The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt

In Part 4, Camus shifts gears somewhat, choosing to focus on the relationship between art and acts of rebellion. According to Camus, all art is a form of rebellion in the sense that the artist cannot really accept reality as it is; he instead attempts to recreate reality, or reshape it, within his works of art. But because the artist is constantly engaged in a dynamic, questioning relationship with reality instead of a rejection of reality, and because the artist creates in a questioning spirit instead of a rigid, top-down, ideological one, the true artist is often the target of totalitarian revolutionaries. This is because all totalitarian revolutionaries are mistrustful of artists’ freedom and wish to have art that serves only the revolution.

Camus then discusses the nature of the novel, arguing that within the novel the artist can achieve the kind of unity and perfection that all humans secretly long for, but which eludes mankind in reality. This is a unity that revolutionary ideologues tend to promise in their utopian thinking but cannot actually deliver in the real world. For Camus, art is the closest mankind can get to experiencing the elusive unity it craves.

Camus then argues that societies that are dominated by revolutionary tendencies struggle to produce good art, as art itself can become propagandistic and dogmatic under a revolutionary regime. However, this only makes true art all the more valuable, as true art reminds the observer that man is not a slave to history—he is also a part of nature, and there is something about his nature that is timeless and transcendent, and therefore permanently beyond the reach of all utopian ideologues.