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The mundane experience with endless dishwashing was an opportunity to make the connection between a basic attitude and a mythical image. My resistance to the eternal repetition was placed in a wider context by the identification with a mythological figure. I experienced the fundamental existential awareness of the person who appears to toil in vain.
Myths are stories constructed from the elements of everyday reality and they take the experience of this reality as their subject matter. They use this to express humankind's self-knowledge, its experience of divinity and its attitude toward both the divine and the mundane. For a myth to endure, both the collective and the individual must be able to identify with it. Thus it must express an essential human condition or yearning.
Myths have been deprived of their power by the science of history. It is clear therefore that a myth that still carries a message to us today must have a symbolic function. It must illuminate some fundamental life experiences. Each myth expresses specific fears and hopes. In the myth of Sisyphus the experience is that of a person who appears to toil in vain, yet will not be torn away from his efforts. I say appears because the phrase "in vain" implies from the outset interpretation of the myth.
Sisyphus ought to "succeed": he should roll the stone over the peak and put an end to the business. But should he really? Don't we tend to call a task a labor of Sisyphus, or label efforts as Sisyphean, in those very situations where we are convinced that a goal must be reached?
Homer has Odysseus tell of his journey through the underworld:
Then Sisyphus in torment I beheld
being roustabout to a tremendous boulder.
Leaning with both arms braced and legs driving,
he heaved it toward a height, and almost over,
but then a Power spun him round and sent
the cruel boulder bounding again to the plain.
Whereon the man bent down again to toil,
dripping sweat, and the dust rose overhead.1
This well known part of the myth conveys great exertion, intense engagement and perseverance with the boulder, even though the supposed goal cannot be reached. This is followed by endless repetition, which according to the myth is a punishment from the gods.
Like all myths that still affect us, the myth of Sisyphus expresses a fundamental experience of human existence, an essential aspect of life and human nature.
The fact that the power of this myth has survived was reflected in the reactions of my acquaintances when I told them that I was currently exploring the myth of Sisyphus. The news met with a sigh or a laugh of understanding, of bitterness and occasionally of malice. All of them showed that this theme was not foreign to them. Conversations developed around the theme of resignation, the will to persevere and the meaning and absurdity of existence. Feelings of being overwhelmed were expressed, along with the conviction that the time would come when one would be unable or unwilling to lift this eternal stone any longer. Questions were raised which brought the issue of hope and hopelessness to the fore. In connection with the life situation of each individual other aspects of this significant mythical image were given more attention. For some people the most significant aspect was that of exertion against the heavy stone viewed as a symbol for a difficult task causing suffering. For others it was the eternal repetition which they experienced as painful. It was the endless repetition that made the "stone" heavy. In the final analysis, however, most of the people agreed that the burden and the repetition combine to cause the suffering.
There were other reactions, however. There were people who felt that the repetition did them good, for it was the expression of an order on which one could depend. They accepted that which was always the same, because they understood it to be an expression of the essence of life. Although some felt deprived of innovation in this model of life, others were pleased that for once novelty was not all important.
It soon became clear from the reactions to the myth that different aspects of it can be experienced, and that these reactions are heavily dependent upon the role the myth plays in the current life situation of each individual. For it goes without saying that not all of human existence is expressed in the myth of Sisyphus. A multitude of myths exists. All have vital things to say about the human condition, and each illuminates a different perspective. To name but one example, in contrast to the myth of Sisyphus is the myth of the holy child, which address the human ability to create and discover. The myth of Sisyphus cannot reflect the entire human condition.
It is remarkable nevertheless that this mythological motif is familiar to so many, above all because the author's native language, German, contains the expression Sisyphosarbeit, "Sisyphus work." As we shall see, one's stage in life shifts certain aspects of this myth into the foreground and allows others to recede.
A nineteen-year-old woman: "Labor of Sisyphus? Useless work, work from which no one gains. Pure frustration. To be avoided whenever possible."
A twenty-two-year-old man: "Labor of Sisyphus? Work that is strenuous yet accomplishes nothing. That may well be true of all work. I consider Sisyphus labor only justified when the work process as a whole contributes something, when one is able to create something in the end."
A forty-year-old woman: "Labor of Sisyphus! What strikes me about it is not so much its uselessness, but its endless repetition. Take for instance the entire job of housekeeping, the washing - there is no end to it. But of course it is necessary. Or think of the repetition of the same problems in relationships, the same arguments over the same problems, and the temptation to resolve them in the same unproductive way. Sometimes I would like to do everything quite differently."
