The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain whence the stone would fall back under 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. However, according to another tradition, he was inclined to the profession of highwayman. I see no contradiction in this. Opinions differ on the reasons that made him a futile laborer of the underworld. He complains, with a certain levity to the gods. He stole their secrets. Aegina Asopo daughter was raped by Jupiter. The father was shocked by that disappearance and complained to Sisyphus. He, who knew of the abduction, offered to tell about it Asopos with the proviso that give water to the citadel of Corinth. Preferred the benediction of water to the celestial rays. Therefore
was punished in hell. 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 also said that Sisyphus, being near death, rashly wanted to test the love of his wife. ordered him to cast his unburied body into the middle of the public square. Sisyphus 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 punish his wife. But when he came to see this world, enjoyed water and sun, warm stones and the sea, and refused to return to the infernal darkness.
Recalls, signs of anger, warnings were of no avail. He lived many years before the curve of the gulf, the sparkling sea and the smiles of earth. It took a decree of the gods. Mercury came and seized the impudent man by force, snatching him from his joys and forcibly took him to the underworld, where his rock was ready. You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. It is therefore 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. Is the price you paid for the passions of this earth. not tell us anything about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are made for the imagination of anime. With regard to this, all you see is all the effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll and push it up a slope a hundred times over, one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, help of a shoulder covered mass of clay, a foot that fits the tension of the arms, the wholly human security two earth-clotted hands. At the end of his long effort measured by the area without sky and time without depth, the goal is reached. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to scale it back up toward the summit and down again to the plain. Sisyphus interests me during that return, that pause. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself.
I see that man going back down slowly but toward the torment which never know the end. That hour like a breathing space which returns as surely as his suffering, is the hour of consciousness. In each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, superior to his fate. Is stronger than his rock. If this myth is tragic that is because its hero is conscious.
What would, in effect, his punishment if each step will sustain the hope of succeeding?. The workman of today works every day of their lives in the same tasks and this fate is no less absurd.
But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes aware. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the full extent of his wretched condition: it 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.
For Therefore, if the decrease in pain a few days ago, can also be done with joy. This word is not in most. I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and the pain was at first. When images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy arises in the heart of man is the victory of the rock, the rock itself. The great anxiety is too heavy so that it can 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 his tragedy begins when he knows. But
en el mismo instante, ciego y desesperado, reconoce que el único vínculo que le une al mundo es la mano fresca de una muchacha. Entonces resuena una frase desesperada: "A pesar de tantas pruebas, mi edad avanzada y la grandeza de mi alma me hacen juzgar que todo está bien". El Edipo de Sófocles, como el Kirilov de Dostoievsky, da así la fórmula de la victoria absurda. La sabiduría antigua coincide con el heroismo moderno. No se descubre lo absurdo sin sentirse tentado a escribir algún manual de la dicha. " Eh, cómo!. ¿ Por caminos tan estrechos...?". Pero no hay más que un mundo. La dicha y lo absurdo son dos hijos de la misma tierra. Son inseparables. Sería un error decir que la dicha nace forzosamente del absurd discovery. It also happens that the sense of the absurd springs from happiness. "I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and this word is sacred. Resounds in the universe and man's limited. It teaches that all is not and has not been exhausted.
out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a penchant for futile sufferings.
makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men. All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols.
In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, a thousand little voices rise beautiful land. Unconscious secret calls, invitations from all faces are the necessary reverse and the prize of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is necessary to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his efforts will never end. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least no more than one to which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. Moreover, he knows he is 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 origin entirely everything human is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night never ends, is always running. The rock is still rolling. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. It always finds its load. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He also concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each of the grains of this stone, each mineral flake of that mountain full of darkness itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Transcript
Marcelo Zamora for all mortals who dare to pay the price of a destination, perhaps tragic, but their own.
05.16.1998, Rosario, Argentina.
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