"A keynote of Calderon’s tragic view of life is his deep-seated realization that a man can be responsible through his own wrongdoing for the wrongdoing of another. This realization probably derives from Calderón’s own family experience. In La devoción de la cruz (c. 1625; Devotion to the Cross) [...], the heart of the tragedy lies in the fact that the greatest sinner is also the most sinned against—in that others, before he was born, had begun to dig his grave" (Parker 2026).

The play was translated for the Festival D'Angers – founded in 1950 and still existing today as Festival D'Anjou – of which he was an artistic director in 1953 and again in 1957, where he selected another Spanish play, The Knight from Olmedo, by Lope de Vega, the predecessor of Calderon. Camus translated this particular piece upon the request of the actor Marcel Herrand (1897-1953), who passed away before the festival took place (see foreword written by Camus, p. 11).

The stark tradegy was performed in June 1953, starring Maria Casarès, who had assisted Camus in the translation, Serge Reggiani, Paul Oettly and Jean Marchat (Lottman: 524-25), and was a success: "Camus' adaptations received national press attention, and locally the press would say that the Calderón work was so perfectly performed it could never again be played on an ordinary theater stage." (Lottman: 525)


After WWII, Albert Camus (1913-1960) became, as a novelist and playwright, moralist and political theorist, "the spokesman of his own generation and the mentor of the next, not only in France but also in Europe and eventually the world" (Cruickshank 2026).

The presentation-inscription reads: "à Sylvester | pour son salut | et avec la fidèle et | cordiale pensée | d'Albert Camus".

Sources and further reading:

Aronson, Ronald. (Winter 2022 Edition). Albert Camus. In Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/camus/

Cruickshank, J. (2026, July 31). Albert Camus. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-Camus

Lottman, H. R. (1979). Albert Camus: A biography. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Parker, A.A. (2026, May 21). Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pedro-Calderon-de-la-Barca

Todd, O. (1998). Albert Camus: A life (B. Ivry, Trans.). Vintage.

Zaretsky, Robert (4 March 2018). 'No Longer the Person I Was': The Dazzling Correspondence of Albert Camus and Maria Casarès. Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 04 September 2026.