A forty-two-year-old man: "The man who always rolled the same boulder: that's how I think of myself too. A lot that used to be challenging isn't any more. The hardship remains, but the feeling of triumph is gone. The challenge seems to be to bear this deficiency, and I'm already resigning myself to it. I have no more energy left. It's no big deal. Most people have their own stone to roll. I used to be admired for my perseverance. Now it's just become natural. Sometimes I'm even criticized for it."
A seventy-five-year-old woman: "Labor of Sisyphus. I haven't thought about that in a long time. Earlier, when I was in my forties, there was so much to do and I seemed constantly to be starting from scratch again. I only have to think of the mountains of socks that always needed mending, and of how they were constantly holed again. It seemed so senseless. Often I was so angry I cried. Nowadays I have much less work, at least that's how it appears. One day I probably just accepted it all. After all, there is another side to it: If things are bound to get dirty again, then there's no need to clean them as if in preparation for eternal life. That's just the way things are. Everything repeats itself - and that too is good. It gives one a sense of being on intimate terms with life. One has strategies for dealing with it. One does things a little differently each time. And somehow I was always proud of the way I coped.
Today I notice the problem far more internally than externally. For I have qualities that have always made my life difficult, and they continue to make it hard. I'm sure that I have been consciously struggling with these problems for close to thirty years: Time and again this endless father complex. I know that things can't be any different, but I don't give up the struggle."
A seventy-three-year-old man: "I was a teacher. To this day I wonder where I got the strength to keep teaching the pupils the same thing over and over again. There were always the same problems encountered and the same questions asked. Sometimes I thought it was really Sisyphus work when I was discouraged, when I had the feeling that the pupils weren't learning what was essential. But of course that's not true. I was only reminded of Sisyphus when I was discouraged or when I expected too much.
Now I think of Sisyphus in connection with death in the sense that I have been pushing the boulder for an entire lifetime. I didn't run away. After all, I could have put the stone down and left. Now I really don't know if what I did was right or not."
When we compare these statements, we are struck by the fact that all of them speak of Sisyphus in connection with work. The myth of Sisyphus is a myth we perceive in the context of the working person, perhaps in essence a myth of work. This view is reinforced by the fact that we are familiar with the linguistic expression "Sisyphus work," which from the outset implies a specific interpretation of the myth.
It also becomes clear that the theme of Sisyphus presents itself above all in midlife. It is then that the experience becomes existential and its issues can no longer be as easily avoided as was the case at a younger age. Of course younger people experience the theme of Sisyphus work, and they too connect it with frustration, but with a frustration that is avoidable. For people in midlife Sisyphus work no longer appears avoidable. It is considered "necessary."
And yet this necessity is most closely linked with a lack of productivity. What is necessary need not be unproductive. What presents itself here as necessary repetition obliges us to ask whether or not there is a point to it all. We sense that what is believed necessary could prove false in the final analysis. Perhaps this fear is simply a result of the tension that arises between the knowledge that not everything can be productive and an internalized demand that everything must be productive. The necessity of repetition seems to be accepted, and yet it stands in opposition to the demand that life must change. This is the tension at the heart of the myth of Sisyphus. It prompts us to consider each time whether the repetition really is necessary or whether it is just an attempt to resolve something in an unproductive way.
The forty-year-old woman speaks of Sisyphus in the context of relationships. So it is not only external work that is viewed as repetitive but also our behavior in relationships. The same "idiosyncrasies" that change so little lead time and again to the same suffering with one another. They always engender the same form of conflict, which leads nowhere because everyone knows from the outset how it will turn out. It's "the same old tune," and no one seems capable of bringing about the slightest change to it.
Unproductive is probably the right expression in this case, since we know very well how our partner really ought to be. The behavior is also unproductive in the sense that we have become used to these repeat performances, perhaps in several partnerships already. We are no longer frightened or even alarmed.
Finally we must ask ourselves if we are keeping our involvement with the same problem in the right perspective. After all, Sisyphus is only one myth among many. In which cases could this perseverance be just senseless repetition?
