The gods have condemned Sisyphe to constantly roll a rock to the peak of a mountain where the rock would fall due to its own weight. They have thought with some reasons that there will be no punishment more terrible than the one whose work is futile yet without hope.

For anyone who believes in Homer, Sisyphe was the most wise and the most prudent of mortals. According to another tradition however, he tends to be a professional bandit. I see no contradictions here. Opinions differ because there are different views on the causes of his futile suffer. Some reproaches him his lightness with the gods. He delivers their secrets. Egine, the daughter of Asope, was kidnapped by Jupiter. The father was surpried by her disappearance and he complains to Sisyphe. He, who have known the abduction, offers he an instruction to give water to the citadel of Corinthe. At hte celestial thunderbolts, he preferred the blessing of water. He is punished for this in the Inferno. Homer also tells us that Sisyphe have chained the dead. Pluto can't endure the sight of his deserted and silent empire. He dispeched the god of war who liberates the hands of the dead form his conqueror.

It is said that Sispyphe, on his dying bed, imprudently wanted to test his wife's love to him. He ordered her not to bury him but throw his body in the middle of the public place. When Sisyphe finds himself in the Inferno, he is irritated by the obedience so contrary to human love, he obtains the permission from Pluton to return to earth to chastise his wife. But when he sees the new view of the world, feels the water, the sun, the warm rock and the see, he no longer want to go back to dark Inferno. Memories, agonies and the warnings mean nothing. Years follow, he lives facing the curve of the gulf, the sparkling see and the smiles of the earth. He was not arrested by the god. Mercure comes and seized the collar of this audacious man and deprived him of his joy, force him return to the Inferno where his rock was prepared.

One has comprehend that Sisyphe is an absurd hero. He is as much by his passions as by his torment. His contempt to the god, his hatred of death and his passion for love, all brings him the unspeakable torture where he is applied to achieve nothing. This is the price to pay for his passion to this earth. Nothing is told about Sisyphe in the Inferno. The mythes are made of imagination. For this one, people only see a body with all the efforts to lift an enormous stone, a rock and make it climbing up a slope over hundred times. People see a face clenched, a cheek stick to a stone, an shoulder which gets an massive cover of the clay with the foot wedges it, the recovery of the arms, the safety of human of two hands of the earth. At the end of this long effort measured by the space without sky and time without depth, all is achieved. Sisyphe watches the stone hurtles down towards the lower world moments after he pushes it up to the summit. He descends to the plain.

It is the duration of the return, the pause of Sisype that interests me. A face that toils before a stone is the stone itself! I see this man re-descends with a heavy step but equal to the torment which can't see the end. The hour which is like a breath he returns surely as his suffering. This hour is the hour of conscious. Each of this moment, when he live the summit and gradually sink into the lair of the gods, he is super than his fate, he is stronger than his rock.

If the myth is tragic, it is because its hero is conscious. Where would his grieve be, if at every step the hope of success supports him? All days of his life, his work is all the same and his fate is no less absured. Sisyphe, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the all the settlement of his miserable condition: it is where he contemplates during his descending. The clairvoyance that makes his torment constitutes also his victory. There is no fate he can not surmounted with his contempts.

If the descent thus sometimes takes place in pain, is can take place in joy the same way. The word is not too much. I always imagine Sisyphy return towards his rock, and the pain starts. When the images of the earth hold so tight to the memories, when the call of happiness is too pressing, the man's heart arrives the tristesse: it is the victory of the rock, it is the rock itself. The immense distress is too heavy to bear. The are our nights f Gethsémani: But the crushing truth perishes of being acknowledged: Thus, Oedipe obeys his fate from the very start without knowing it. From the moment he knows, the tragedy commence. But at the same instant, blind and desperate, he recognized that his only link attaching the world, is the fresh man of a young girl. Then an excessive remark rings out: In spite of so many ordeals, my advanced age and noble sole makes me judge all is well. The Oedipe of Sophocle, as the Kirilov of Dostoievsky, gives thus the formula of absurd victory. The ancient sage rejoins the modern heroism.

One never discover the absurd without being tempted to write some manual of happiness. 'What, by such a narrow way?' But there is only one world. The happiness and the absurd are the two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It's wrong to say that happiness are bound to be born out of the discovery of the absurd. It is the same sensible that the absurd is born out of happiness. 'I judge that all is well', said Oedipe, and this remark is sacred. It rings out in the wild and limit universe of human. It signs that all is not, has not been exhausted. It chases out of the world a god who has come into with dissatisfaction and the appetite for meaningless suffering. It makes the fate that matters human, which should be settled among men.

All the silent joy of Sisyphe is there. His fate belongs to him. His rock belongs to him. In the same way, the absurd man, when he contemplates on his torment, silences all the idols. His silence is suddenly delivered to the universe. Thousands small voices rise up from the earth. Unconscious and secret appeals, invitations of all faces, they are the necessary backwards and the price of the victory. The is no sun without shadow and it should recognize the night. absurd man say yes and his effort never cease. If there is a destined fate, there is no superior destiny or at least no one other than he judges to be inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At this subtle moment hen a man turns around to his life, Sisyphe, returns to his rock, contemplate on this sequence of unrelated action becomes his fate created by him, get united under his gaze in his memory, and gotten sealed with his death. Then, persuaded by the origin of human of all that his human, the blind man desires to see and known that the know has no end, he is always going. The rock is always rolling.

I leave Sisyphe at the base of the mountain. One always finds his burden again. But Sisyphe teaches a superior fidelity, that is to deny the gods and lift the rocks. He also judges that all is well. The universe from now on has no master can make him seems sterile or futile. Each grain of the rock, each mineral fragment of the night-filled mountain, to himself forms a world. The struggle itself towards the summit are enough to fill a heart of a man. One should imagine Sisyphus happy.