The Myth of Sisyphus

“It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.”

Albert Camus wrote this is his book The Myth of Sisyphus, published in 1955. It describes an experience many people have during the course of a lifetime - when all that has been constructed to elude this weary feeling begins to crack, and the absurd is confronted. Camus talks a lot of "the absurd": here is a group of people kicking around a ball, there is a man exchanging processed trees or metal for food. To Camus the absurd is something that cannot be destroyed, but accepted, subjected, and then risen above. 

In Greek myth, Sisyphus was a man who angered the gods, and so was punished for all eternity. They saw this mortal man who would not cower and revere them, so they devised a torture that would never end: Sisyphus was condemned to roll a boulder up hill for hours on end only to have it roll back down to the bottom once the task was complete. Of course, the task would never be complete, it would never have any purpose, this unfortunate man would toil for all eternity and never once have anything to show for it. But the thing that really makes this punishment terrible is that Sisyphus is conscious of his plight, and knows there is no hope of anything more. To us reading this story, it is the fact of consciousness that makes the unending labour so unbearable - it is the knowledge that the labour is meaningless and will never end. 

But it is when the rock rolls back into the depths, and Sisyphus must walk down to resume his task, that Camus' imagination finds the man. I'll quote:


         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....The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that can not 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 the 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 arises 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 Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Oedipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same moment, blind and desperate, he realizes that the only bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark rings out: "Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well." 
           One does not discover the absurd without being tempted 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 felling 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 suffering. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.
         ...
         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.