Different authors took the existential line of thought in many directions, but as Camus pointed out, they did tend to justify the absurdity of life with some sort of claim to the eternal. Kierkegaard was probably the only philosopher connected to Existentialism who ever defaulted to a purely religious conclusion. But still, one can’t help but wonder how someone could pick apart all the layers, witness pure existence in its true form, and then justify it by concluding that there’s something that exists above and beyond our immediate life. You’ll recall that even Steppenwolf‘s Hermine says all true actions live on in eternity.

This is what bothered Camus, and I think it’s why he wrote The Myth of Sisyphus. As I said in the last post, it’s a very subtle change in outlook between the Existentialists and Camus’s Absurdism — but it is a change nonetheless. The Existentialists (as I’ve come to know them) were remarkably skilled at describing the “nausea” brought on by life, but they were terrible at suggesting what to do about it. Those with suicidal tendencies before their existential investigation were often left with even greater death-bound impulses. In short, Existentialists sought a way to live in spite of the absurd, while Camus, on the other hand, chose to live for the absurd.

“Living is keeping the absurd alive. […] One of the only coherent philosophical positions is thus revolt. It is a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity. […] It may be thought that suicide follows revolt – but wrongly. […] Suicide, like the leap, is acceptance at its extreme. […] That revolt gives life its value. Spread out over the whole length of a life, it restores its majesty to that life. ” (pp. 54-55).

Those familiar with my rants may be thinking of Henry Miller. Back in March I wrote two posts (on Mar 11 and Mar 21) about Miller and George Orwell, after reading that Orwell had criticized Miller’s style of “protest.” To sum it up, Orwell’s style was to attack the governments that had swung too closely to totalitarianism. Miller’s style was more of a protest against all of existence — hence why I think it fits in with Camus’s suggestions.

I’ve only read three of his books, but it’s clear to me that Miller experienced more happiness in his life than most of my favorite writers. That’s just one of the reasons why he’s an enigma, why I can’t cross his name off and keep moving down the list…so to speak. Camus and Miller both understood that, though the absurd does seem to negate our natural tendencies in life, it in no way prevents us from adapting to its conditions. Human beings are the most adaptable creatures on this planet! And our imagination is more powerful than any other tool we possess!

Those who have come this far in the struggle are often compelled to write about it. I know not what drives a man to write — even looking at myself. I know I was bored, depressed, unsuccessful, lonely, etc…and I was deeply inspired by the personal fiction of Jack Kerouac. But at the time, it just seemed like something that would be a worthwhile activity even if nothing came of it. Even if I didn’t get paid for it or become famous because of it, writing seemed like a purposeful way to spend my time. Now three years have gone by and — after an arduous process of self-realization — I still feel essentially the same.

In the concluding section of Sisyphus, Camus suggests that a life of absurd creation is, without a doubt, a life worth living:

“He must give the void its colors. [...] A profound thought is in a constant state of becoming; it adopts the experience of a life and assumes its shape. Likewise, a man’s sole creation is strengthened in its successive and multiple aspects: his works. […] A succession of works can be but a series of approximations of the same thought. […] But if those failures all have the same resonance, the creator has managed to repeat the image of his own condition, to make the air echo with the sterile secret he posesses” (pp. 114-115).

“The great work of art has less importance in itself than 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” (p. 115).

“In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. […] To create is likewise to give a shape to one’s own fate. […] There is no frontier between being and appearing. […] The final effort for these related minds, creator or conqueror, is to manage to free themselves also from their undertakings” (p. 117).

But you see that creation is of utmost importance. To continue to create is a man’s way of revolting against the demanding and often unrewarding nature of creative activity. In other words, hardly anyone will ever become famous for writing. Most who realize this after hoping for fame will stop writing. Those who continue do so in an absurd fashion, because it will appear to bystanders that the writer is wasting his time. The absurd creator disagrees:

“He knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life…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. […] The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy” (pp. 122-123).