The forty-two-year-old man experiences a completely different aspect of the myth. His associations make clear why the Sisyphus story could be classed as a myth of the forty-year-old:
By the time one is forty a lot has been learned about mastering life, external life, and the knowledge is being applied. When for the first time we master something which we assumed was beyond our abilities we are filled with a good feeling about life. Unfortunately, this feeling is unique and cannot be repeated. The best we can hope for is a good memory of it, but usually the achievement becomes unremarkable. We have grown accustomed to it ourselves, and so have those around us. This man in his forties cannot get used to the "norm," perhaps in part because he devotes all of his energy to his work and has none left for anything else. Do we have a man here for whom this myth alone explains his entire life? Is his life dominated by the Sisyphus theme? Did he perhaps learn somewhere that by loyal pushing of the stone peaks are actually attained?
It is becoming increasingly clear that the theme of Sisyphus must occupy only one place among others in our lives.
An additional phenomenon shows up here, which while related only indirectly to the myth of Sisyphus can nevertheless greatly intensify Sisyphean suffering. Admiration is much easier to come by in youth and young adulthood than later. Later there is much that simply repeats itself, much becomes "usual," even expected. If a person can't find self-worth in the loyal fulfillment of nonspectacular tasks, if he has difficulty with the ordinary, then the Sisyphus theme will prove even more torturous than it might otherwise.
My thesis that the Sisyphus theme belongs to the forty-year-olds is supported by the statement of the seventy-five-year-old woman. She reminisces about her years between the ages of forty and fifty. In her case we clearly see the senselessness which she experienced when faced with socks that were always full of holes. We see her rage in the face of a task that could never be completed.
In the end, she simply accepted the situation as an aspect of "finite life," as an expression of the fact that much of human activity is just not meant for eternity. She arrives at a sense of human moderation. Her exertion is no longer devalued just because it yields nothing absolute, and the endless duplication of effort is accepted. In the eternal repetition she perceives that she is on intimate terms with life. After all, we review learning material repeatedly in order to imprint it on our memories. Through repetition life also imprints itself on us, if we are not constantly confronted with new and unpredictable situations.
The story this woman tells shows clearly that there is a phase of life in which the theme of Sisyphus dominates, and that this phase can be outgrown. At first she suffered and rebelled against it, but eventually accepted it as one of life's fundamental patterns. By virtue of this acceptance aspirations were relativized, and the positive aspect of repetitiveness could be experienced, namely the sense of security which it brings. The older woman shows, too, how she satisfies the need for variation, which after all exists in all of us: Though the tasks were always similar, each time she approached them slightly differently inventing new strategies. And she was proud of this. She fully developed the freedom which remained available within the limits of the situations. The small variations which are possible can take the place of grand and impossible designs if the persistence of repetition is accepted.
But the Sisyphus theme can raise its head elsewhere. At first the seventy-two-year-old viewed the mastery of external life as Sisyphus work, forever starting again from the beginning and never really coming to any end. But later she moved on to speak about "inner problems," about idiosyncrasies that have always made life difficult for her and continue to do so. In this instance it is the ability to carry on with her idiosyncrasies and to tolerate them, to be able to put up with the difficult sides of herself, which she considers Sisyphus work.
The seventy-three-year-old man brings a similar perspective to our topic when he states that he now perceives the theme of Sisyphus in conjunction with death. The gentleman identifies himself to a certain extent with Sisyphus, as a man who has spent an entire life pushing the stone. He has always tackled the tasks which have presented themselves to him, always shouldered the hardships of life and never fled. But now he has doubts about the wisdom of his conduct.
For this individual, "pushing the stone" meant fulfilling his duty. Today he feels that sometimes he could have let the stone rest in peace. If we take his statement more radically, the stone could symbolize not just duty, but all the hardship of this man's existence. Then giving up the stone would mean giving up his life, capitulating. That was something which it never occurred to him to do.
This former teacher reminisced about his professional experience in a way that shows he was able to distance himself from complete identification with the myth. Teaching entailed much repetition and called for great versatility to make that repetition palatable. The essential factor for this teacher was however not the repetition of the material. What was essential was the pedagogical passion, the unfaltering will to show something to each new group of pupils, even though it remained the same old subject for the teacher. The necessity of repeating the same material challenged him to be creative within that repetition. Repetition is only a structural element within an existence which holds the awareness of mortality. The truly essential thing is that which is illuminated within this repetition. The teacher's exertion became a labor of Sisyphus only when he was discouraged or when he hoped for too much.
