The Value of Labor and The Myth of Sisyphus This work is available here free, so that those who cannot afford it can still have access to it, and so that no one has to pay before they read something that might not be what they really are seeking. But if you find it meaningful and helpful and would like to contribute whatever easily affordable amount you feel it is worth, please do do. I will appreciate it. The button to the right will take you to PayPal where you can make any size donation (of 25 cents or more) you wish, using either your PayPal account or a credit card without a PayPal account. The Value of Labor and the Myth of Sisyphus Rick Garlikov In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a brilliant rascal who sometimes played tricks on the gods to get what he wanted. He even used trickery to avoid death. Finally the gods had enough and condemned Sisyphus to eternal hard labor -- his punishment: rolling a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down to the bottom each time he finally gets it to the top. It was intended to be not only difficult labor, but frustratingly futile, unrewarding, repetitive labor.

The toil of Sisyphus is a metaphor for all difficult and repetitive labor that is frustrating and unrewarding. The 1957 Nobel laureate for literature Albert Camus wrote in a brief essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1940) that Sisyphus' fate and his endless toil is not futile. He says: "If the descent [i.e., Sisyphus' returning to the bottom of the mountain to start pushing the rock upward all over again] is sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy." And "The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." In spite of Camus' words, the punishing labor of Sisyphus seems horrendous. That is why it was given, and that is why the myth has such power. Or is Camus right that there can be nobility or redemption, or grounds for satisfaction, even "happiness", in such futile labor? I believe Camus focused on only part of the characteristics of the labor of Sisyphus.

There are at least five characteristics of Sisyphus' task, and I want to distinguish between attributes which might be redemptive, noble, or joyous, and those which are not. Rolling the rock eternally up the hill only to have it return each time you reach the summit for you to do it all over again is 1) repetitive, 2) futile, 3) temporary, and 4) laborious, and 5) worthless in a way that is separate from its being repetitive, futile, laborious, and temporary. I have written elsewhere that impermanence does not erase value. Making someone happy or providing solace for someone in despair, even if it is only temporary is still a worthwhile act. Creating or saving a life that will someday die is not a worthless or meaningless act. Even if all we do in the lifetime of civilization collapses into a universal blackhole or relative pinpoint of incredibly dense mass, our accomplishments are what they were, even if they do not remain in the memory of an omniscient God but dissolve entirely into the metaphysics of empty time. That something happened and meant anything at all is important, regardless of how long it lasts.

All joys in life are temporary, but they are joys nevertheless, and they are most important. A joyous life is better than a joyless one, even though both come to an end. So I have no quarrel with Camus about the fact that Sisyphus' success at reaching the summit with the boulder is merely temporary. Sisyphus can rejoice in that success each time simply because he achieves it, regardless of how long the achievement lasts. And the fact that he has to do it all over again does not diminish its value or his happiness, because there are many things we do repeatedly to obtain joy or satisfaction, and we do not lament having to do so. Repeated joy or repeated success is not a source of frustration or futility. Sex, for instance. Good food. Convivial companionship. Humor. Restful sleep. Breathing. Excitement. Anticipation. Games and sports. There is nothing about simply having to repeat something that necessarily makes it bad or that makes it not worth doing any of the times or all of the times. The fact that Sisyphus has to push the rock up the mountain repeatedly is not what makes it a bad task.

The effort is laborious; the rock is huge and heavy, and Sisyphus has to work very hard to achieve the summit. But the work is possible, and it is not harmful. Much work that is difficult is worthwhile and often success at a difficult task is far sweeter than success at an easy one. There is nothing about hard work in itself that is frustrating or futile or even punishing. So Camus is still on safe ground in imagining at least the possibility that Sisyphus is happy each time he succeeds, even as he starts back down the mountain to retrieve the rock to begin again. Now futility is normally, perhaps even always, disappointing, but futility is the failure to reach a goal. Sisyphus fails to get the rock to the top of the mountain permanently, but he never fails to get the rock to the top of the mountain. His effort is only to be considered futile if the goal is permanence. Insofar as his task is not to keep the rock at the pinnacle, but merely to get it there, his efforts are not futile. In fact as often as he has to repeat the task he achieves success and his effort is rewarded, not frustrated.

