The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a
rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own
weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful
punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
If one believes Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most
prudent of mortals. According to another tradition, however, he was disposed to
practice the profession of highwayman. I see no contradiction in this. Opinions
differ as to the reasons why he became the futile laborer of the underworld. To
begin with, he is accused of a certain levity in
regard to the gods. He stole their secrets.
It is said also that Sisyphus, being near to death, rashly
wanted to test his wife's love. He ordered her to cast his unburied body into
the middle of the public square. Sisyphus woke up in the underworld. And there,
annoyed by an obedience so contrary to human love, he
obtained from Pluto permission to return to earth in order to chastise his
wife. But when he had seen again the face of this world, enjoyed water and sun,
warm stones and the sea, he no longer wanted to go back to the infernal
darkness. Recalls, signs of anger, warnings were of no avail. Many years more
he lived facing the curve of the gulf, the sparkling sea, and the smiles of the
earth. A decree of the gods was necessary. Mercury came and seized the impudent
man by the collar and, snatching him from his joys, led him forcibly back to
the underworld, where his rock was ready for him.
You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the aburd hero. He is, as much through his passions as
through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his
passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is
exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for
the passions of this earth. Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the
underworld. Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them. As
for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise
the huge stone, to roll it and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one
sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder
bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms
outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. At the very
end of his long effort measured by skyless space and
time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone
rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push
it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain. It is during
that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A
face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man
going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he
will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as
surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those
moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the
gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.
If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is
conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of
succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works every day in his life at the
same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare
moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless
and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he
thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture
at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted
by scorn.
If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it
can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus
returning toward his rock, and th
sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too tightly to
memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that
melancholy rises in man's heart: this is the rock's victory, this is the rock
itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of
One does not discover the absurd without attempting to
write a manual of happiness. "What! by such
narrow ways--?" There is but one world, however. Happiness and the absurd
are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to
say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as
well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness. "I conclude
that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in
the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been,
exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction
and a preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which
must be settled among men.
All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate
belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he
contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly
restored to silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up.
Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the
necessary reverse and price of victory. there is no sun
without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes
and his effort will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there
is no higher destiny, or at least there is but one which he concludes is
inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of
his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life,
Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that silent pivoting he contemplates
that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him,
combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced
of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who
knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of
the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the
higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that
all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither
sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that
night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the
heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
---Albert Camus---(Translation by Justin
O'Brien, 1955)
In your NB, please complete Journal # 3: Part I: Explain
how this essay is related to The Stranger. Use evidence from the text. Part II:
What is it about your life that resembles Sisyphus' plight? What is your
relationship to your rock? Is the struggle itself enough for you? Would you
describe pushing a rock up a hill heaven, hell, or something in between?