FREE PDF Ú BOOK Le Mythe de Sisyphe ↠ ALBERT CAMUS

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FREE PDF Ú BOOK Le Mythe de Sisyphe ↠ ALBERT CAMUS Í One of the most influential works of this century this is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka these essays begin with a meditation on suicide the uestion of living or not living in an absurd univOne of the most influential works of this century this is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the nov Camus as a writer receives mixed response from the readers It is understandable when some readers avoid reading him because he seems a difficult writer whose works are taken to be disturbing Some readers appreciate his writings though they do not agree with him While for some Camus’ ideas are irrelevant when compared with those proposed by existential philosophers Although Camus is often categorized as an existential philosopher but he himself never approved of that In one of his interviews he said “No I am not an existentialist Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked We have even thought of publishing a short statement in which the undersigned declare that they have nothing in common with each other and refuse to be held responsible for the debts they might respectively incur It's a joke actually Sartre and I published our books without exception before we had ever met When we did get to know each other it was to realise how much we differed Sartre is an existentialist and the only book of ideas that I have published The Myth of Sisyphus was directed against the so called existentialist philosophers”When compared with different periods of his life his writings offer an insight into the state of mind Camus was often fraught with The penning of “The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus” which he did almost simultaneously came at a point when he himself faced despair about the kind of life he was living which included his anxiety about his future as a writer and finding his place in the World At this time he was in Algiers his native land far from the hubbub of Paris His mature works ie “The Rebel and The Plague” came later on where Rebel dealt with the problem of “murder” as against the problem of “suicide” which he dealt in The Myth of Sisyphus We can notice the change in the focus of the writer which turned from inner to outer from individual to social As he progressed from Sisyphus to the Rebel he matured as a writer and later on himself felt annoyed at his proposed idea of absurd He said “This word “Absurd” has had an unhappy history and I confess that now it rather annoys me When I analyzed the feeling of the Absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus I was looking for a method and not a doctrine I was practicing methodical doubt I was trying to make a “tabula rasa” on the basis of which it would then be possible to construct something If we assume that nothing has any meaning then we must conclude that the world is absurd But does nothing have any meaning I have never believed we could remain at this point”Now this is what keeps me in awe of the writer He is one writer who has never been afraid of opening his heart his thoughts anything which plagues his mind before his readers before this world In that sense he may be termed as a radical and approached with skepticism but it cannot be ignored that the ideas he proposed came to influence the generation of writers engaged in the “works of absurd” eg Samuel Beckett who contributed significantly to the “theatre of Absurd” The idea of repetition which he proposed with Sisyphus which in turn was inspired by Kierkegaard’s Repitition is witnessed significantly in the works of Beckett too What is his ideas also even now influence the readers like me in whose face the “why” of existence suddenly strikes one fine day It wouldn’t be an overstatement or some form of fervent adherence to the writer if I admit that he inspired the mind to seek and not be satisfied till the response unites the thought and the experience He is not an easy writer to read agreed but his writings are not disturbing specially if one gets to understand that his writingin The Myth of Sisyphus is a declaration of writer’s notion that the life must be lived fully in awareness of the absurdity of this World In the Myth of Sisyphus he terms the World as absurd because it doesn’t offer any answer to the uestion of existence it being a silent spectator to the suffering of whole humanity In a Universe divested of meaning or illusions a man feels a stranger His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land But does this situation dictate death Camus ponders upon the problem of suicide and contemplates then whether suicide is the answer to this absurd world which doesn’t answer anything He opines In the face of such contradictions and obscurities must we conclude that there is no relationship between the opinion one has about life and the act one commits to leave it Let us not exaggerate in this direction In a man’s attachment to life there is something stronger than all the ills in the world The body’s judgement is as good as the mind’s and the body shrinks from annihilation We get into the habit of living before acuiring the habit of thinking In that race which daily hastens us towards death the body maintains its irreparable lead And to kill one self means to allow both life and death to have dominion over one Hence the absurd doesn’t dictate death but calls for the awareness and rejection of death It calls for living it with consciousness with revolt freedom and passion Neither religion nor Science for that matter provides answer to a uestioning mind satisfactorily While the former tends to imbue it with an idea of eternity; an extension of life in heaven the latter merely tries to explain it by hypothesis But Camus cannot believe either of themThen turning to existential philosophers he says that they “without exception suggest escape” “Through an odd