Albert Camus, French thinker and writer of Algeria (Nobel Literature Prize, 1957; d. 1960), was a man in search of self-understanding. ‘What is man?’ was motive and theme for much of his writing. His novels, The Stranger (1942), The Plague (1947) and The Fall (1956) explore human meaning or lack thereof in interrelationships of characters faced with ‘absurdity‘ of life. Camus’ essay, The Myth of Sisyphus (1955), explores ‘the absurd’ from a literary and philosophical perspective.

Albert Camus was atheist, yet he had good grasp of belief in God and sympathized with its standpoint. A favorite character of Camus was Don Juan, legendary womanizer for whom “nothing is vanity … except the hope of another life” (The Myth of Sisyphus, p 52). Don Juan is concerned with pleasures of this life and displays “legendary bravado, in that mad laughter of the healthy man provoking a non-existent God” (The Myth of Sisyphus, p 56). According to Camus, Don Juan believes “in three things,” “courage, intelligence, and women.” When a Franciscan priest offers to pray for Don Juan, Don Juan says,

Thank you, Father. I like to look on prayer as a form of courage.

[Albert Camus, Notebooks: 1935-1942 (NY: Paragon House, 1991), pp 180f]

Camus didn’t believe in God because “I cannot get lost in the glorification or the mere definition of a notion which eludes me and loses its meaning as soon as it goes beyond the frame of reference of my individual experience.” Camus was well aware of the paradox of God and evil, “either we are not free and God the all-powerful is responsible for evil or we are free and responsible but God is not all-powerful.” Camus “cannot understand what kind of freedom would be given me by a higher being.” Said Camus, “death is there as the only reality” (The Myth of Sisyphus, p 42).

“Camus was diagnosed with tuberculosis at the age of 17, and was heart-broken at having to give up his position as goalkeeper on the University of Algiers football team. He suffered relapses of TB throughout his life” (Lara Marlowe, ‘The Irish Times,’ 2013). Camus’ father, Lucien, was killed in battle in WWI, at age of 29, when Albert Camus was only 1. It is no wonder that death was integral to his thought.

Camus celebrates the happiness and wonder of children, the beauties of natural landscapes, in his prose, but had no wish to escape death and the absurd. Something which he did wish to escape was hope.

There is so much stubborn hope in the human heart. The most destitute men often end up by accepting illusion.

[The Myth of Sisyphus, p 74]

For Camus, hope is illusion.

An example of Camus’ writing for children:

It is time to speak of the fairies. In order to escape from the intrepid melancholy of expectation, it is time to create new worlds. Do not believe though, that fairy tales lie.

(‘Melusina’s Book’ – ‘Tales for Some Too Sad Children,’ 1934)

Example of Camus appreciating nature:

The high seas. The sun sinks and is swallowed by the fog long before it reaches the horizon. For a brief moment, the sea is pink on one side and blue on the other. Then the waters grow darker. The schooner slides, minute, over the surface of a perfect circle of thick, tarnished metal. And, at the most peaceful hour, as evening comes, hundreds of porpoises emerge from the water, frolic around us for a moment, then flee to the horizon where there are no men. With them gone, silence and the anguish of primitive waters are what remain.

[‘The Sea Close By’ in ‘Summer,’ 1954]

Myth and Symbol

Sisyphus story comes to us from Greek mythology. As penalty for his bad behavior, King Sisyphus, founder of Corinth, was punished by Zeus to push a rock, a boulder, up a hill, over and over. After mighty struggle to get the rock to the top, it would descend again to the plain below. So Sisyphus had to repeat his struggle with the rock’s weight again and again, in the underworld, forever.

Camus:

[The gods] had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. 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.

Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them.

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 . . .

I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment . . .

That hour like a breathingspace . . . is the hour of consciousness.

. . . he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.

[The Myth of Sisyphus, pp 88f]

The End

Bibliography

‘Melusina’s Book’ in Albert Camus, Youthful Writings, tr. Ellen Kennedy (NY: Vintage, 1977), p 227

‘The Sea Close By’ in Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, tr. Ellen Kennedy (NY: Vintage, 1970), p 175