After two posts I still haven’t explained the myth itself. Sisyphus is a character sentenced by the gods to the underworld where he must roll a heavy rock up a mountain, whereupon it just rolls back down. This would drive most to despair (if not insanity), but Sisyphus is clever. His victory lies in his continued activity, which he performs without hoping that it will end. By simply pressing on, he revolts against the gods who devised this terrible state of existence. Camus said he prefers to think about the calm moment when Sisyphus reaches the top of the mountain — when he can take a deep breath, survey the land around him, and then stroll leisurely down the slope again.

But don’t be mistaken. Camus provides no manual, nor could there ever be one. Every man troubled by existence must imagine his own happiness. I haven’t quite accomplished it yet, but I feel a lot better about the process than I did before. And with that said, I may be moving on to the next phase in this process of inner discovery. As always, you’re welcome to come along for the ride.

I can tell you right away that this will be a two-part analysis of Sisyphus, because I feel that I must provide an overview of the topic of suicide in literature and philosophy — at least how I’ve perceived it. Then there are two aspects to Sisyphus itself: an eloquent statement of the dilemma, and the closest thing to a solution that Camus — or anyone else, for that matter — has ever devised.

Camus discloses that the book was written in 1940, which I find extremely interesting, if only in terms of what came before and after it. Just scanning my favorites, Henry Miller published his first works in the ’30s — but Kerouac’s first book wasn’t published until 1950. Even earlier, Hesse’s Steppenwolf saw publication in Germany in 1927. I point these out initially because it seems that Sisyphus is a landmark in 20th Century philosophical development — yet in some ways it represents a transition that was never completed (I’ll expand on this later). By transition I mean that Camus essentially broke with the Existentialists of the ’40s and ’50s, most prominently Jean-Paul Sartre.

Camus and Sartre both recognized the absurd nature of life, but while Sartre and others sought to transcend it, Camus thought that required a leap beyond human certitude. As Camus put it, “I do not want to found anything on the incomprehensible. I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone” (p. 40). Seen in this light, Sisyphus becomes a sort of poetic mathematical exercise in which Camus affirms the absurd life instead of evading it. And according to the Wikipedia page on Absurdism, this book is practically the manual.

Camus argues his case succinctly, acknowledging how deeply he could go into this subject, but at all times subjecting himself to a rigid set of guidelines. The main point of the book appears early: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy” (p. 3).

He attempts many definitions of the absurd condition:

“Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering” (pp. 5-6).

“What is this condition in which I can have peace only by refusing to know and to live, in which the appetite for conquest bumps into walls that defy its assaults?” (p. 20)

“That struggle implies a total absence of hope (which has nothing to do with despair), a continual rejection (which must not be confused with renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction (which must not be compared to immature unrest). […] A man who has become conscious of the absurd is forever bound to it” (p. 31).

This blog is riddled with discussions of Existentialism and Absurdism. Two posts that come to mind focus on Sartre’s Nausea and Hesse’s Steppenwolf. But while Sartre’s Roquentin never really considers suicide, Hesse’s Harry is obsessed with the concept. He finds a “Treatise of the Steppenwolf” that explains:

“Suicides present themselves as those who are overtaken by the sense of guilt inherent in individuals, those souls that find the aim of life not in the perfecting and molding of the self, but in liberating themselves by going back to the mother, back to God, back to the all. Many of these natures are wholly incapable of ever having recourse to real suicide, because they have a profound consciousness of the sin of doing so. For us they are suicides nonetheless; for they see death and not life as the releaser” (p. 48).

“All suicides have the responsibility of fighting against the temptation of suicide. …It is nobler and finer to be conquered by life than to fall by one’s own hand” (p. 49)

But that’s it???!!! That’s all he could offer us? A sense of despair that drags one through life? Isn’t that just making oneself a prisoner of inertia, unable to improve upon any aspect of existence and thus resigning onself to it? Of course I should give Hesse more credit than this. Steppenwolf is a novel, not an autobiography or a philosophical essay. If you know the ending (I won’t spoil it!), it’s believable that Hesse was mocking Harry’s mode of living, even after the awakening inspired by the treatise and his wise lady friend Hermine. But even when more concrete suggestions arise, they’re often vague and difficult to adapt to the context of the 21st Century.

