Sisyphus was a punished man in Greek mythology. He was punished by pushing a boulder up to the top of the mountain, and each time he reached the top of the mountain, the boulder rolled back down the hill, and so on and on. In the Western context, the adjective "Sisyphean" refers to "a never-ending and futile task."
Sisyphus was the son of King Aeolian (in Asia Minor, on the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea) and the founder and king of the city of Corinth (Ephyra). Sisyphus was known for his cunning and wit, which led him to hoard a great deal of wealth.
When Zeus kidnapped Aegina, the daughter of the river god Asopus, the river god went to Corinth in search of a daughter. Sisyphus, who learned of this, revealed Aina's whereabouts to the river god in exchange for a river that flowed through all seasons. Having revealed Zeus's secrets, Zeus sent Thanatos, the god of death, to escort him. Sisyphus cleverly kidnapped death and made death away from the human world for a time. Zeus had to order Ares, the god of war, to go to Sisyphus to release Sanatos. Upon his release, Sanatos immediately took Sisyphus' soul.
Before entering the underworld, Sisyphus instructed his wife, Merope, not to bury his body. In the Underworld, Sisyphus pleaded with Persephone to say that he was a man who had not been buried and was not qualified to stay in the Underworld. He asked for three days to deal with his affairs, and he agreed.
Sisyphus did not follow the covenant. When he saw the rivers and mountains again, and felt the sun and rain, he never wanted to return to the eerie hell.
The edicts, angers, and warnings of Hades were of no avail. This infuriated Hades completely. Sisyphus was punished by the gods by ordering him to push a boulder up to the top of the mountain. Every time he exerted all his strength, the boulder would slip out of his hands and roll back to the bottom of the mountain when he was about to reach the top....... He had to do endless futile efforts.
Titian's Sisyphus, 1548-49, Prado Museum
Antonio Zanchi, Sisyphus, circa 1660-65
Petro Vecchia, Sisyphus, early 1660s
Sisyphus, like Autolycus and Prometheus, was a deception or thief in ancient Greek mythology. He deceived Death—and twice—and was punished with eternal hard labor, which he paid for. Just, why is he an image that constantly pushes the boulder ? It's a puzzle that seems to have something to do with the Greeks' imagination of the underworld—that everything is in vain after death. There are also scholars who believe that this is related to the ancient people's view of nature: Sisyphus pushed stones to symbolize the disc of the sun, which rose from the east every day and then sank into the west.
Sisyphus was an important motif of ancient writers. The painter Polygnotus depicted the story of Sisyphus on the Lech Wall in Delphi. Both Homer's Iliad (book 6) and the Odyssey (volume 11) have descriptions of Sisyphus. The clear text in the Odyssey reads: "I saw Sisyphus in great pain, pushing a rock with both hands, struggling with his arms and feet, trying to push the stone to the top of the mountain. But every time, when the stone reached the top of the mountain, the great force flipped the stone and rolled back to the flat ground where it had started, so he pushed the stone uphill again, with all his might, sweating like rain, and the dust above his head rose."
Fragments of an ancient Greek amphora vent cup unearthed in Altamura, circa 350 BC
▲ Post-Pall Sephone oversees Sisyphus's labor in the underworld, circa 530 BC, on the A side of the double-layered black amphora
Details of the medieval book The Story of the Rose - Sisyphus lies under a millstone, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, 14th century
Sisyphus symbolizes a protracted, meaningless task, John Vogel, Symbols of the Germanic Revival, 1649
The Roman poet Ovid also mentions Sisyphus in the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. In order to bring his lover Eurydice back to life, the infatuated Orpheus broke into hell and impressed the king and queen of Hades with his piano and singing. In describing this scene, Sisyphus appears in the poet Ovid's pen: Orpheus's singing voice is so moving that Sisyphus also stops his eternal task and sits on his rock and listens.
In Plato's Confessions, Socrates looked forward to his mortal encounter with a man who thought he was wise, like Sisyphus. That way he can question them and then make a judgment about who is truly wise and who is merely self-righteous.
The German writer Manfred Kopfer, in His book The Philosophy of Recursive Thinking (2018), even advised Sisyphus: Every time he climbed to the top of the mountain, he cut a stone from the mountain and brought it to the bottom. In this way, the mountain will eventually be razed and the stones will never roll down again. In Cover's interpretation, Sisyphus could turn God's punishment into a test for himself—if he could "move the mountain," it would be enough to prove that he could also "cross the line" to do what God was entitled to do.
Neither abstract nor extreme, Camus found a calm, sublime, and slightly sad way to describe politics, photo by Henri Cartier Bresson/Magnum Pictures
Albert Camus's philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942
▲ Camus was buried in the Lulmaran Cemetery in the Vaucluse department of France, where he lived. Sartre delivered a eulogy at the funeral, paying tribute to Camus's "heroic and stubborn humanitarian spirit."