Moreover, if we once again look at what is in some sense metaphysically important, it is important in life that we try to do what is right, not just that we succeed. We cannot control our destiny, but we can control our deserts, and we do that by always trying to do what is right and what is best. Attempts may be futile, but making the attempt is never futile, for it determines and simultaneously rewards our character. In all these ways, Camus is on safe ground in being able to imagine that Sisyphus is happy. But there is one remaining attribute of Sisyphus' labor, and I see no way to imagine it produces happiness, nobility, or redemption. It has nothing to do with the repetiveness of the act, its difficulty, the brevity of its achievement, or its potential futility. It is that the act of rolling this boulder up this hill serves no useful purpose other than to punish Sisyphus. It is meaningless to move this rock to the top of this hill otherwise. There is no merit in getting the rock to the summit. The task is a worthless one. The achievement is an achievement in name only.

It accomplishes nothing but getting the rock from here to there. Even if the task of Sisyphus were merely to get this rock up this hill one time, whatever amount of time he spends doing it, whether long or short, is time squandered from how he better could have spent it doing something worthwhile and useful. Even if it were to make him stronger, he would have been better off becoming stronger by doing strenuous work that was actually useful. As a metaphor for frustrating and futile labor, the point of this being a punishment for Sisyphus is that it an eternal waste of time and energy. That it is repetitive makes it frustrating because it is the repetition of something boring and useless. That it is laborious is only bad because it is a strenuous effort to achieve something of no real value. It does not really matter that it is temporary, for even if it were permanent, Sisyphus would not be able to take pride in the fact that he has simply changed the position of a rock, a piece of furniture in the universe. Moving the rock makes a difference in the universe, but a difference that is without distinction, without merit, without benefit.

Sisyphus has added no value to the universe by taking the rock from the bottom of the hill to its crest. His crowning victory each time is an empty one, not because it does not last, but because it accomplishes nothing of value. His work, his success, his effort is all in vain because the task is worthless. Not all work is noble. What is noble is to be striving toward the best we can accomplish, not toward just any accomplishment for its own sake. Even if you do well at something that is somewhat worthwhile, if there is something else you should have been doing that was more worthwhile, or that better set the stage for a lifetime of more worthwhile contributions you could have made, you have not done the most valuable act you could have. You have somewhat wasted your time. To spend time doing something of absolutely no value is to waste your time and that part of your life. Of course, sometimes we need to do less worthwhile acts in order to be able to do other more worthwhile acts. Eating, sleeping, vacationing or taking breaks may be unproductive and not particularly gratifying in themselves (for some people) but may be necessary in order for one to have the energy and focus to do what is worthwhile and satisfying.

Sometimes we have to work at less productive work in order to be able to have the resources, such as financial resources, to do more worthwhile things. That is a sad and inefficiently wasteful situation, but a bearable one. However, Sisyphus does not even have that luxury. He always and only pushes the rock up the hill. His chore is not a means to another end. Pushing the rock is all he does and all he gets to do. It is his only act. And it has absolutely no intrinsic or extrinsic value for him. It is a totally useless and meaningless act, and it is all he gets to do. That is why this punishment is so terrible. Perhaps, of course, he could be hearing or composing music, conceiving poetry, retrieving happy memories, dreaming hopeful dreams, creating wondrous fiction, or solving deep theoretical physics or philosophical problems in his head while he is pushing the rock, but the myth does not seem to offer that possibility; and even if it did, he has no one to share his answers with and cannot even stop to write them down. The punishment would not be so bad if he is able to think and if he enjoys thinking and is able to come to some interesting insights or pleasant thoughts.

But that is not part of the myth, and perhaps the toil of the rock is so demanding that it precludes even thinking. Being able to think and do something worthwhile while doing the otherwise worthless task of moving the rock would allow for redemption and nobility and would take the sting out of the punishment. If thinking is impossible though because of the intensity of the toil or because Sisyphus is constitutionally not capable of it, or if thinking is unhelpful because Sisyphus is constitutionally not satisfied by it, then we are back to the totally meaningless and unredemptive nature of his work and his continued existence. Aristotle said that happiness is an activity of the soul in conformity with excellence. I would add it is also an activity of the soul in the pursuit of excellence. Sisyphus however is not pursuing excellence. He is merely performing a task. And not all tasks are in conformity with, or the pursuit of, excellence. It is the total lack of value of what Sisyphus has to work so hard to achieve that makes his punishment so horrific.