Plus, this book was published over a decade before Sisyphus. But that’s not to say that the literary community made a convincing progression beyond Harry’s position in the subsequent decades. The most prominent example is Jack Kerouac. He wasn’t a philosopher, but he remains one of the most beloved literary figures in American history. In his books he claimed that he could never commit suicide because he was a Catholic and that would mean he’d go to hell. His alternative? He basically drank himself to death. Big Sur outlines part of this irreversible decline.

Obviously the world of literature is very familiar with alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide, but Kerouac was always his own protagonist and thereby immortalized his story. And when examining this twisted path, it’s impossible to maintain a separation between philosophy and psychology. But this existential despair is an important characteristic of modern humanity, and one that cannot be ignored. In Steppenwolf, Hermine tries to calm Harry by saying, “The image of every true act, the strength of every true feeling, belongs to eternity just as much, even though no one knows of it or sees it or records it or hands it down to posterity. In eternity there is no posterity” (p. 153).

Camus recognized this tendency in existential thought, and he made a point of ruling that out of his possible conclusions in Sisyphus. “I am taking the liberty at this point of calling the existential attitude philosophical suicide. […] They always lay claim to the eternal, and it is solely in this that they take the leap” (p. 42). The “leap” mentioned here is applied to any bridge beyond what a human can comprehend. That more commonly means religion, so it was strange for me to see such a term applied to Existentialism, which I had previously seen as an answer of sorts.

In reality Existentialism is a statement of the problem; it’s where Camus begins and quickly dashes off. He’s not convinced by the idea of eternity, whether in organized religion or just broader spirituality. He’s not content to stubbornly hope that the basic condition of life will eventually improve.

Camus began to wonder if the desire to escape is an even bigger problem than the nausea inspired by existence. In other words, what if there was a way not only to endure the situation, but even capitalize off of it? It’s a very slight twist of the mirror that could produce an extraordinarily different outcome. “The danger…lies in the subtle instant that precedes the leap. Being able to remain on that dizzying crest – that is integrity and the rest is subterfuge” (p. 50).

Next I’ll explore what one is to do on that dizzying crest, and why and how Camus felt it could be accomplished.

It’s difficult to explain the point of the book in a short space, but these quotes might help: “It is this irrelevancy of a man’s beliefs to the fate that can overtake him that supplies the most primitive ground for Existentialism, and means that a belief in some sort of providence or destiny is the essential prerequisite of all religion and most philosophy” (p. 112).

“A man becomes an Outsider when he begins to chafe under the recognition that he is not free” (p. 113).

Unfortunately, Wilson consistently turns to the idea of religion as a way out of his dilemma. He doesn’t address the concept of God, but merely the desire to have a system of beliefs by which to live. “The necessary basis for religion is the belief that freedom can be obtained” (p. 113).

“Supposing a solution does exist somewhere, undreamed of by me, inconceivable to me, can I yet hope that it might one day force itself upon me without my committing myself to a preliminary gesture of faith which (in point of fact) I cannot make? The poet finds that he can answer this question with a ‘yes’” (p. 120).

In other words, Wilson is striving to find on outlook on live that is primarily optimistic, and the best way he can do that is to allude to a religious solution. In the meantime, he addresses some of the greatest skeptical and pessimistic literature of the past 150 years, claiming that the ultimate work of modern pessimism is T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men.”

Wilson built the foundation of his book on both The Stranger and Sartre’s debut novel Nausea. He then runs through some real life figures like Van Gogh and Lawrence, as well as a multitude of fictional characters and the authors who created them (Hesse, Nietzsche, etc). William Blake gets special attention from Wilson, who asserts that a visionary imagination is the pinnacle of human creativity. However, Wilson never satisfactorily solves his basic problems, and in fact keeps returning to Camus and Sartre throughout the book. He returns to the Stranger for the reason that, no matter how you spin it, life often seems too unreal — and this realization tends to overpower many other philosophies.

I too will have come back to The Stranger — and The Outsider as well — in the near future.