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.

“his recurrent theme was their failure to protest against the world they lived in. This is the whole burden of his longest and most serious piece of literary criticism, written in 1940 on Henry Miller; and he called it ‘Inside the Whale’ to illustrate this same point that Miller had failed in his duty to protest, had ‘performed the essential Jonah act of allowing himself to be swallowed, remaining passive, accepting” (p. viii)

I stopped reading the introduction around this point, with the intention of returning later, because Woodhouse had begun — as many book introduction writers do — to give away too many elements of Animal Farm that I preferred to learn on my own by reading the book. However, I have already read 1984, and I know how Orwell felt about modern governments and their leanings, especially in the early-20th Century, towards totalitarianism.

And Orwell was far from alone in espousing that sentiment. Hermann Hesse’s great work Steppenwolf comes to mind, in which protagonist Harry Haller learns to shape his life into one of constant and unending revolt against the world. The Beats were a definite incarnation of this mentality in America in the ’50s and ’60s. But this idea of constant rebellion, with recurring attempts at revolution, reminds me of two recent posts on this blog: one about David Foster Wallace and his discussion of institutionalized irony; one about Adam Curtis and his documentary The Trap, which addressed the problems of a Western world that has rejected positive liberty for the safer, more stable negative liberty.

I don’t need to double back on those previous posts; I only hope to bring up the point that successful revolution against any vast power in this post Y2K world seems impossible. As The Trap states, negative liberty allows institutions to imprison people, though the people remain under the impression that they are free. Likewise, government and society in the West has become more static and difficult to change.

Curtis concludes by stating that the world is no longer run by ideologies. This makes sense, considering how exhausting it is for a modern individual to remain idealistic for longer than a few years. Anyone can begin a lifestyle of constant revolt against tyranny, but all who do will eventually feel like a shadowboxer, fighting against ghosts and making insignificant progress. And naturally that leads to the classic novel Don Quixote, and the resulting adjective quixotic. Wikipedia (via the Google define tool) defines it as “a person or an act that is caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals. It also serves to describe an idealism without regard to practicality.”

Of course this probably deserves a deeper analysis of the types of revolt, ranging from internal (i.e. – individual psychology) to a governmental coup. However, this still relates to a question a Spanish friend asked in the fall, regarding the fact that Americans should be protesting constantly in the street, when in reality they never do. The first conclusion would be that they’re busy watching TV and playing video games, but I think it goes deeper than that (thanks to Curtis for clarifying the situation). Americans can sense that there is no effective target for their revolt. For example, even if Bush had been impeached, Cheney would have taken over and the situation probably would have gotten even worse. But I digress…

I don’t think that Miller’s style of writing — or of living, for that matter — can be written off as anything but brilliant. I would even go so far as to suggest that Miller’s first two books, Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, would more appropriately have been called How to Live a Sane Life in a World That Has Gone Mad, parts I and II. Either that, or How to Live in a World Where Successful Revolution Has Become an Impossibility.

Yes, Miller spent more of his adult life in France than in his native country of America, where he probably could have done a lot of good. But he valued freedom of expression above all else, and he recognized that America was about 30 years behind the curve in that area (Cancer was published in Paris in 1934, but, because of obscenity laws, wasn’t published in America until 1961). Yes, Miller seemed to preach passivity and indifference over constant worrying and revolt. But no, this should not be interpreted through Orwell’s method.

Miller did speak of floating down the river of life and taking things as they came, but this was simply his way of making peace with the terrifying nature of life and the world, following the acknowledgment that one person can only change so much, especially through direct physical action. Miller did do more than his share of protesting, but he only did it on his own terms — in a way that would echo through time in an invincible manner. As a result, Miller’s works are almost more useful than Orwell’s, because Orwell wrote from a stance that could be manipulated by governments and institutions. Anyone who has read 1984 wouldn’t doubt that the scariest governments in the world today — including the American government — have probably used the same tactics that Orwell warned against.

Miller called his first attempts at writing “a phantom struggle”:

“It came without effort, born of a second, a miracle you might say, except that everything which happens is miraculous. Things happen or they don’t happen, that’s all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony because we’ve lost the habit of falling asleep. We don’t know how to let go” (p. 283, Tropic of Capricorn).

If you want revolt, Miller provided it by the ton:

“Any primitive man would have understood me…only those about me, that is to say, a continent of a hundred million people, failed to understand my language. [...] The one thing they did not want to hear about was that life was indestructible. Was not their precious new world reared on the destruction of the innocent, on rape and plunder and torture and devastation? [...] No greater humiliation, it seems to me, was meted out to any man than to Montezuma; no race was ever more ruthlessly wiped out than the American Indian; no land was ever raped in the foul and bloody way that California was raped by the gold diggers. I blush to think of our origins—our hands are steeped in blood and crime. [...] Down to the closest friend every man is a potential murderer” (pp. 287-288).

I’ve pulled these quotes almost at random, but one further down the page seems key:

“Every one who has not fully accepted life, who is not incrementing life, is helping to fill the world with death. [...] Activity in itself means nothing: it is often a sign of death. [...] By the very climate which activity engenders, one can become part of a monstrous death machine, such as America, for example” (pp. 288-289).

Keep in mind that this was first published in 1938, thus preceding not only the U.S. atom bomb attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but also this whole post-war mess that America has seen over the last 50 or 60 years. Seen from this angle, I would argue that Miller’s duty to protest has been more successfully fulfilled than Orwell’s.

The story is not easily summarized, since it’s much less plot-based than it is a subjective philosophical exploration. The concise version: Harry Haller is a man of about 50 years who was ejected from both his career and his marriage, and who, after traveling the world and tiring of its banal ways, contemplates killing himself on a daily basis. He recognizes two identities within himself: one, a broken, wretched man with a secret fondness for middle-class regularities; the other, a wolf who would like to tear the whole meaningless mess to shreds. With the help of a book Harry finds called the Treatise on the Steppenwolf and, later on, an intriguing woman named Hermine, he soon learns that there is much more to life — and to himself — than he previously thought.

I underlined and tabbed so many pages that I literally have to limit the amount of quotes I list here. But the section that lit me up the most came approximately 150 pages into the novel.

While Hermine is giving a “lesson” to Harry, she says,

“Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life must not be like you and me. Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours” (p. 151).

On the next page, Hermine says,

“Time and the world, money and power belong to the small people and the shallow people. To the rest, to the real men belongs nothing. Nothing but death.”

“Nothing else?” [asks Harry.]

“Yes, eternity.”

“You mean a name, and fame with posterity?”

“No, Steppenwolf, not fame. Has that any value? And do you think that all true and real men have been famous and known to posterity? [...] 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” (pp. 152-153).

And a bit later, Hermine continues with:

“We have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness” (p. 153).

Later in the story, Harry is still struggling to wrap his head around his new experiences. One of Hermine’s friends says,

“It is the world of your own soul that you seek. Only within yourself exists that other reality for which you long. I can give you nothing that has not already its being within yourself. I can throw open to you no picture gallery but your own soul. All I can give you is the opportunity, the impulse, the key. I can help you to make your own world visible. That is all” (p. 175).

And finally, a fun quote about art:

“Just as madness, in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is schizomania the beginning of all art and all fantasy” (p. 193).

As you can see, I got carried away with the quotations. If any of this grabs you, then you should grab a copy of Steppenwolf immediately. But be forwarned, you will not come out of it with a fuzzy feeling in your rumbly tumbly. You are left with the realization that you alone are responsible to navigate the mess of existence. Like they tell Harry about the Magic Theater: “For Madmen Only!”