It is not because his labor is merely arduous and eternal, but because it is arduous and eternally pointless, that he must suffer from doing it. One cannot imagine him happy unless one foolishly imagines him, or imagines him foolish. As a metaphor for part of the human condition and the plight of some people -- even those often considered most successful because we mistakenly think change is progress or that there are no hollow victories -- the myth of Sisyphus is a sad commentary. The work of far too many people has been, and continues to be, pushing a rock up a hill merely to change its location. This work is available here free, so that those who cannot afford it can still have access to it, and so that no one has to pay before they read something that might not be what they really are seeking. But if you find it meaningful and helpful and would like to contribute whatever easily affordable amount you feel it is worth, please do do. I will appreciate it. The button to the right will take you to PayPal where you can make any size donation (of 25 cents or more) you wish, using either your PayPal account or a credit card without a PayPal account.

Encyclopedia of Greek Mythology: Sisyphus Sisyphus (SIS-i-fus) Sinner condemned in Tartarus to an eternity of rolling a boulder uphill then watching it roll back down again. Sisyphus was founder and king of Corinth, or Ephyra as it was called in those days. He was notorious as the most cunning knave on earth. His greatest triumph came at the end of his life, when the god Hades came to claim him personally for the kingdom of the dead. Hades had brought along a pair of handcuffs, a comparative novelty, and Sisyphus expressed such an interest that Hades was persuaded to demonstrate their use - on himself. And so it came about that the high lord of the Underworld was kept locked up in a closet at Sisyphus's house for many a day, a circumstance which put the great chain of being seriously out of whack. Nobody could die. A soldier might be chopped to bits in battle and still show up at camp for dinner. Finally Hades was released and Sisyphus was ordered summarily to report to the Underworld for his eternal assignment. But the wily one had another trick up his sleeve.

He simply told his wife not to bury him and then complained to Persephone, Queen of the Dead, that he had not been accorded the proper funeral honors. What's more, as an unburied corpse he had no business on the far side of the river Styx at all - his wife hadn't placed a coin under his tongue to secure passage with Charon the ferryman. Surely her highness could see that Sisyphus must be given leave to journey back topside and put things right. Kindly Persephone assented, and Sisyphus made his way back to the sunshine, where he promptly forgot all about funerals and such drab affairs and lived on in dissipation for another good stretch of time. But even this paramount trickster could only postpone the inevitable. Eventually he was hauled down to Hades, where his indiscretions caught up with him. For a crime against the gods - the specifics of which are variously reported - he was condemned to an eternity at hard labor. And frustrating labor at that. For his assignment was to roll a great boulder to the top of a hill.

Only every time Sisyphus, by the greatest of exertion and toil, attained the summit, the darn thing rolled back down again. What does sisyphus mean? Definitions for sisyphusˈsɪs ə fəs This page provides all possible meanings and translations of the word sisyphus Princeton's WordNet(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition: Sisyphus(noun) (Greek legend) a king in ancient Greece who offended Zeus and whose punishment was to roll a huge boulder to the top of a steep hill; each time the boulder neared the top it rolled back down and Sisyphus was forced to start again Wiktionary(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition: Sisyphus(ProperNoun) tragic figure in Greek mythology doomed eternally to roll a boulder up a hill in Tartarus, a part of Hades. Origin: From Σίσυφος. Webster Dictionary(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition: Sisyphus(noun) a king of Corinth, son of Aeolus, famed for his cunning.

He was killed by Theseus, and in the lower world was condemned by Pluto to roll to the top of a hill a huge stone, which constantly rolled back again, making his task incessant Origin: [L. Sisyphus, Sisyphus, fr. Gr. .] Freebase(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition: Sisyphus In Greek mythology Sisyphus was a king of Ephyra punished for chronic deceitfulness by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this action forever. The Nuttall Encyclopedia(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition: Sisyphus a mythical king of Corinth, who for some offence he gave the gods was carried off to the nether world, and there doomed to roll a huge block up a hill, which no sooner reached the top than it bounded back again, making his toil endless. Numerology The numerical value of sisyphus in Chaldean Numerology is: 3 Pythagorean Numerology Sisyphus - Definition and synonyms of Sisyphus in the English dictionary.

