![]() ![]() It was random and chaotic, and made no inherent sense. The world, Camus (see left) said, was insane. For generations, artists, authors, and philosophers have portrayed Sisyphus as trapped in a mundane and pointless existence where the only escape is eventual, inevitable death….a portrait of despair with which I think we have all identified at one point or another.īut Camus re-thought Sisyphus’ story, and cast him not as an eternal victim for having to push that stone endlessly up the hill…but as a hero, because he never gave up trying. Every day, Sisyphus would attempt the nearly overwhelming task of pushing his boulder, only to have it roll back down the hill, hitting him on the way, and forcing him to start the process all over again. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was the king of Ephyra who was punished by the gods for his greed and craftiness (some stories have him outsmarting the gods who tried to punish him) by being forced to push an enormous boulder up a hill. And just when I thought I couldn’t go on reading, because I knew that feeling of claustrophobic apprehension, the hero of the book mentioned a quote by French author and philosopher Albert Camus: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy”. ![]() Suffice it for now to say that it’s a powerfully atmospheric book, transporting readers not only into the overwhelmingly vast Arctic, but also forcing them to share in the characters’ dread as illness and ice slowly choke the life from them and from their ship. The book I’m working through now is Stranded, by Bracken MacLeod, about which more later. ![]()
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