"Suffering, in fact, is a common affair, but it is difficult to believe it when it falls on the head. There have been as many plagues in the world as there have been wars. And yet plagues and wars always find people just as unprepared!
The great ones literary projects, have a very special feature. They remain relevant, to a creepy point, in fact, no matter how many years have passed since their first edition. In this very category there is the "Plague" of the French philosopher, writer and author, Albert Camus which in recent weeks sells thousands of copies throughout Europe and of course in our country.
The "Plague" of Camus nowadays has a dual nature. One, the allegorical one, which concerns the spread of Nazism or authoritarian and fascist regimes in general, and the second, the self-referential one that talks about the pandemic and all its consequences, such as quarantine, many of which we live in today with his pandemic coronavirus.
Camus wrote this great work in 1947, in a charged atmosphere. World War II ended about two years ago, humanity has lived through Nazism and at the same time there is its growing influence of communism beyond and outside the "Iron Curtain". To make his symbolism even stronger, in fact, he places all the action in the spring of 1940…
Then, in Oran, a coastal city Algeria , Dr. Bernard Rieux leaves home to begin home visits for his patients. At the entrance of his house he stumbles upon a dead mouse.
This fact raises a reasonable question because Oran is a completely quiet, clean and tidy city. But that was only the beginning. Within the next month thousands of mice will come out of the basements and sewers, to cool off in the streets.
Rieux knows that only unpleasant events can foretell.
His fears will be confirmed when the first ones come outbreaks. Fever, lethargy, red eyes, chapped lips, swollen groin, delirium, spots on the body. Within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms most patients die.
Bernard Rieux seeks the help of the elderly doctor Castel and the two of them are terrified to find out that they are dealing with an enemy that in the civilized west was considered extinct: the plague. The "Black Death" that in the Middle Ages had harvested millions of people in Europe!
From that point on, a battle begins to defeat the plague but at the same time a battle of the people with themselves…
The city authorities, although initially they do not want to, are then forced to take restrictive measures. Deaths are rising exponentially with each passing day. All animals that may have fleas are executed in the middle of the street. At some point the whole city will be quarantined. It is forbidden to enter or leave it. Trains and boats are not allowed to approach it. The only communication with the outside world is telegrams.
The families of the victims are quarantined in the… quarantine and are all transported to the camp that was built in the city stadium.
The inhabitants of the city, separated from their loved ones, feel that they have been sentenced to a peculiar exile in their own homes and each of them has a different reaction to the isolation, the fear and death.
Camus heroes, in addition to Bernard Rieux and the old doctor Castell, are Tarou who will coordinate the volunteers who will help the medical staff cope with the increased cases. It is Rabar, a journalist who went to report in the city and was finally trapped in quarantine. It is Gran, the low-ranking government official who deals with epidemic statistics on a daily basis, and it is Father Panelos who makes a fiery speech to the people of Oran and tells them that "if you are facing the plague today, it is because the time to think "and warns that" the righteous have nothing to fear, but the wicked have every reason to tremble. "
One of the "scenes" that Camus describes quarantine in the once beautiful city is shocking and parables with today are almost inevitable:
"You could now see them hurrying across the streets, leaning forward, blocking their mouths with a handkerchief or their hand. In the evening, instead of people gathering in large numbers trying to extend the duration of these days, each of which could be the last for them, you would meet small groups of people rushing home or into cafes. So, for a few days, at dusk, which was falling faster this season, the roads were deserted and only the wind was mourning among them non-stop ".
At the end of this masterpiece, the author opens the window of optimism, emphasizing that the rodents have disappeared and the pandemic It is limited to the minimum, but at the same time warns that no one can be sure that this will not happen again and, in fact, calls everyone to maximum vigilance.
"Hearing the cries of joy coming from the city, Rieux thought that this joy would never be certain. Because she knew what the happy crowd did not know, and that one can read in the books, that is, her bacillus plague he never dies or disappears, how he can stay asleep for decades in furniture and clothes, how he waits patiently in rooms, basements, chests, handkerchiefs and papers and how maybe one day he will come for misery and knowledge of the people, the plague would wake them up mice and would send them to vote in a happy city. "
And this applies to both pandemics and fascist schemes.
And since the reason for current books, it would be good, now that we have plenty of time, to read (apart from Camus's masterpiece) three more.
The first is "The game of slaughter" by Eugene Ionescu where in a happy city an epidemic falls dismantling the social fabric. The following excerpt is shocking and extremely topical:
"I gathered you here for the last time, in the square of our city, to inform you: Something completely inexplicable is happening to us. We were attacked by a plague of unknown causes. Our neighboring cities and countries have closed their borders. Army has surrounded our city. Any entry and exit is prohibited. Until yesterday we were free, but from today we are in quarantine!
The second is "On blindness" by Jose Saramago where in a country there are cases of sudden blindness and the government decides to quarantine the blind, thus revealing the cruel face of man.
The third and last is the satire "The Mask of the Red Death" by the great Edgar Allan Poe. The plot follows the story of Prince Prospero in his attempt to avoid a deadly plague known as the Red Death, while he is hidden in his abbey, in a peculiar quarantine. "Red Death" is a fantastic disease which, as Poe describes it, causes acute pain, blood secretions, dizziness and eventually collapse leading the patient to death in less than half an hour.