From the case above we can see that Sisyphus work is not necessarily Sisyphean from the start, but that it can become Sisyphus work when the going gets especially tough. This may be because our expectations are too high, or because we overreach ourselves, as perhaps the teacher has done. It is too much to continuously expect of ourselves that we be at work with a pedagogical passion and remain constantly inspired within our repetition. After all, not even Sisyphus propelled the boulder downhill. He just let it roll! In the case of this teacher, however, one has the impression that he was all for the pushing of the stone. It is only with hindsight that he thinks he should have allowed himself a greater degree of freedom.
The associations of people in different age brackets have given us access to the experiential perspectives which they bring to this myth. The Sisyphus tale seems to have a lot to do with the burden of mastering everyday reality. In our human interactions we bear the burden of constantly recurring behavior which can damage a relationship. In the course of living together we become a burden for each other, and we proceed to bear these burdens together. The burden can also be seen as the effort of enduring the troublesome side of our own nature.
In all of the statements it is clear that life exists in relationship to the structural element of repetition. And yet this principle of repetition is questioned suspiciously as to whether it really is necessary or whether it merely arises from our fear of change. This repetition has much in common with ordinary life, with the experience that we cannot constantly climb the highest peaks, that "peak experiences" are not a constant part of the human condition. Of course repetitions increase the older people get, because repetition is a function of time. It appears that people in midlife are significantly less capable of dealing with this than older people are. For forty-year-olds the beginning of perceptible aging is painful because so much repeats itself and so often this repetition involves starting over from the beginning. This experience of the Sisyphean always involves the question of meaning.
Certain work seems to become Sisyphus work when we want too much, when we are too strongly committed to the absolute and incapable of accepting the finite nature of our existence. In the dynamics of great expectations which are followed by disappointments we experience the tortures of Sisyphus.
Then Sisyphus in torment I beheld
being roustabout to a tremendous boulder.
Leaning with both arms braced and legs driving,
he heaved it toward a height, and almost over,
but then a Power spun him round and sent
the shameless boulder bounding again to the plain.
Whereon the man bent down again to toil,
dripping sweat, and the dust rose overhead.2
It is easy to imagine this series of events. My first impression is of "rockiness." The predominating image is that of supreme exertion in the effort to impose human will on this rock. Exertion, the necessity of letting go, and the determination with which Sisyphus takes up the stone over and over again form the essentials in Homer's text. Sisyphus has to push with both hands and feet, his body drips with sweat, and a cloud of dust encircles his head.
This is an image of the greatest concentration and presence. Thus Sisyphus cannot pay attention to anything else: The stone and his exertion demand everything from him.
Sisyphus would have had to be intensely aware of himself in this situation. We too are intensely aware of ourselves when we are fully concentrated upon a task and feel at one with it. At such times we are apt to have an experience of power and of self which takes place entirely inside, because we are no longer looking at ourselves from the outside. These are the moments when we can surpass ourselves. Such moments with oneself and of oneself provide an experience of selfhood which can only come through self-abandonment.
Sisyphus has no onlookers. This part of the myth has nothing to do with the admiration of others. It is not a narcissistic demonstration of power in the sense of "take a look at this ..." It is a struggle that must be undertaken alone.
Shortly before he reaches the goal a "power" forces the boulder downward, and the hope that arose within his concentrated engagement is dashed. Within reach of the goal, at the commonest and most frustrating point Sisyphus fails. Did he imagine too soon that he had reached his goal and lose concentration as we mortals so often do?
Or was it perhaps never his intention to actually reach the goal with the boulder, but just to push it up as far as possible? Could it be that he was more intent on merely being engaged in the process than on the attainment of the perceived goal?
We know that the boulder will never reach its goal - at least within the myth. In considering this we are forced to confront our own fear that our efforts will fail in the end, that everything could prove useless, senseless, absurd, in vain. It is that thought that forces us to look for a meaning in this apparently senseless myth.
It is peculiar that the text transmits no reaction from Sisyphus when the boulder once again rolls down into the fields below. The stone is referred to as "shameless," perhaps even "shameful." With consternation one asks of what the stone ought to be ashamed. Could it be its overwhelming "power?" From Sisyphus we hear nothing at all.
What happens in the moment when the boulder rolls down into the fields? I imagine that Sisyphus jumps to one side, breathing heavily, stands still to catch his breath and then strides down again into the valley.