Translation of Sisyphus to 20 languages. Sisyphus Meaning of Sisyphus in the English dictionary DICTIONARY exclamation Sisyphus is a noun. A noun is a type of word the meaning of which determines reality. Nouns provide the names for all things: people, objects, sensations, feelings, etc. WHAT DOES SISYPHUS MEAN IN ENGLISH? Sisyphus In Greek mythology Sisyphus was a king of Ephyra punished for chronic deceitfulness by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this action forever. Read more Definition of Sisyphus in the English dictionary The definition of Sisyphus in the dictionary is a king of Corinth, punished in Hades for his misdeeds by eternally having to roll a heavy stone up a hill: every time he approached the top, the stone escaped his grasp and rolled to the bottom.

ENGLISH WORDS THAT BEGIN LIKE SISYPHUS Synonyms and antonyms of Sisyphus in the English dictionary of synonyms SYNONYMS WORDS RELATING TO «SISYPHUS» Sisyphus story sisyphus myth albert camus pronunciation seconds mars quotes greek mythology king ephyra punished chronic deceitfulness being compelled roll immense boulder hill only watch back down repeat encyclopedia mythweb sinner condemned tartarus eternity rolling uphill then watching again founder corinth gods ceaselessly rock mountain whence stone would fall weight they thought sparknotes summary probably more famous punishment underworld than what life according about name collaboration between serengeti sufjan stevens formally whose project under gmail like client side drafts persist your form data browser Translation of «Sisyphus» into 20 languages TRANSLATOR TRANSLATION OF SISYPHUS Find out the translation of Sisyphus to 20 languages with our English multilingual translator . The translations of Sisyphus from English to other languages presented in this section have been obtained through automatic statistical translation; where the essential translation unit is the word «Sisyphus» in English.

List of principal searches undertaken by users to access our English online dictionary and most widely used expressions with the word «Sisyphus». FREQUENCY OF USE OF THE TERM «SISYPHUS» OVER TIME The graph expresses the annual evolution of the frequency of use of the word «Sisyphus» during the past 500 years. Its implementation is based on analysing how often the term «Sisyphus» appears in digitalised printed sources in English between the year 1500 and the present day. Examples of use in the English literature, quotes and news about Sisyphus EXAMPLES 10 ENGLISH BOOKS RELATING TO «SISYPHUS» Discover the use of Sisyphus in the following bibliographical selection. Books relating to Sisyphus and brief extracts from same to provide context of its use in English literature. 1 The Myth of Sisyphus This volume contains several other essays, including lyrical evocations of the sunlit cities of Algiers and Oran, the settings of his great novels The Outsider and The Plague. Albert Camus, 2013 10 The Labors of Sisyphus: The Economic Development of ...

Maria Hsia Chang's The Labors of Sisyphus is a reassessment of the meaning and purpose of the Chinese communist revolution. Maria Hsia Chang, 1999 10 NEWS ITEMS WHICH INCLUDE THE TERM «SISYPHUS» Find out what the national and international press are talking about and how the term Sisyphus is used in the context of the following news items. 1 The Sisyphus Machine creates beautiful patterns in sand Bruce Shapiro makes mesmerizing and impermanent sculptures with commercial motion-control gear, as used in robotics to less artistic ends. He's been doing it ... «Boing Boing, Jun 15» 2 It's called a Sisyphus Machine, it's pretty useless, but you definitely … This is a Sisyphus machine, and it is the most mesmerising thing you will see today. The above video is a ten-hour time lapse of the machine doing it's thing ... «Metro, Jun 15» 3 Greece and the Myth of Sisyphus!

Since 2010, Greece has been living the tragic myth of Sisyphus, the king in Greek mythology who tried to outsmart the Gods and was punished for his trickery by ... «Huffington Post, Mar 15» 4 Sisyphus Just Needs a Hand By James StavridisJames Stavridis is a retired four-star U.S. Navy admiral and NATO supreme allied commander who serves today as the dean of the Fletcher ... «Foreign Policy, Jan 15» 5 Tears Of Sisyphus: Republicans Resurrect ACORN, Only To Murder … WASHINGTON -- Great empires rise and fall, rise again. Byzantium survives in splendor as Rome collapses before the barbarian hordes. So it has been with ... «Huffington Post, Dec 14» 6 Active Fatalism He brought up Sisyphus, the Greek mythological figure whose devious attempt to defy the gods and even death itself was punished with his condemnation to the ...

