Some literary characters, like some books and some very special people, never leave us. They found a way to win a space in our hearts and our imagination, because they represent something that complements or enriches our experience in this world. And if at some point we must invariably say goodbye to these people, these characters who fascinate and enrich us, something in them always remains. The more our experience grows, and our self undergoes transformations and mutations that differentiate it increasingly from what it was when we met that special person, the more distant and opaque the memory becomes. But whenever we return to them, seeing a photo or rereading the book in which we met them, our memory is revived, and we realize that we need these special, unique beings, even if only as a mere reminder of the possibilities of human experience. Or as a reflection of a side of ourselves which we need to deal with and overcome, sooner or later. Evgeny Bazarov is one of those characters...
Albert Camus, the most likable Frenchman to ever walk this earth, was an atheist, an existentialist, an absurdist, and a man who ultimately denied the existence of the supernatural, being rather a creature of the flesh, living in the (then) now, not concerning himself with matters beyond the understanding of a sane man. Yet, Camus was an ethical man, a deeply ethical man, and more, he was an “ homme du monde ” and a man of action, he set an example of fight, of confrontation with the inexorable, and of a weird optimism about men, which went in opposite direction to most of the philosophies en vogue in his lifetime. How was that possible? What has Camus realized that escaped the attention of his contemporaries, even the brightest ones, like Sartre? How has he come to justify the existence of ethics in the world of the absurd? In the world where there is no ultimate consequence to anything a man ever does? That’s what I’ll endeavor to demonstrate here. But, first and not least...