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The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
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.
Aegina, the daughter of Aesopus, 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 Aesopus 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 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 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.
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发表于 2016-7-10 16:30:52