«New York Times, Oct 14» 7 Superdrag offshoot The Lees Of Memory share new song and video … On September 16th, the band is releasing its debut album, Sisyphus Says, via SideOneDummy Record. The album's lead single, “We Are Siamese”, has been ... «Consequence of Sound, Jul 14» 8 Sisyphus, the bold new nanobrewery After months of anticipation, Sisyphus Brewing Company opened its doors to the general public on July 11.The new nano-brewery, located in a former ... «thelinemedia.com, Jul 14» 9 Opening soon: Sisyphus brews big variety in small batches Owner Samuel Harriman works a brew kettle at Sisyphus Brewing Co. The new microbrewery… more. Calling all beer buffs: Sisyphus Brewing Co.'s taproom ... «Minneapolis / St.

Paul Business Journal, Jul 14» 10 Sisyphus Redeemed Sisyphus, it will be remembered, was condemned for all eternity to roll a heavy rock to the top of a hill, and each time when he was nearing his goal the stone ... «Dissident Voice, Jun 14» REFERENCE In 2015, America has a labor force from the 1970s. That's bad. In 2015, America has a labor force from the 1970s. That's bad. 10 things you need to know today Today's best articles The week's best photojournalism Daily business briefing Reporting on the monthly jobs numbers is a little like reporting on Sisyphus. According to Greek mythology, Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to eternally roll a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down again. Similarly, any journalists covering his efforts would have to report a modest gain, only to remind readers of the utterly futile big picture. OK, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) reports aren't that bad. But they aren't far off either.

Last Thursday, for instance, saw 223,000 jobs added to the economy and the unemployment rate dip to 5.3 percent. In fact, we've now seen 57 months of straight job growth — the longest single stretch since World War II. And yet, seven years after the Great Recession, we still haven't repaired the economy. To return to the same level of employment we had before the collapse (accounting for population growth), and to do so by the summer of 2017, we need to be adding 246,000 jobs a month . This latest report actually revised May and April's gains downward, so the latest three-month average is 221,000 jobs per month. More fundamentally, the two clearest indicators of the health of American jobs are the rates of growth for average hourly earnings and inflation. They signal when employers are facing truly bottom-up pressure to offer workers better deals, because everyone who wants a job can get one. But the rate of average wage growth plummeted after 2008, and has been bouncing around at 2 percent ever since — essentially flatlined.

The inflation rate has struggled to even reach 2 percent, the Federal Reserve's explicit target. So what's going on? The first clue in the jobs report is the labor force participation rate, which is the percentage of Americans who have a job (out of everyone 16 and over who either has a job or is actively looking for one). That indicator peaked in the boom of the late 1990s at 67 percent. Then it got wobbly after 2001, fell of a cliff after 2008, and has slowly eroded since. For June it was at 62.6 percent, the lowest it's been since the late 1970s. In fact, it fell from 62.9 percent in May, and that drop pretty much explains June's seemingly positive fall in the unemployment rate to 5.3 percent. (The rate is calculated as a share of the labor force. So if the labor force shrinks but unemployment stays steady, the unemployment rate still goes down.) Now, labor force participation is still higher than it was mid-century, so maybe this isn't such a big deal?

Well, you see that big run-up in labor force participation after 1960? That's the entrance of women into the work world. Between 1960 and 1980, we went through a cultural shift that significantly expanded the pool of labor available in the job market. There's nothing wrong with that pool shrinking again, but only if it was something we meant to do. We could have undertaken policies to shrink the work week , or to allow people to retire earlier , or to increase the amount of income they get from the government. But we didn't do any of that as a society. Most families have two earners now, but both earners have to work full-time just to keep up with previous living standards. Families with only one earner tend to be poorer these days, both because they have less income and because they can't afford the child care expenses that would free up the second parent to work. That late 1990s peak at 67 percent was also the last time wages for workers at every income level rose together . Since we haven't fundamentally altered the structure of our economic policy since then, it's fair to say that peak is what a healthy economy looks like.

