too, and sometimes we let ourselves go. But the sun is coming back and all we want to do is close our friend’s mouth and ears under a shower of kisses. Let them rain on you, my dearest love, my beloved, and surrender yourself to me. I love you.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, March 6, 1950 [#233]

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"My dear love, my black, my beautiful, my lukewarm, what a desire I have for your presence, your warmth. I think of the little room suspended above Paris, of the falling evening, of the glow of the radiator and of us, linked to each other, in the penumbra..."

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance ; January 16th 1950 [#130] ☆– quote credit: @acknowledgetheabsurd

Photo: Albert, in the love-nest Camus-Casarès, Rue de Vaullirard, Paris, early 1950s. (source: insolitoestudio ig)

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Albert Camus - Nobel Laureate in Literature, Uppsala January 1958 [x]

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Albert Camus and his first wife Simone Hié.

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“Camus himself offered a startling new perspective on his time with Simone Hié in a letter to her mother, who had sought his advice on Simone’s enduring problem with drugs. “I have thought about it and I really don’t know what to tell you,” he writes to her. “Seventeen years ago, with an intuition that was ahead of my young years, I realized that there was no way out of this situation. That’s why I ended it so abruptly, even though that cost me more than I have ever admitted to anyone.””

— Elizabeth Hawes, Camus, A Romance

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"If your heart remembers nothing but the love it has for me, this would be the salvation in death that I could not have in life."

-Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959 (Nov. 7, 1913 - Jan. 4, 1960)

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"How is it possible that beings like you disappear one day from this world? What would become of existence without your face, without your gaze, without your clairvoyante warmth, without your love."

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus ☆– Correspondance; October 24th 1956

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Albert Camus –☆ November 7th 1913 ▪︎ January 4th 1960

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“But know this that I will repeat to you until the end. The only thing that separates me from you now and drives me crazy for moments is the idea that one day death will force us to live without each other. When this thought takes hold of me with enough acuity to make me live, for example, one morning, with the idea that you are no longer there and that you will never be there again, all my faculties become blurred in total chaos, I feel a terrible urge to vomit, and sounds of madness can be heard everywhere in me.”

— Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Correspondance, September 15, 1949 [#93]  

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“I love you. I love you with all my soul, with all my strength. I’d like to have you against me and face this new year with you. This time I won’t be in your arms, but if you close your eyes, at any time of the day you will feel my fingers on your lips.”

— Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Correspondance, November 7, 1949 [#101]

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"I want you everywhere, all of you, and I will always want you. Yes, always, and don't talk to me about '...if' or 'maybe...' or 'as long as...' I want you, I know, it is a need and I will put all my heart, all my soul, all my will and all my cruelty even, if it is necessary to have you."

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Correspondance *☆ Christmas 1948 [#43]

~ quote credit/thanks to: @acknowledgetheabsurd

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“Cabris on its hillock, a little below, was surrounded by trees in bloom. And everywhere, thousands of buds. Each bud brought me closer to you.”

— Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, March 3, 1950 [#229]

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Albert Camus and Maria Casarès