L’État de Siège. [The State of Siege].

CAMUS, Albert.

$3,000.00

Item Number: 137545

Paris: Gallimard, 1948.

First edition, early printing of Camus’ fourth play, a political allegory about resistance to the plague of authoritarian rule. Octavo, original wrappers. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title page, “A Jean de Bosschère assiege sure anso mars insoumais [L’Etat de Siege] are Esperes a plus cordials Albert Camus.” The recipient, Jean de Bosschère lived for most of the 20th century between London and France, and illustrated his own works as well as the works of Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire, and the classical works of Aristophanes, Ovid, Strato and Apuleius. He published his own works of poetry, and in 1952 was awarded the Prix de la Méditerranée and in November the Mandat des Poètes. In near fine condition.

Written in 1948, The State of Siege—the original sense is closer to state of emergency—is a play in three acts presenting the arrival of plague, personified by a young opportunist, in sleepy Cadiz and the subsequent creation of a totalitarian regime through the manipulation of fear. In a piece written in 1948, in reply to criticisms from Gabriel Marcel, Camus defended his decision to set the play in Spain, and not in Eastern Europe, citing the ongoing oppression in Spain, France's collusion in it, and the Catholic Church's abandonment of Spanish Christians. The piece was first performed in October 1948, and was initially received poorly by critics and public, who had eagerly awaited the work, but expected a dramatization of Camus's novel The Plague. While the two share a common background, the treatments are entirely different in tone. The work has remained almost constantly in print in French, and since 1958 in an English translation by Stuart Gilbert—in Caligula and Three Other Plays—with a foreword by Camus.