You can see the problem in other measures, too. The U-6 unemployment rate counts the official unemployed, people working part-time but who want to work full-time, and people who have given up looking for jobs. It soared to 17 percent after 2008. Seven years later, it's at 10.5 percent, which is higher than it's been since the early 1990s. Or you can look at labor force participation amongst the 55-and-over crowd, which has gone up since 1990. We may have more older people overall, and thus more retirements, which is part of why the headline labor force participation rate is dropping. But the percentage of older people who are sufficiently scared about their future that they want to keep earning has increased. Finally, there's the percentage of people between ages 25 and 54 who are employed. That number excludes people who might be students and people who might be retired, so it's really the core of the work force. It's headed up, but it's still well below its pre-2008 peak, which in turn was well below its late 1990s peak.

One of the crucial things to remember about inequality is that denying Americans work is one of the best ways to drive it up. Inequality stopped rising in the late 1990s because work was plentiful. If someone didn't like the deal an employer was offering, they could just go find another deal. But in this new world, jobs for the lower class are far harder to come by, and that loss of bargaining power is cascading up the income ladder. These days, you can get someone with a BA for what you used to pay for someone with a high school degree. And you can get a worker with a mater's degree for what you'd use to pay a worker with a BA. Americans aren't just attached to the economy in a different way from before, they're attached in a fundamentally worse way: one that comes along with lower incomes, more insecurity, and jobs that are just harder to find . In other words, this isn't a reshuffling. It's a rot. 1000+ images about Sisyphyus on Pinterest | Vladimir kush, Museums and Prado Forward Attic black-figure neck- amphora. Sisyphos pushing his rock up the hill for eternity.

He is accompanied by Persephone who is seated in her Hades-palace in the underworld. The palace is indicated by two dorian pillars. Found in Italy. Attic period. 510 - 500 BC. (source: Leiden Museum of Antiquities) See More The Velocity Gospel Dedicates New EP to Legendary Miami Music Teacher Doug Burris - Particle News The Velocity Gospel Dedicates New EP to Legendary Miami Music Teacher Doug Burris Follow @particlenewsapp Miami New Times - 2016.7.8 If you were to just see the name, you might expect the Velocity Gospel to be some sort of speed metal gospel choir, which - don't get us wrong - sounds awesome. But if you ask the man behind it all (and he has been asked many times before) you'd find that's not the case. Emmanuel Canete says the name pulling his one-man psychedelic, indie-pop style together instead derives from a bizarre literary influence in Steve Aylett's novel of the same name. "Within the mythos of the book, there exists a cult, the Velocity Gospel - religious zealots that spend their days and nights doing everything possible to build large catapults.

They use these devices to launch themselves as fast and as high as they can into the sky in the hopes of becoming closer to God. Of course, they fall to the ground and suffer tremendous physical trauma. Nonetheless, they pick themselves up, dust themselves off and start the process all over again," Canete explains. He likens this to the Greek mythology of Sisyphus, who is eternally condemned to roll a boulder up a hill, only to have it fall back down right before reaching the top. "As an artist who has always struggled to maintain artistic integrity while striving to achieve commercial success, struggle and finding meaning and validation in the process rather than the end result has always been my focus," he adds. Canete remembers his first days playing live music. He'd stagger out of a bar at the break of dawn, rushing to make it on time to his freshman year first period class.

Several years after putting in his time with local bands (most notably with Stone Scent and Caution Automatic), Canete released his current one-man-project's debut album, Read Full Story The Myth of Sisyphus The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. If one believes Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of mortals. According to another tradition, however, he was disposed to practice the profession of highwayman. I see no contradiction in this. Opinions differ as to the reasons why he became the futile laborer of the underworld. To begin with, he is accused of a certain levity in regard to the gods. He stole their secrets. Aegina, the daughter of Aesopus, was carried off by Jupiter. The father was shocked by that disappearance and complained to Sisyphus. He, who knew of the abduction, offered to tell about it on condition that Aesopus would give water to the citadel of Corinth.

