There is no mystery in human creation. Will performs
this miracle. But at least there is no true creation without a secret. To be
sure, a succession of works can be but a series of approximations of the same
thought. But it is possible to conceive of another type of creator proceeding by
juxtaposition. Their works may seem to be devoid of interrelations. To a certain
degree, they are contradictory. But viewed all together, they resume their
natural grouping. From death, for instance, they derive their definitive
significance. They receive their most obvious light from the very life of their
author. At the moment of death, the succession of his works is but a collection
of failures. But if those failures all have the same resonance, the creator has
managed to repeat the image of his own condition, to make the air echo with the
sterile secret he possesses. -- Camus
