The possessed
Subtitle: a play in three parts.
By: Translated from the French by Justin O'Brien.
Publisher: Vintage Books
Published: 1964
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 182
Subjects: Theatre; Literature
Work titles: Possédés.
First sentence: "... I tried, amidst this vast, preposterous, panting world full of outbursts and scenes of violence, never to lose the thread of suffering and affection that makes Dostoevsky's universe so close to each of us."
—Albert Camus in The Preface to this volume
Description: "If The Possessed is a prophetic book, this is not only because it prefigures our nihilism, but also because its protagonists are torn or dead souls unable to love, and suffering from that inability, wanting to believe and yet unable to do so—like those who people our society and our spiritual world today. . . . Hence, we have dramatized not only one of the masterpieces of world literature but also a work of current application.
Notes: "This play, being a good play, is not so much against something, not even nihilism, as it is for something. It shows wonderfully well what Camus believes in: the importance of each separate individual, the limit which is not to be passed where the individual is concerned, the tragic inappropriateness of whatever does violate that limit, the practical impossibility of group judgment."
—Warren Ramsey, The Yale Review