To the celestial thunderbolts he preferred the benediction of water. He was punished for this in the underworld. Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put Death in chains. Pluto could not endure the sight of his deserted, silent empire. He dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from the hands of the conqueror. It is said also that Sisyphus, being near to death, rashly wanted to test his wife's love. He ordered her to cast his unburied body into the middle of the public square. Sisyphus woke up in the underworld. And there, annoyed by an obedience so contrary to human love, he obtained from Pluto permission to return to earth in order to chastise his wife. But when he had seen again the face of this world, enjoyed water and sun, warm stones and the sea, he no longer wanted to go back to the infernal darkness. Recalls, signs of anger, warnings were of no avail. Many years more he lived facing the curve of the gulf, the sparkling sea, and the smiles of the earth. A decree of the gods was necessary.

Mercury came and seized the impudent man by the collar and, snatching him from his joys, led him forcibly back to the underworld, where his rock was ready for him. You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the aburd hero. He is,as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth. Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them. As for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved.

Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain. It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock. If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious.

Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn. If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and th sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy rises in man's heart: this is the rock's victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Oedipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same time, blind and desperate, he realizes that the only bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl.

Then a tremendous remark rings out: "Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well." Sophocles' Oedipus, like Dostoevsky's Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory. Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism. One does not discover the absurd without attempting to write a manual of happiness. "What! by such narrow ways--?" There is but one world, however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness. "I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men. All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing.

Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. there is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that silent 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. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain!

One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. What is it about your life that resembles Sisyphus' plight? What is your relationship to your rock? Is the struggle itself enough for you? Would you describe pushing a rock up a hill heaven, hell, or something in between? How does this story relate to Sartre's ideas about man's fate, Plato's universe, Christian faith and the teachings of Jesus? Which is worse, Dante's Inferno or the eternal struggle of Sisyphus?

Sisyphean task | Article about Sisyphean task by The Free Dictionary Sisyphean task | Article about Sisyphean task by The Free Dictionary Related to Sisyphean task: Sisyphus , Sisyphean Sisyphus (sĭs`ĭfəs), in Greek mythology, son of Aeolus and founder and king of Corinth. Renowned for his cunning, he was said to have outwitted even Death. For his disrespect to Zeus, he was condemned to eternal punishment in Tartarus. There he eternally pushed a heavy rock to the top of a steep hill, where it would always roll down again. Albert Camus' essay The Myth of Sisyphus is based on this legend. Sisyphus (religion, spiritualism, and occult) Sisyphus, asteroid 1,866 (the 1,866th asteroid to be discovered, on December 5, 1972), is approximately 7.6 kilometers in diameter and has an orbital period of 2.6 years.

Sisyphus was a mythological figure whose punishment in the underworld was to roll a stone up a hill, only to have it roll back to the bottom, and then have to push it up the hill, over and over again for eternity. According to Martha Lang-Wescott, Sisyphus represents “determination; dogged persistence; to start over (again or anew); to repeat effort.” Jacob Schwartz gives this asteroid’s astrological significance as “determined action on hopeless or repetitive tasks, ‘returning to square one.’” This asteroid’s key phrase is “start over.” Sources: Lang-Wescott, Martha. Asteroids-Mechanics: Ephemerides II. Conway, MA: Treehouse Mountain, 1990. Lang-Wescott. Mechanics of the Future: Asteroids. Rev. ed. Conway, MA: Treehouse Mountain, 1991. Schwartz, Jacob. Asteroid Name Encyclopedia. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1995. Sisyphus in Greek mythology, the son of Aeolus (the guardian of the winds) and the builder and king of Corinth.

After his death, Sisyphus was condemned in Hades to roll a heavy stone up a hill, which, every time it nearly reached the top, rolled down again. Hence the expression “Sisyphean labor,” which signifies endless and ineffective hard work and torments. Various myths have been preserved that explain why such a severe punishment befell Sisyphus. According to one myth, he is tormented for having disclosed the gods’ secrets. Sisyphus was portrayed in ancient Greek dramas, including non-extant works by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. He has been represented in modern literature (A. Camus, R. Merle) and in art (Titian). [23–1053–] Sisyphus a genus of dung beetles whose black or brown body is 5-12 mm long. The legs are very long. The anterior tibiae are dentate, whereas the posterior tibiae are bent and lack denticles. There are 16 species, distributed mostly in the tropics of Africa and Asia. There is only a single species, S. schaefferi, in the USSR (southern region).

