For the dramatist the passion for the impossible is just as valid a subject for study as
avarice or adultery (CTOP, vi).

Caligula's place within the developing corpus of Camus's work is unique.
Began with the fiery exuberance of youth, it underwent periodic revision
almost to the year of his death, testifying to the subtle transformations of
sensitivity and perspective that his work reveals.

Four stages are worthy of note. The initial inspiration to dramatize the
life of the Roman emperor flowered in the climate that gave birth to Nuptials
and A Happy Death. The latter work certainly seems to be Caligula's twin.
Both express a passionate will to live and a contempt for the hypocrisy of
the everyday, torn as they are between celebrating life and coming to terms
with death. Struggling to emerge from the habitual, the daily routine and
social ritual, the individual stands forth in hard-won uniqueness, only to
come face-to-face with a reality of death made more poignant by that sin-
gular achievement. The intrinsic tension seems almost to invite repose. Its
ambiguous legacy haunts all three works--as it does The Minotaur of 1939.
This legacy invites the emergent individual to merge with nature, to become
one with it and to resemble nothing. Much here is reminiscent of Nietzsche's
brilliant study of the Dionysian, which impressed Camus in those years. ¹

This initial period is submerged and somewhat hidden by Camus's in-
creasing preoccupation with the absurd, which surfaces in 1938 and 1939.
As A Happy Death gives way to The Stranger, so Caligula is put aside, only
to be taken up again after The Stranger is completed and The Myth of Sisyphus
nears final form. The version that first appeared in public resulted from this
radical rethinking. Here we begin with the emperor's realization that "men
die and they are not happy." No attention is paid to Caligula's life before
the death of his sister and mistress, Drusilla. Rather, the focus is upon his
rebellion against what he feels to be a metaphysical injustice. "Really, this
world of ours, this scheme of things as they call it, is quite intolerable. That's

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