Francine Faure
{{Short description|French mathematician, teacher, pianist, and second wife of Albert Camus}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2022}}
Francine Faure (6 December 1914 – 24 December 1979) was a French pianist specializing in Bach.{{citation|first=Deborah|last=Weagel|contribution=Musical and Verbal Counterpoint in Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould|pages=181–196|title=Essays on Music and the Spoken Word and on Surveying the Field|volume=7|series=Word and music studies|editor1-first=Suzanne M.|editor1-last=Lodato|editor2-first=David Francis|editor2-last=Urrows|publisher=Rodopi|year=2005|isbn=9789042018976}}. Footnote, p. 193: [https://books.google.com/books?id=w5AFddWhUhAC&pg=PA193 "In fact, Camus's second wife, Francine Faure, was a pianist who specialized in the music of Bach."] . She was also a mathematician.{{citation|title=Camus: Portrait of a Moralist|first=Stephen Eric|last=Bronner|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=2009|isbn=9780226075679|page=8|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TyOjcCm8XDMC&pg=PA8|quote=Francine Faure, a pretty if physically delicate mathematician from a provincial middle-class family in Oran}}. She was the second wife of Albert Camus, whom she met in 1937 in Algiers. They were married in Lyon on 3 December 1940.{{citation|title=Masterpieces of French Literature|series=Greenwood introduces literary masterpieces|first=Marilyn S.|last=Severson|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|year=2004|isbn=9780313314841|page=19|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UqeNR5qdHSkC&pg=PA19|quote=Francine Faure arrived in Lyon in December 1940, and she and Camus were married there on December 3. ... The couple returned to Oran in January 1941 where [...] his wife found some work as a substitute teacher.}} She came from a middle-class French family in Oran, Algeria, which was a French colony at the time. She also taught mathematics, sometimes as a substitute teacher.
Personal life
Francine's father Fernand Martial François Faure died in World War I, at the Marne, where Camus' father had also died. Her mother, Marie-Fernande Charlotte "Fernande" Faure ({{née|Albert}}), was considered by Camus biographer Olivier Todd to be domineering. Her grandfather had built part of the Oran harbour. Her maternal grandmother Clara Albert ({{née|Touboul}}; 1868–1940) was a Berber Jew and was born in Oran to Fredj Touboul (also reported as Fredja Abitboul) and Messaouda Touboul ({{née|Tabet}}; 1834–1890).{{cn|date=April 2024}}
Although Camus was indifferent if not hostile to formal marriage, the couple had twins, Catherine and Jean Camus, in Paris in 1945 after the city's liberation. Francine had moved there from Algeria after two years' separation from Albert, who was participating in the French resistance at the time.{{cn|date=April 2024}}
She was different from Camus' string of {{lang|fr|petites amies}}. Her beauty was striking, but her presence was reserved, unassuming, and gentle. And she had a {{lang|fr|cœur droit}} ('upright heart'), in the words of Camus."Camus, A Romance" by Elizabeth Hawes (2009) – Chapter 2.
Francine suffered from and was hospitalized for depression, for which insulin and electroshock therapy were at various times prescribed.{{citation|contribution=Biography of Albert Camus|first=Neil|last=Heims|pages=3–54|title=Albert Camus|editor-first=Harold|editor-last=Bloom|editor-link=Harold Bloom|publisher=Chelsea House|year=2003|isbn=9781438115153}}. On p. 41, Heims writes: [https://books.google.com/books?id=ihqHSbg41TUC&pg=PA41 "In 1953, Francine's pain at Camus's indifference and her unreciprocated love became overwhelming. It was expressed in a depression that grew in severity into a full blown illness which included a suicide attempt and severe withdrawal, staring straight ahead and repeating the name Maria Casarès. Francine was hospitalized and subject to more than thirty electroshock treatments."] At one point she attempted to throw herself from a balcony, whether to escape the hospital or to kill herself is not known.{{citation|title=God and the Devil are Fighting: The Scandal of Evil in Dostoyevsky and Camus|first=Stephen M.|last=O'Brien|series=PhD Thesis|publisher=City University of New York, Department of Comparative Literature|year=2008|isbn=9780549611370|page=221|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eF1oh-61WboC&pg=PA221|quote=Camus's second wife may have attempted suicide on two occasions by jumping, in one case from a balcony in Oran, in another instance from the second floor of the Sainte-Mandé psychiatric hospital in which she was being treated for depression. It is reasonable to think that these suicide attempts were related, at least partially, to the humiliation and disorientation that Francine may have felt because of Camus' open marital infidelity.}} Her depression was blamed in part on her husband's infidelities, namely his affair with María Casares. Camus told Francine, "They think I'm the guilty one.""Albert Camus: A Life" by Olivier Todd (1996) – Chapter 41.{{page needed|date=April 2024}}
File:Tombe Albert Camus et épouse.jpg.]]
Shortly after being awarded the Nobel Prize, Albert Camus mentioned in a letter to his cousin Nicole Chaperon how he was moved by the generosity of Francine, "whom I have never stopped loving in my bad way." In the same letter he said that Francine had "forgiven" him."Albert Camus: A Life" by Olivier Todd (1996) – Chapter 47.{{page needed|date=April 2024}}
She and Camus are buried together in Lourmarin.Luberon 2012 Dominique Auzias, Dominique Auzias, Jean-Paul Labourdette, Collectif, Jean-Paul Labourdette – 2012 "La tombe de Camus et de son épouse Francine Faure ressemble à deux jardinets piqués de romarins, de lavande et d'iris."
References
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Category:20th-century French mathematicians