reasoning starting out from the absurd over the ruins of reason in a closed universe limited to the human they deify what crushes them and find reason to hope in what impoverishes them That forced hope is religious in all of them”To further explain this he presents to us the ideas proposed by different philosophers For example he saysOf JasperJasper writes “Does not the failure reveal beyond any possible explanation and interpretation not the absence but the existence of transcendence”So that Jasper proposes the existence which cannot be defined as “unthinkable unity of the general” and the “inability to understand” as the existence which illuminates everythingOf ChestovChestov names the fundamental absurdity by saying “This is God we must rely on him even if he does not correspond to any of our rational categories”For Chestov reason is useless but there is something beyond reason even if that something is indifferent to usOf KierkegaardKierkegaard calls for the third sacrifice reuired by Ignatius Loyola the one in which God most rejoices The sacrifice of the intellect He says ‘In his failure the believer finds his triumph’Kierkegaard substitutes his cry of revolt for frantic adherenceCamus doesn’t agree with these philosophers who did all of them tried to understand the absurd but finally gave into that which they found impossible to define He calls their giving up as Philosophical suicide He cannot believe in Jasper’s idea of Transcendence In response to Chestov he says ‘To an absurd mind reason is useless and there is nothing beyond reason’ He chooses ‘despair’ instead of Kierkegaard’s frantic adherence He says “I want everything to be explained to me or nothing” So now when faced with absurd and being in consciousness how best to live the life Camus advocates the life of a seducer Don Juanism actor conueror or creator following the three conseuences of absurd ie revolt passion and freedomBy revolt Camus means to keep the absurd alive by challenging the world anew every second By Freedom he means losing oneself in that bottomless certainty feeling henceforth sufficiently removed from one’s own life to increase it and take a broad view of itBy passion he means being aware of one’s life one’s revolt one’s freedom and to the maximum Though he praises the absurd man in a seducer actor or conueror it was his stance on creator which I felt inclined towards He says “Creating is living doubly The groping anxious uest of a Proust his meticulous collecting of flowers of wallpapers and of anxieties signifies nothing else”SisyphusTowards the end of this essay he compares absurd with Sisyphus who according to the myth was condemned to rolling a rock to the top of a mountain only to see it rolling down back every time he reached the top He says that though Sisyphus is well aware of his fate of the continuous struggle he has to engage in but he is still passionate about his life and doesn’t give up It is during his descent that Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained Likewise the absurd man when he contemplates his torment silences all the idols In the universe suddenly restored to its silence the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up Unconscious secret calls invitations from all the faces they are the necessary reverse and price of victory There is no sun without shadow and it is es sential to know the night The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing If there is a personal fate there is no higher destiny or at least there is but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable For the rest he knows himself to be the 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 becomes his fate created by him combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death Thus convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end he is still on the go The rock is still rollingThe other essays in the collection Summer in Algiers The stop in Oran Helen’s Exile and Return to Tipasa are worth reading too In Return to Tipasa we observe Camus prevailed over by nostalgia for home for his land It is here that he says In the direction of the ruins as far as the eye could see there was nothing but pock marked stones and wormwood trees and perfect columns in the transparence of the crystalline air It seemed as if the morning were stabilized the sun stopped for an incalculable moment In this light and this silence years of wrath and night melted slowly away I listened to an almost forgotten sound within myself as if my heart long stopped were calmly beginning to beat again And awake now I recognized one by one the imperceptible sounds of which the silence was made up the figured bass of the birds the sea’s faint brief sighs at the foot of the rocks the vibration of the trees the blind singing of the columns the rustling of the wormwood plants the furtive lizards I heard that; I also listened to the happy torrents rising within me It seemed to me that I had at last come to harbor for a moment at least and that henceforth that moment would be endlessWhat I realized reading these essays over again was that despite of being labelled as the proponent of absurd it is actually living that he so fervently speaks about; Not just living but living passionately and fully Living in awareness and uestioning Though he seems to be recommending a negative faith as James Wood says in introduction against the religious or existentialist ideologies he nevertheless demonstrates a distinctive way to the seekers to come to terms with the existence; the way to be chosen henceforth of course depending upon the individual starting every day with an ever new light “In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer” From an interview with Jeanine Delpech in Les Nouvelles Littéraires 1945 Cited in Albert Camus Lyrical and Critical Essays Vintage 1970 From an interview with Gabriel d'Aubarède in Les Nouvelles Littéraires 1951 Cited in Albert Camus Lyrical and Critical Essays Vintage 1970Source