June 20, 2026
by Gabriele Nicolò The analysis of the loneliness of an old man conducted by Albert Camus in the collection of essays The reverse and the obverse (1935-1936) is lucid, even ruthless. Sitting around a table with three young people, the protagonist – to overcome the consuming anxiety of being alone and feeling alone – launches into the story of his past life. His are poor adventures, “trifles dropped from above, tiredness celebrated as victories”. He left no pauses in his story and, in his haste to tell everything before his interlocutors left him, “he chose from his own past what he thought was suitable to strike the spectators”. Making himself heard was his only “vice”: he refused, in fact, to see the irony in the looks and the “mocking rudeness” that …
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