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.<P>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. <P>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 n 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.<P>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 that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.<P>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.<P>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.<P>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, Edipus 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' Edipus, like Dostoevsky's Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory. Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism.<P>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 Edipus, 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.<P>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. <P>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.<P>(An essay by Albert Camus--I thought you would all enjoy knowing "the rest of the story" behind our Sisyphus. Keep on rolling that stone, buddy!!)<P><BR>CJ<P>------------------<BR>Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

CJ,<P>I was wondering how long it would take someone to come up with this. I even left a post ribbing Sisyphus a little bit.<P>But from time to time, we all play the role of the absurd hero dutifully pushing his rock up hill.<P>Bumper

<I>Camus</I> is considered some kind of French intellectual treasure. And perhaps that essay loses something in the translation. At least it makes people aware of that particular character in mythology. But really, has anyone ever seen a more impenetrable thicket of clarity-free prose? <P>The prisoner pushes a rock up a hill under sentence to do so. The rock falls back down. He has to start over. It sucks. But it keeps happening. Why read anything more into it? (coincidentally, this would closely parrallel how Hemingway would have treated the subject).

Sisyphus,<P>You are still in the Gethsame portion of rolling your rock--the night of torment when melancholy sets in on your soul and the grief is too heavy to bear. The interesting part of this essay is not that he is rolling the rock due to an enforced punishment, although that is true enough. No, the interesting part of this essay is that point in time when Sisyphus' rock rolls back down the hill and he walks down after it. <P>In the beginning, I'm sure it seemed like torture to him to keep rolling that stupid rock--what's the point? It just rolls back down again! It sucks. He will never attain his goal or be done! That sucks too. But eventually (no doubt after a couple thousand years), he begins to accept his fate. Okay, rolling a rock uphill is still frustrating work, but it is nonetheless his destiny, and there is a little comfort in that. Another couple thousand years go by, and he realizes that rolling the rock to the top is not the point--it's how it's rolled (attaining perfection is not the point, it's the journey). The rolling is the thing--not attaining the top. So he becomes the heaven's and earth's best rock roller. Another couple thousand years go by, and he sees that there's another lesson: this time it's not in the rolling (the journey) but in going down after the rock has rolled down. He can go fast, he can go slow, he can detour all over the place, but eventually he HAS to end up back at the rock and push it back up again. He may at first have resented having to go back down, then he enjoyed the stroll going back down, and eventually he felt contentment and even joy at the realization that he is fulfilling his destiny and he is committed to his rock. Last, but not least, he realizes that in every life, there are rocks, but without the rocks, we would never realize the full joy of the walk downhill. <P>Keep on rolling, Sisyphus! Only a few thousand more years to go!<P><BR>CJ<P>------------------<BR>Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

"You are still in the Gethsame portion of rolling your rock--the night of torment when melancholy sets in on your soul and the grief is too heavy to bear. "<P>Sis - Is this the reality for you here, or are you simply feeling like the rock will never reach the top? Are you still the tragic hero - or was this you in your marriage. What is the symbolism for you? Are you in need of a new *name* here or are you still rolling that same boulder over and over and over? I read back on some of your postings and it seems that you are trying to break the penalty? Are you going to be able to walk down the other side of the mountain at some point in time? <BR>Curious because isn't that what we all are facing here? We are in marriages that are in need of repair in some way, shape or form. Sis is simply epitomizing that by his bold NN. We are all rolling the boulder to the top and watching it roll back down. Sometimes not all the way, sometimes we catch it before it makes it to the bottom, but always, we are walking back down the mountain to begin anew, because we have made the commitment to do so. Will the boulder ever roll down the other side? Is the other side a plateau? So many questions...<P>For now.....<BR> <P>------------------<BR>The only way out is to go through<BR>- Robert Frost