Albert Camus and the Plateau | Office de tourisme du Haut-Lignon – Découvrez des activités pleine nature et des hébergements insolites pour vos

Let's meet Albert Camus, dear visitors

Leaving Le Chambon-sur-Lignon on the D151, through the hamlet of La Bourghea, we cross the small bridge over the river Ligne, where Camus, wearing his overalls, used to catch trout. At Moulin, turn right. The path, lined with hundred-year-old beech trees, leads to the Panelier estate, whose restored walls, tower and crenellated gateway are a sight to behold!

Camus arrived in late summer 1942 at the Panelier guesthouse in Mazet-Saint-Voy run by Sarah Oettly, a relative of his wife Francine. Stricken with tuberculosis in 1931, Francine recommended the fresh, pure mountain air to escape the “furnace” of Oran.

“I’m just writing you a note to give you my news and address. We have landed in the mountains in an isolated fortified farmhouse, here good supplies, lots of trees”
31-08-1942. Albert Camus to Emmanuel Roblès, a writer friend living in Algeria.

August 1942:“Before sunrise, above the high hills, the fir trees are indistinguishable from the undulations that support them… Against the barely discolored background of the sky, it looks like an army of savages surging from behind the hill. As the sun rises and the sky brightens, the fir trees grow taller and the barbarian army seems to advance… Then, when the sun is high enough, it suddenly lights up the fir trees tumbling down the mountainside”. Notebooks II

Armee De Resineux Devalant La Montagne P.b

"Autumn here is very beautiful ... but I won't make it through the winter" September 22, 1942 Albert Camus

In autumn 42, he sent Pascal Pia, director of the newspaper Combat, a package with this note: “I’m sending you today 1.5 kg of dried mushrooms for your winter. Tell your wife to soak the ones in the little cylindrical box, as they have strips on them which retain a considerable amount of dust … the others, on the other hand, are honest boletus …”.

At the end of December, a first draft of La Peste was more or less completed at Le Panelier, but it was “ugly”, writes Camus! It was not published until 1947. “I want to express in La Peste the suffocation we suffered and the atmosphere of threat and exile in which we lived”.

Thinking of returning to Algeria in November 42, the end of the free zone and the Allied landings in North Africa prevented him from leaving the Plateau, and he wrote “Comme des rats!

In 1943, he wrote “Le Malentendu”, a play bearing “the colors of exile”, as well as the first draft of “L’Homme révolté”.

Journée d'automne Vue Sur Le Lizieux Office De Tourisme Du Haut Lignon

Correspondence and encounters...

Camus had a long exchange of letters with Jean Grenier, more than 230 of them. Camus confides in Grenier about his physical pain, his solitude, his writing projects… and then with his friend Pascal Pia. The two men’s friendship dates back to Algiers, when they were journalists. Pia was working at Paris Soir, but had moved back to Clermont, and it was Pia who helped him get “L’Etranger” and “Le Mythe de Sisyphe” published by Gallimard. Francis Ponge at Le Chambon entrusted him with a typed copy of “Carnet du bois de pins”. Next came his meeting with André Chouraqui, who lived at Chaumargeais in Tence in the house lent to him by Doctor Héritier, and then with a curious Dominican, Father Raymond Bruckberger, writer, journalist and chaplain to the French Resistance. Brucke describes the Plateau as “an eagle’s nest of Huguenots that was also a nest of resistance!

"He was, as we say, a good man" Amélie, the boarding house housewife.

It was with great emotion and friendship for this country that Albert Camus would return several times, spending his September vacations with his family at the villa le Platane, côte de Molle in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.

A small booklet on Camus’ stays in Vellave is available to read at the tourist office.