Camus saw Sisyphus as the embodiment of the absurdity of human life. In his philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus, it is described as follows:
"With his taut body, he lifted the boulder with all his might, pushed the boulder, and supported the boulder to roll up the slope, climbing again and again; and saw that his face was taut, his cheeks were pressed against the stone, and he held it on one shoulder, bearing the clay-covered behemoth; one leg squatted steadily, and cushioned under the stone; his arms held the stone full, and the hands covered with mud appeared full of humanity. This kind of effort has no top in space and no bottom in time, and over time, the purpose has finally been achieved. But Sisyphus watched as the stone rolled down the hill in an instant, and had to be pushed back to the top. "
Camus was interested in Sisyphus, who had a short break on the return journey:
"A bitter face so close to the stone is already a stone in itself. As he descended the mountain again, he took a heavy and even step towards his endless sea of suffering. This hour is like a breath, just as his misfortune will surely return, and this is the time of awakening. Every moment he left the top of the mountain, every minute he gradually sneaked into the cave of the gods, surpassed his own destiny. He was stronger than the stone he pushed. "
Finally, Camus concluded:
"Every fine grain of the rock, every mineral glow of the dark mountain, became an integral part of his one-man world. The struggle to climb to the top of the mountain itself is enough to enrich a person's heart. It should be imagined that Sisyphus was happy. ”
▲ A copy of José de Ribera's Sisyphus, 17th century
As he strides at a heavy and uniform pace toward an unending ordeal, when he comes again to the boulder and examines his own life, Sisyphus realizes that his fate is the sum of all his actions, created by himself.
His fate belongs to him, and so is the boulder. He realized the absurdity of his fate, which could only be considered a tragedy—and he understood this and had no hope of being pardoned. However, through this most sober understanding and reconciliation of his own destiny, Sisyphus found that he could despise his own destiny and even negate the punishment of the gods by enjoying the process—putting his spirit above fate. It was precisely because he gave up hope of finding meaning in endless futility that he was able to attain spiritual freedom.
The joy of Sisyphus's silence lies in this.
The Myth of Sisyphus constitutes an important motif of Camus's literary creation. The essential motivation for Sisyphus's "hypothesis of happiness" is not absurdity—for absurdity in itself does not tell us what happiness and unhappiness are—but in Camus's assertion that only a happy life is compatible with human dignity. It is dignity that is manifested in resistance. Sisyphus was condemned to eternal punishment but to be happy, a form of rebellion, and the only possible form of rebellion in that situation.
Franz von Stark, Sisyphus, 1920
Sisyphus is the archetype of the absurd hero. Both out of his passion and out of his hardships. He despised the gods, hated death, but loved life. This is the price that must be paid for the love of this shore. The world will always see his load—he warns the world by denying the supreme loyalty of the gods and the selection of the rocks.
Also as persistent victims, Sisyphus and Prometheus can be seen as having a degree of consistency in terms of their spiritual core. But there is no doubt that the two give people a completely different inner feeling. Prometheus was a rebel among the gods, who could be worshipped, but difficult to approach, much less imitated; Sisyphus is a human being, and its greatest aesthetic significance lies not in what great achievements he has made for mankind, but in his own love of life and freedom, and his antipathy and resistance to authority and power.
Prometheus has a perfect symbolic "meaning" – he was nailed to the Caucasus, and he suffered for his "meaning", thus sublimating the "meaning". Sisyphus's suffering was not as cruel as Prometheus's, but his myth remains tragic—if the hope of success is sustained at every step he takes, then where does his suffering begin? Sisyphus's "pushing the stone" is a symbol of the absurd, a void of "meaning". He exists by pushing stones, he understands the absurdity in it, but he still marches - he dominates this absurdity.
In other words, "rebellion" is a contest between Sisyphus and the creatures, and the ambiguity. He strives for transparency and clarity, and he always questions the world, even if he knows that "resistance" is a fiasco.
Think of another stage absurdity, Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot. Two guys like tramps were waiting for a man named Godot all the time. They were poor and desperate, hoping that Godot's appearance would save them. Waiting helplessly, long and meaningless, and ultimately in vain. Since they are both nothingness of meaning, what is the difference between "Sisyphus" and "Waiting for Godot"? Compared with the illusory Godot, although the action of pushing the stone makes people lose hope, although this hopelessness also gives people a realistic experience of nothingness and absurdity, after all, the pushed stone is still in his own hands, and the steps under his feet are still his own steps.
I think that when Sisyphus accepted such an arrangement of fate, when he chose to face this eternal futility, it was enough to alleviate the cruelty of this truth, and even to overcome sorrow and melancholy. Like Another mythological figure, Oedipus, after so much suffering, he was able to judge that "everything is good."
Xiong Qi/Wen