Il y a eu aussi les cigarettes. Quand je suis entré en prison, on m'a pris ma ceinture,
mes cordons de souliers, ma cravate et tout ce que je portais dans mes poches, mes
cigarettes en particulier. Une fois en cellule, j'ai demandé qu'on me les rende. Mais on
m'a dit que c'était défendu. Les premiers jours ont été très durs. C'est peut-être cela qui
m'a le plus abattu. Je suçais des morceaux de bois que j'arrachais de la planche de
mon lit. Je promenais toute la journée une nausée perpétuelle. Je ne comprenais pas
pourquoi on me privait de cela qui ne faisait de mal à personne. Plus tard, j'ai compris
que cela faisait partie aussi de la punition. Mais à ce moment-là, je m'étais habitué à ne
plus fumer et cette punition n'en était plus une pour moi.
The lack of cigarettes, too, was a trial. When I was brought to the prison, they took away my belt, my shoelaces, and the contents of my pockets, including my cigarettes. Once I had been given a cell to myself I asked to be given back, anyhow, the cigarettes. Smoking was forbidden, they informed me. That, perhaps, was what got me down the most; in fact, I suffered really badly during the first few days. I even tore off splinters from my plank bed and sucked them. All day long I felt faint and bilious. It passed my understanding why I shouldn’t be allowed even to smoke; it could have done no one any harm. Later on, I understood the idea behind it; this privation, too, was part of my punishment. But, by the time I understood, I’d lost the craving, so it had ceased to be a punishment.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/27870913/T...y-Albert-Camus
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It was the old Adam in me, I suppose—the taint of that first father who was the first rebel against God’s commandments. Most strange is man, ever insatiable, ever unsatisfied, never at peace with God or himself, his days filled with restlessness and useless endeavour, his nights a glut of vain dreams of desires wilful and wrong. Yes, and also I was much annoyed by my craving for tobacco. My sleep was often a torment to me, for it was then that my desires took licence to rove, so that a thousand times I dreamed myself possessed of hogsheads of tobacco—ay, and of warehouses of tobacco, and of shiploads and of entire plantations of tobacco.
[..]
In the sixth year I increased the base of my pyramid, so that in eighteen months thereafter the height of my monument was fifty feet above the height of the island. This was no tower of Babel. It served two right purposes. It gave me a lookout from which to scan the ocean for ships, and increased the likelihood of my island being sighted by the careless roving eye of any seaman. And it kept my body and mind in health. With hands never idle, there was small opportunity for Satan on that island. Only in my dreams did he torment me, principally with visions of varied foods and with imagined indulgence in the foul weed called tobacco.
[...]
As the time passed, I grew more contented with my lot, and the devil came less and less in my sleep to torment the old Adam in me with lawless visions of tobacco and savoury foods.
[...]
I cannot refrain from telling here a curious incident. The ship had by this time drifted so far away, that we were all of an hour in getting aboard. During this time I yielded to my propensities that had been baffled for eight long years, and begged of the second mate, who steered, a piece of tobacco to chew. This granted, the second mate also proffered me his pipe, filled with prime Virginia leaf. Scarce had ten minutes passed when I was taken violently sick. The reason for this was clear. My system was entirely purged of tobacco, and what I now suffered was tobacco poisoning such as afflicts any boy at the time of his first smoke. Again I had reason to be grateful to God, and from that day to the day of my death, I neither used nor desired the foul weed.
http://www.online-literature.com/london/the-jacket/19/
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Franchement, y a-t-il une excuse à cela ? Il y en a une, mais si misérable que je ne puis songer à la faire valoir. En tout cas, voilà : je n’ai jamais pu croire profondément que les affaires humaines fussent cho-ses sérieuses. Où était le sérieux, je n’en savais rien, sinon qu’il n’était pas dans tout ceci que je voyais et qui m’apparaissait seulement comme un jeu amusant, ou importun. Il y a vraiment des efforts et des convic-tions que je n’ai jamais compris. Je regardais toujours d’un air étonné, et un peu soupçonneux, ces étranges créatures qui mouraient pour de l’argent, se désespéraient pour la perte d’une « situation » ou se sacrifiaient avec de grands airs pour la prospérité de leur famille. Je comprenais mieux cet ami qui s’était mis en tête de ne plus fumer et, à force de volonté, y avait réussi. Un matin, il ouvrit le journal, lut que la première bombe H avait explose, s’instruisit de ses admirables effets et entra sans délai dans un bureau de tabac.
Tell me frankly, is there any excuse for that? There is one, but so wretched
that I cannot dream of advancing it. In any case, here it is: I have never been
really able to believe that human affairs were serious matters. I had no idea
where the serious might lie, except that it was not in all this I saw around
me which seemed to me merely an amusing game, or tiresome. There are really
efforts and convictions I have never been able to understand. I always looked with amazement, and a certain suspicion, on those strange creatures who died for money, fell into despair over the loss of a position, or sacrificed themselves with a high and mighty manner for the prosperity of their family. I could better
understand that friend who had made up his mind to stop smoking and through sheer
will power had succeeded. One morning he opened the paper, read that the first H-
bomb had been exploded, learned about its wonderful effects, and hastened to a
tobacco shop.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/887992/Albert-Camus-The-Fall
