Autumn when leaves become flowers
While flaneuring in Victoria this autumn, I encountered a bookstore window with the following quote:
“Autumn is a second spring, when every leaf is a flower. Albert Camus.”
Ironically the bookstore was along Oak Bay’s main street. A bit of research turns up that this is not exactly what Camus wrote. The quote is from one of his plays, where in the same scene, one of the characters states, “where autumn has the face of spring and the spring smells of poverty.” Now that’s more like Camus! (More on this later.)
That said, I loved the quote as it captures what I had been experiencing for weeks before our Victoria visit. I had been taking lots of photos of autumn leaves as for some reason they were more spectacular this year. Indeed, they were like flowers. Other Calgarians made similar comments on social media.
I continued to take more photos of autumn leaves while in Victoria and on a Southern Ontario visit, as well as Calgary. Here is a sample of my autumn 2023 leaves or should I say flowers collection.
Misquoted
“Autumn is a second spring, when every leaf is a flower. Albert Camus.”
I am a big fan of Albert Camus, the existentialist writer with several of his books in my collection. But I was surprised by this quote as he was such dark and melancholy writer - and person. Because of my doubt, I did some digging and it turns out the quote is from Act 2 in his 1944 play, “The Misunderstanding.”
The quote combines statements from two different characters in the play. And when you read the dialogue, the quote isn’t as “rosy” as it seemed on the bookstore window.
Read for yourself:
MARTHA: And often, in the harsh, bleak spring we have here, I dream of the sea and the flowers over there. [After a short silence, in a low, pensive voice] And what I picture makes me blind to everything around me. [After gazing at her thoughtfully for some moments, JAN sits down facing her.]
JAN: I can understand that. Spring over there grips you by the throat and flowers burst into bloom by the thousands, above the white walls. If you roamed the hills that overlook my town
for only an hour or so, you’d bring back in your clothes a sweet, honeyed smell of yellow roses. [MARTHA, too, sits down.]
MARTHA: How wonderful that must be! What we call spring here is one rose and a couple of buds struggling to keep alive in the monastery garden. [Scornfully] And that’s enough to stir the hearts of the men in this part of the world. Their hearts are as stingy as that rose tree. A breath of richer air would wilt them; they have the springtime they deserve.
JAN: You’re not quite fair; you have the autumn, too.
MARTHA: What’s the autumn?
JAN: A second spring when every leaf’s a flower. [He looks at her keenly.] Perhaps it’s the same thing with some hearts; perhaps they’ll blossom if you helped them with your patience.
MARTHA: I’ve no patience for this dreary Europe, where autumn has the face of spring and the spring smells of poverty. No, I prefer to picture those other lands over which summer breaks in flame, where the winter rains flood the cities, and where ... things are what they are.
Camus, Albert. Caligula and Three Other Plays. Justin O’Brien, trans. New York: Knopf, 1966. Pages 104–05.
Last Word
As an existentialist, I choose to see and enjoy the beauty in the different seasons, be that of nature, or my personal life. As we move from autumn to winter, I will enjoy Calgary’s intense blue skies, our chinook arch clouds and the feathery hoar frost mornings.
I choose to see the beauty in the world we share as much as possible, which reminds me of another quote “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, in her 1878 novel Molly Brawn. I wonder in what context she wrote that.