## Myth of Sisyphus The gods had laid a doom upon Sisyphus, to roll without end a heavy stone up the brow of a mountain, from whose height it would fall again of its own weight. They deemed, and rightly, that no sorrow could surpass the pain of toil without hope or end. If a man trusteth Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of mortal men. Yet another telling saith he plied the craft of a robber upon the highways. I see no strife between these tales. Men differ in their judgments as to why he was made the vain laborer of the underworld. First, they charge him with lightness and irreverence toward the gods, for he stole their secrets. When Ægina, the daughter of Æsopus, was stolen away by Jupiter, her father, sorely vexed, sought news of her. Sisyphus, knowing well the deed, offered to betray it—but only if Æsopus would bring water unto the citadel of Corinth. Thus, to heavenly thunderbolts he preferred the blessing of a living spring. For this bargain was he cursed in the lands of the dead. Moreover, Homer telleth that Sisyphus once bound Death herself in chains. Pluto, lord of the shades, could brook no longer the silence and desolation of his realm. In wrath he sent the god of war, who freed Death from her bonds and gave her back her dreadful office. It is further told that, nearing death, Sisyphus sought to put his wife's love to trial. He bade her cast his unburied body into the midst of the market-square. Thus he awoke in the underworld, and being angered by so unloving an obedience, he won leave from Pluto to return to the earth and chastise her. But when he had once more beheld the fair face of this world, and drunk of its waters, and felt the sun upon his flesh, the warm stones beneath his feet, and the shining of the sea, he would not go back to the shadowed realm. No summons, no sign of wrath, no warning would move him. Many years he lived thus, rejoicing in the curve of the gulf, the glitter of the waters, and the smiles of the earth. Yet in the end, a new decree of the gods was spoken. Mercury came down, seized the bold man by the neck, and tearing him from his sweet joys, led him back with violence to the underworld, where his stone awaited him. Thou hast already perceived that Sisyphus is the hero of the absurd. He is such as much by his passions as by his punishment. His scorn for the gods, his loathing of death, and his fierce love for life won for him that unspeakable doom wherein all his strength is spent upon a work that cometh to naught. Such is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth. Naught is told us of Sisyphus in the shadowed realm. Myths are shaped that the soul of man might breathe life into them. As for this tale, one beholdeth only the endless striving of a body strained to raise the monstrous stone, to roll it, to thrust it up the steep, time and again. One beholdeth the face drawn in anguish, the cheek pressed hard against the rock, the shoulder heaving against the clodded mass, the foot bracing its weight, the arms flung wide for a new beginning, the wholly human sureness of two earth-caked hands. At the end of his long toil, measured only by a heavenless sky and a time without depth, the task is done. Then doth Sisyphus watch the stone plunge downward in swift ruin unto the lower world from whence he must lift it anew toward the height. Once more he maketh his way down unto the plain. It is in that return, that breathing-space, that Sisyphus draweth my eye. A face worn so near to stone becometh stone itself. I behold that man treading downward with heavy yet steady step toward the torment whose end he shall never behold. That hour which is his breathing-space, returning as surely as his sorrow returneth, that hour is the hour of thought. At each of those moments when he forsaketh the high places and sinketh back toward the dwellings of the gods, he is greater than his doom. He is stronger than his stone. If this tale be tragic, it is for that the hero is aware. Where should his torment lie, if at every step the hope of victory did bear him up? The workman of our day toils all his life at the selfsame labours, and his fate is no less steeped in absurdity. Yet it is tragic only in those rare hours when he becomes aware of it. Sisyphus, the labourer among the gods, helpless yet defiant, knoweth full well the breadth of his misery; it is this that he pondereth as he descendeth the slope. That clear sight, which should make his torment, also crowneth his triumph. For there is no fate that may not be overcome by scorn. If the descent be sometimes made in sorrow, yet may it likewise be made in joy. Nor is that word too strong. Again I imagine Sisyphus turning back unto his stone, and the sorrow lay at the beginning. When the fair visions of the earth cling too fast to memory, when the call of happiness groweth too sharp, then doth sadness rise in the heart of man: this is the stone’s victory; this is the stone itself. The boundless grief groweth too great to be borne. Such are our nights of Gethsemane. Yet, heavy truths, once known and faced, do lose their sting. Thus Œdipus, at the first, doth heed fate unwittingly; but from the hour he knoweth his doom, his tragedy is born. And yet, in that same hour—blind, cast down, forsaken—he findeth that the only tie which bindeth him to the world is the cool hand of a maid. Then there soundeth that mighty word: “Amid so many woes, my long years and the greatness of my soul do teach me that all is well.” Thus doth the Œdipus of Sophocles, like the Kirilov of Dostoevsky, give the secret of triumph over the absurd. The wisdom of the ancients confirmeth the heroism of our own age. One doth not behold the absurd without feeling the urge to pen a manual of happiness. “What! By such narrow paths—?” Yet there is but one world, and no other. Happiness and the absurd are both sons of the selfsame earth; they are bound each to each and cannot be sundered. It were folly to claim that happiness must needs spring forth from the discovery of the absurd; it is as oft that the feeling of absurdity riseth from happiness itself. “I conclude that all is well,” saith Œdipus, and that word is sacred. It ringeth through the wild and narrow realm of man, teaching that not all is spent nor shall be. It driveth out from the world that god who had entered it filled with weariness and a love for needless sorrow. It maketh of fate a thing human, to be dealt with by men among men. All the silent gladness of Sisyphus is wrapped therein. His fate is his own. His stone is his burden and his lot, and he owneth it. In like manner, the man who hath known the absurd, when he beholdeth his torment, casteth down all false gods. In a world restored to its first silence, the thousand small voices of the earth arise anew—unseen callings, secret summons, the speechless invitations of every face. These are the rightful price of victory. There is no sun without its shadow; he must know the night who would love the day. The absurd man giveth his yea, and from henceforth his toil shall be without end. If there be any personal fate, it is no fate from above, or if there be, it is of such kind as he reckoneth both needful and unworthy. For the rest, he knoweth himself to be the master of his days. At that fine turning, when a man looketh back upon his life—Sisyphus, pausing a breath ere he returneth unto his stone—in that small pivot he beholdeth the chain of his deeds, once broken, now gathered under the eye of remembrance and soon to be sealed by death. Thus, knowing full well that all things human spring from none but man, like a blind man longing for sight though he knoweth the night shall never end, he presseth on still. The stone rolleth yet. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the hill. Ever and again one findeth one's burden anew. Yet Sisyphus teacheth the highest faithfulness, that denieth the gods and lifteth the stones of life. He too saith, “All is well.” This world, henceforth without a master, seemeth to him neither barren nor vain. Each grain of that stone, each speck of that mountain steeped in night, maketh a world entire. The striving itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. We must hold Sisyphus to be happy.