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AN EMPEROR’S ABSURD JOURNEY TO “THE MOON” FOR THE REVOLT TO THE TRUTH: ALBERT CAMUS’ CALIGULA

Caligula, which was completed and published by Albert Camus in 1944, is the first play written by the author individually. Camus fictionalizes his work, which consists of four acts, inspired by the life story of the third Roman emperor, Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known by the pseudonym Caligula. In this sense, in Caligula, which has a biographical as well as a historical characteristics, the main protagonist who gave the work his name, is an extraordinary emperor who reveals his revolt by falling into nonsense. Caligula sets a seemingly impossible goal to rebel against the mortal world. He wants to reach something that is not of this world, the “moon”. Although this desire can be interpreted as being distant from the truth of life at first glance, on the contrary, it is directly related to the truth. Therefore, Caligula is not a mad man as it is thought. He is a being who has attained the truth of the world he was thrown into, and therefore suffers and experiences an existential crisis. The tragedy of Caligula, who refused to act according to the truth and exhibited a disengagement with his own will and choice, lies in the dilemma that he lives between his firm belief that he can achieve the goal he set for rebellion and the knowledge that he will never reach it. This is the point at which the emperor falls into the absurd. In this article, prepared on Caligula, it is aimed both to trace existentialism, which is in the field of literature as well as philosophy, and to examine Camus' concepts such as absurd and revolt.



Anahtar Kelimeler
Albert Camus, Caligula, existentialist theatre, existentialist philosophy, absurd, revolt.
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