Agitated? Pensive? Unburdened? Would he then have eyes for the surroundings? After being so exclusively focused on the boulder and the slope, does Sisyphus then enter into a relationship with the landscape? Homer tells us nothing of this. The phase of being unburdened is not important. What counts is the phase of being burdened and the fact that he continues to accept the burden. When we work on this myth ourselves, however, we are free to look at it in a different way to those who wrote it down.
Homer speaks of a rock which Sisyphus probably has to push up a mountain, since he speaks of a peak. On antique vases which portray interpretations of the myth of Sisyphus this rock is sometimes depicted as round like a ball and sometimes as a block of stone. The size of the blocks or crags are always exaggerated in relation to Sisyphus, in order to make it seem a miracle that a human could lift such a block at all.
In nature boulders are simply there. If they are to be moved, then it must be from the outside. Since they oppose our intentions with their hardness, solidity, angularity and weight, it is generally difficult to get a boulder to move, let alone roll. Yet Sisyphus gets the boulder to move, and even to roll, repeatedly. The only goal the myth suggests he doesn't achieve with his stone is the peak.
Focusing on Sisyphus' success at moving the stone provides a perspective that could lead us to discover another meaning in the myth. We are driven to seek such an interpretation because it is uncomfortable for us to see nothing but the senseless monotony of having to start from the beginning again and again. It is precisely the painfulness of this situation that opens up our eyes to dimensions of the myth that are not openly being addressed.
Nevertheless, the myth deals first of all with failure, though Sisyphus does not give up. Sisyphus is not allowed to give up and he is not able to give up. He renews his attempts repeatedly, resuming the effort. Is he stubborn, compulsive or hopeful? Is he full of self-confidence or of defiance? Is he a symbol of the obstinacy with which people strive to succeed in spite of the apparent hopelessness of their goals? Is he a symbol for the fact that in spite of all of our tenacity our intentions and wishes never exist in realistic relation to our ability to realize them? Is Sisyphus a model for humanity in its excessiveness, when it lacks moderation and strives to reach beyond reasonable limits?
In this regard let us look at a text from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Maxims and Reflections."
Yet the most wondrous error is one that concerns ourselves and our abilities. It is that we dedicate ourselves to a worthy task, a noble undertaking, that is beyond our abilities. We strive for a goal that we can never attain. The Tantalus-like or Sisyphus-like suffering that one feels as a result of this effort is all the more bitter, the more earnest one's intentions have been. And yet often just when we view ourselves as severed from our original intentions forever, we find something else desirable along the way, something appropriate to us with which it was actually our lot to be contented.3
For Goethe it is clearly immoderate ambition, the over-estimation of oneself that makes us experience "Tantalus-like or Sisyphus-like suffering." It is interesting that he speaks of Tantalus and Sisyphus together. Tantalus, Sisyphus and Prometheus are the well-known penitents of the underworld. Tantalus tested the omniscience of the gods by placing his own son before them as a meal. As a punishment he must endure eternal hunger and thirst in the underworld. Above him is a tree full of fruits, but it withdraws from him when he reaches out for the branches. Beneath him is a lake, but it too recedes when he tries to draw water from it. He must suffer hunger and thirst forever, as Sisyphus must exert himself forever. Tantalus, Sisyphus and Prometheus* all competed with the gods, tried to prove themselves superior to the gods and were punished for it.
Perhaps the myth of Sisyphus is also a symbol for the fact that in spite of all our efforts nothing can really be brought to an end in human life, nothing can ever be completed. It is an intrinsic aspect of life that everything continues as long as we live.
If the myth tells us that no matter how much humans exert themselves, ultimately they will never attain their goals, then one can ask why Sisyphus doesn't just give up. The myth answers that it is part of his punishment that he cannot give up.
A man who is no longer young is determined to pass an examination in a discipline that probably isn't very well suited to him. He torments and tortures himself. Sometimes he gets sick before the examination is to be held. Twice already he has failed it, and he is allowed to take it a third time. He is overstretching himself, but cannot bring himself to acknowledge this. Like Sisyphus he begins anew with great tenacity.
The man appears to others to be quite set on the idea of passing the examination. Nothing else, not even the subject matter seems to interest him. Passing the test is all that counts. The fellow seems stubborn, compulsive in the extreme. When he fails the test he blames the stupidity of all those who examined his paper. Two days later he brings out all his supporting documents. He wants to show everyone that he could have passed and that he has been treated unjustly. This fellow just doesn't want to give up. And he probably can't give up without losing his self-image and falling into a deep crisis of self-esteem.
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