See Albert Camus’ Historic Lecture, “The Human Crisis,” Performed by Actor Viggo Mortensen

in Literature, Philosophy | August 9th, 2018 4 Comments

Back in 2016, New York City staged a month-long fes­ti­val cel­e­brat­ing Albert Camus’ his­toric vis­it to NYC in 1946. One event in the fes­ti­val fea­tured actor Vig­go Mortensen giv­ing a read­ing of Camus’ lec­ture,“La Crise de l’homme” (“The Human Cri­sis”) at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty–the very same place where Camus deliv­ered the lec­ture 70 years earlier–down to the very day (March 28, 1946). The read­ing was ini­tial­ly cap­tured on a cell phone, and broad­cast live using Face­book live video. But then came a more pol­ished record­ing, cour­tesy of Columbi­a’s Mai­son Française. Note that Mortensen takes the stage around the 11:45 mark.

“The Human Cri­sis” will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. 

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in April, 2016.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Camus Explains Why Hap­pi­ness Is Like Com­mit­ting a Crime—”You Should Nev­er Admit to it” (1959)

Hear Albert Camus Read the Famous Open­ing Pas­sage of The Stranger (1947)

Albert Camus Talks About Nihilism & Adapt­ing Dostoyevsky’s The Pos­sessed for the The­atre, 1959


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Comments (4)
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  • Ronny says:
    August 10, 2018 at 8:32 am

    Real­ly quite mar­vel­lous. Thank you.

    Reply
  • Kumar Alphonse says:
    August 14, 2018 at 8:08 pm

    Real­ly good to read the infor­ma­tion.

    Thanks,
    Kumar

    Reply
  • Eileen Grundstrom says:
    October 18, 2020 at 1:10 pm

    Excel­lent lec­ture. Thought pro­vok­ing for sure. Dis­cus­sion is superb. Intel­li­gent gift­ed peo­ple.

    Reply
  • Cecelia says:
    August 31, 2021 at 6:55 pm

    The post lec­ture talk was asolute­ly ruined by the woman speak­er’s con­stant loud laugh­ing and non-ver­bal nois­es — so unbe­liev­ably irri­tat­ing. Maybe ask speak­ers to keep it down in future, or at least cov­er their mike if they are going to be so loud and unre­strained. Her mike seemed to be up much loud­er than the men’s mikes too, which meant I had to keep the sound down because of her loud­ness and then could­n’t hear Vigo! Sort it out next time please!

    Reply

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