The Myth of Sisyphus
by Albert Camus
T
he 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. Egina, the
daughter of Esopus, was carried off by Jupiter. The father was shocked by that
disappearance and complained to Sisyphus. He, who knew of the abduction,
offered to tell about it on condition that Esopus would give water to the citadel of
Corinth. To the celestial thunderbolts he preferred the benediction of water. He
was punished for this in the underworld. Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put
Death in chains. Pluto could not endure the sight of his deserted, silent empire. He
dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from the hands of her conqueror.
It is said 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 earth. A decree of the gods was necessary. Mercury came and seized the
impudent man by the collar and, snatching him from his joys, lead him forcibly
back to the underworld, where his rock was ready for him.
You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd 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 the 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 everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his 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 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." Sophocles’ Oedipus, like
Dostoevsky’s Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory. Ancient
wisdom confirms modern heroism.
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.
All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His
rock is a thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment,
silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its 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 efforts 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 slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated
actions which become 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.
* * *
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and
that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth
living amounts to answering the fundamental question of
philosophy. All the rest—whether or not the world has three
dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—
comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.
(Albert Camus)
* * *
