Mystery of a killer’s name
QUESTION Why did Albert Camus choose the name Meursault for his anti-hero in his existential novel The Stranger?
As A former French teacher of 38 years standing, I would be ashamed if I couldn’t help with this one.
Camus’s novel L’Etranger (usually translated as The stranger or The Outsider) is the story of a French-Algerian drifter called Meursault, who kills an Arab on a beach. Camus never explained why he gave his character this name.
Camus’s first novel A Happy Death, written between 1936 and 1938, though not published until 1971, features a character with the similar name Patrice Mersault, without the first ‘u’. The 1942 manuscript for L’Etranger used the same surname for the main character.
Perhaps it was chosen because the name offers us the French word mer (sea) and the other half, ‘sault’, sounds like sot (meaning fool) referring to the character’s act of craziness committed by the sea.
Along the line, the name was changed to Meursault. This is the name of a small commune in the Burgundy region regarded for its white wine.
The town held an annual literary contest, awarding 3,000 bottles of wine to a work of literature highlighting the region. Perhaps Camus made the alteration jokingly with the idea that it might make him more likely to win the prize.
It is also possible his publishers made the change. ‘Meur’ is suggestive of meurt from the French verb mourir (to die) since the anti-hero will go to the guillotine.
Whatever the reason, L’Etranger is a great 20th century novel, which gives A-level French students food for thought.
Ian MacDonald, Billericay, Essex.
QUESTION We read about ‘tonnes of carbon dioxide’ How big is a tonne of CO 2?
THE volume occupied by a given mass of a gas depends on the temperature and pressure because gases are readily compressible. At the International Organisation for standardisation standard temperature of 15C and pressure of 1013.25 hPa, a tonne of carbon dioxide will occupy a volume of 505 cubic metres, or 17,826 cubic feet.
This would fill 20 per cent of an Olympic size swimming pool and is roughly the volume of a three-bedroom house.
David Sharp, Hoddesdon, Herts.
QUESTION What is the art in Oberhauser’s lair in the Bond movie Spectre?
FurTHEr to the earlier answer, Oberhauser’s stolen Picasso and Modigliani were a nod to an earlier scene in Dr No.
It was filmed in 1961 after Goya’s painting of the Duke of Wellington was stolen from the National Gallery. Bond enters Dr No’s lair and is mildly surprised to see the portrait on an easel. A neat joke.
In real life, the painting had been stolen by Kempton Bunton, a quixotic character, whose reason for trying to ransom it for £140,000 has a topical ring to it.
After the painting was returned undamaged, he told his trial he would have used the ransom money to set up a charity ‘to buy television licences for old and poor people who seem to be neglected in an affluent society’.
He was sentenced to just three months in prison.
Bunton’s story is being made into a film under the working title The Duke, with Jim Broadbent in the lead role with Helen Mirren as his wife. It’s due to be released next year.
Mike Ogden, Worksop, Notts.