Like the scarab, Sisyphus feeds on the excrement of animals, mostly ungulates. Before eating the dung, the beetle rolls it into small balls. Sisyphus man condemned to roll up a hill a huge stone which always rolls back before he gets it to the top. [Gk. Myth.: Brewer Dictionary, 1006] SparkNotes: Frost’s Early Poems: “Mending Wall” Frost’s Early Poems Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it And spills the upper boulders in the sun, And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: 5 I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, 10 But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go.

15 To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: “Stay where you are until our backs are turned!” We wear our fingers rough with handling them. 20 Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across 25 And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: “Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it 30 Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, 35 That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him, But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather He said it for himself.

I see him there, Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. 40 He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father’s saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.” 45 Summary A stone wall separates the speaker’s property from his neighbor’s. In spring, the two meet to walk the wall and jointly make repairs. The speaker sees no reason for the wall to be kept—there are no cows to be contained, just apple and pine trees. He does not believe in walls for the sake of walls. The neighbor resorts to an old adage: “Good fences make good neighbors.” The speaker remains unconvinced and mischievously presses the neighbor to look beyond the old-fashioned folly of such reasoning. His neighbor will not be swayed. The speaker envisions his neighbor as a holdover from a justifiably outmoded era, a living example of a dark-age mentality. But the neighbor simply repeats the adage.

Form Blank verse is the baseline meter of this poem, but few of the lines march along in blank verse’s characteristic lock-step iambs, five abreast. Frost maintains five stressed syllables per line, but he varies the feet extensively to sustain the natural speech-like quality of the verse. There are no stanza breaks, obvious end-rhymes, or rhyming patterns, but many of the end-words share an assonance (e.g., wall, hill, balls, wall, and well sun, thing, stone, mean, line, and again or game, them, and him twice). Internal rhymes, too, are subtle, slanted, and conceivably coincidental. The vocabulary is all of a piece—no fancy words, all short (only one word, another, is of three syllables), all conversational—and this is perhaps why the words resonate so consummately with each other in sound and feel. Commentary I have a friend who, as a young girl, had to memorize this poem as punishment for some now-forgotten misbehavior. Forced memorization is never pleasant; still, this is a fine poem for recital.

“Mending Wall” is sonorous, homey, wry—arch, even—yet serene; it is steeped in levels of meaning implied by its well-wrought metaphoric suggestions. These implications inspire numerous interpretations and make definitive readings suspect. Here are but a few things to think about as you reread the poem. The image at the heart of “Mending Wall” is arresting: two men meeting on terms of civility and neighborliness to build a barrier between them. They do so out of tradition, out of habit. Yet the very earth conspires against them and makes their task Sisyphean. Sisyphus, you may recall, is the figure in Greek mythology condemned perpetually to push a boulder up a hill, only to have the boulder roll down again. These men push boulders back on top of the wall; yet just as inevitably, whether at the hand of hunters or sprites, or the frost and thaw of nature’s invisible hand, the boulders tumble down again. Still, the neighbors persist.

The poem, thus, seems to meditate conventionally on three grand themes: barrier-building (segregation, in the broadest sense of the word), the doomed nature of this enterprise, and our persistence in this activity regardless. But, as we so often see when we look closely at Frost’s best poems, what begins in folksy straightforwardness ends in complex ambiguity. The speaker would have us believe that there are two types of people: those who stubbornly insist on building superfluous walls (with clichés as their justification) and those who would dispense with this practice—wall-builders and wall-breakers. But are these impulses so easily separable? And what does the poem really say about the necessity of boundaries? The speaker may scorn his neighbor’s obstinate wall-building, may observe the activity with humorous detachment, but he himself goes to the wall at all times of the year to mend the damage done by hunters; it is the speaker who contacts the neighbor at wall-mending time to set the annual appointment. Which person, then, is the real wall-builder? The speaker says he sees no need for a wall here, but this implies that there may be a need for a wall elsewhere— “where there are cows,” for example.

Yet the speaker must derive something, some use, some satisfaction, out of the exercise of wall-building, or why would he initiate it here? There is something in him that does love a wall, or at least the act of making a wall. 1

Question: In mythology, who was condemned to eternally roll a boulder up to the top of a hill only to see it roll down the other side?
Answer: Sisyphus