The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
Albert Camus (translated by Justin O'Brien)

04/28/2003
Okay, I've been reading this slowly on the train to and from work, and having a devil of a time. But I'm finally ready to put down some thoughts. I guess the main problem I have is how Camus can insist that there is inherent value in sticking it out in this absurd world when, it seems to me, the very nature of the absurd precludes valuations of that kind. In his preface he writes:

"The fundamental subject of 'The Myth of Sisyphus' is this: it is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a meaning; therefore, it is legitimate to meet the problem of suicide face to face. The answer, underlying and appearing through the paradoxes which cover it, is this: even if one does not believe in God, suicide is not legitimate."

I guess my problem is with the word "legitimate." (And I wonder if that is actually the word used in French. I'll have to ask Michael.) If "legitimate" is, in fact, the right word, I assume his meaning is closest to this one(from my American Heritage Dictionary): "Based on logical reasoning; reasonable." But the absurd is not reasonable. It is not logical. By his own description, it is the force of human reason up against that which is ultimately unreasonable and unknowable. So it seems to me that, first of all, legitimacy is not an appropriate criterion here, and second, if you insist on that term, then any response to the absurd, including suicide, is reasonable in an unreasonable world!

I would take Camus more seriously if he qualified his statements -- if he presented his position as simply one way to live with the absurd, one man's choice, rather than the only genuine way to live. I have no problem with his value judgments, if he would only state them as his own personal opinions and not present them as universal truths. The very nature of the absurd is that there are no universal truths. Camus contradicts himself, I believe.

Next topic:

Page 37: "The absurd man... recognizes the struggle, does not absolutely scorn reason and admits the irrational. Thus he again embraces in a single glance all the data of experience and he is little inclined to leap before knowing. He knows simply that in that alert awareness there is no further place for hope."

Much of what Camus says reminds me of things I have learned about meditation, mindfulness, attention, awareness. But his tone is very different from Buddhist teachers I have read. He is cold, almost callous at times. Especially in his descriptions of Don Juan and The Conqueror. In this essay, at least, there doesn't seem to be room for compassion. And I do wonder... is there a place for compassion in an indifferent universe? I feel certain that there must be.

Apparently Camus' book, The Rebel, deals with the topic of murder. If he makes the case against murder, perhaps that is where the compassion comes in? Do I want to slog through that book to find out? Am I interested enough?

While his description of Don Juan leaves me cold and The Conqueror just leaves me baffled, I love his example of The Actor, which I take to mean the stage actor. His art is fleeting. It lasts only as long as he is on stage and then is gone. Just like our lives. Except the actor gets to play out different lives night after night. I especially love this part:

Page 79: "...the distance separating [the actor] from the creatures into whom he infuses life is not so great. He abundantly illustrates every month or every day that so suggestive truth that there is no frontier between what a man wants to be and what he is. Always concerned with better representing, he demonstrates to what a degree appearing creates being."

This is the same idea inherent in the speech by the transexual woman, Agrado, in Almodovar's movie, All About My Mother, when she tells the audience, "You are more authentic the more you resemble what you've dreamed of being." There's really not much difference between pretending and being, is there?

In the section, "Absurd Creation," Camus defines the "true work of art." Once again, how can he do this? How can he presuppose the absurd, one part of which is the essential indifference of the universe, and then try to define universal values? This is what he says:

"The true work of art is always on the human scale. It is essentially the one that says 'less.' There is a certain relationship between the global experience of the artist and the work that reflects that experience.... That relationship is bad when the work aims to give the whole experience in the lace-paper of an explanatory literature. That relationship is good when the work is but a piece cut out of experience, a facet of the diamond in which the inner luster is epitomized without being limited."

I think this is just a fancy way of expressing the creative writing teacher's routine admonition: Show; don't tell. And I agree, personally, that it makes for better writing. But that's not the issue. If you're going to attempt to describe the absurd world in which "everything is permitted," you can't turn around and universalize your value judgments. You can't have it both ways.

A few pages later, are these magnificent lines:

"To work and create 'for nothing,' to sculpture in clay, to know that one's creation has no future, to see one's work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries -- this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on the one hand and magnifying on the other, is the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors."

That last sentence makes me want to cry for joy. That one might live "to give the void its colors." That is a reason to press on. A purpose. And the paragraph makes me think of the Buddhist monks who create huge elaborate sand mandalas, only to sweep them off into the sea. There is a flow here that I must remember. A current I can either float within or swim against. Either way, I must remember it.

"But perhaps the great work of art has less importance in itself that in the ordeal it demands of a man and the opportunity it provides him of overcoming his phantoms and approaching a little closer to his naked reality."

I am soooo ready for my semi-annual meditation retreat that begins this Thursday.

04/30/2003
Some reflections: I asked Renee about the meaning of life. I asked her, "Why live?" She said cats don't wonder about why they should live; they just do. Other species don't question their existence; they simply exist. Why can't people be like other animals in this regard?

It occurs to me now that no other species is capable of comprehending its own death. Animals don't know their lives are finite. They don't know 1) that they have a choice now, and 2) that they have no choice ultimately - they will die sometime.

It must be that knowledge that we will die that drives us to seek meaning where other species don't. Knowing we will die makes us more productive. It also is probably the genesis of religion. We know we will die but can't accept the finality of it, so we imagine an afterlife. Or we can't tolerate the situation we have now, so we create an afterlife to give our current situation meaning.

I really understand now the phrase, "Religion is the opiate of the masses." I doubt our civilization would have advanced as far as it has without it. You can have all the brilliant minds in the world, but you also have to have strong arms and backs to bring the ideas into reality. And who's going to do all that heavy lifting without some hope of reward? Sisyphus didn't have a choice, did he?