The gods thought there was no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labour. Sisyphus earned it by scorning the gods, hating death, and loving life — he chained Death and later cheated Hades to return to the sun.
Camus is interested in the pause: “It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me.” Going back down, conscious of his fate, he is superior to it. “There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.” “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Lines to Remember
1 quotationsThe struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
La lutte elle-même vers les sommets suffit à remplir un cœur d'homme. Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.
Context & when to use it
The absurd hero, conscious of his fate, is superior to it.
For meaning without metaphysics, perseverance, the dignity of repetitive work.
Sententiae
phrases in the originalIl faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux
Origin. Camus, last line of The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). — Albert Camus
For meaning in the struggle itself.
Explore Next
related by shared connectionsThe Dover Cliff
Edgar leads his blind father to a “cliff” that isn’t there, lets him leap, and convinces him he has survived by a miracle — curing his despair with a theatrical trick.
To Be, or Not to Be
Hamlet’s soliloquy weighing life against death — the most famous speech in English, and a compressed treatise on suicide, fear and the paralysis of thought.
Albert Camus
Algerian-born novelist and essayist of the absurd and of revolt — “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
Absurdism
Camus’s position — the conflict between our longing for meaning and the world’s silence cannot be resolved, only lived with in lucid revolt.
Eternal Recurrence
Nietzsche’s thought-experiment — would you will to live your life again, every moment, infinitely? The supreme test of affirming life.
Vyāsa
The legendary sage who, Hindu tradition holds, divided the Veda into four, composed the Mahābhārata (in which he is also a character and the grandfather of both warring clans), and wrote the Purāṇas — the archetypal author of Indian tradition.