![]() ![]() (p.54) Essayist not philosopherĬamus takes quite a long time to finally getting round to saying this. Spread out over the whole length of a life, it restores its majesty to that life. To face down the obvious absurdity of human existence and to enjoy the wild beauty of the world while we can. ![]() If life is meaningless, the teenager is tempted ask, what on earth is the point of going on living? Why not commit suicide? That is the subject of the essay: it is an essay about suicide – about confronting suicide as the apparently ‘logical’ consequence of realising that we live in an Absurd world.Ĭamus’s answer is, that we shouldn’t commit suicide because it is more human and more noble and more in tune with a tragic universe – to rebel, to revolt against this fate. Written in 1940, in the ruins of the defeat of France, the text affirms that even in a Godless universe and a world awash with nihilism, there remain the means to defy and surmount that nihilism. ![]() The Myth of SisyphusĬamus’s preface sums it up. Born in November 1913, he was just 23 when he wrote Summer in Algiers, 26 when France fell to the Germans in June 1940, the year he wrote The Stop in Oran, and so on. A young man just beginning a career in writing and still very much entranced by the pleasures of the flesh, sunbathing, swimming, eyeing up beautiful women (a constant theme in his works). It’s worth remembering how young Camus was when he wrote these texts. This volume consists of the long (100-page) essay about suicide, The Myth of Sisyphus, which argues against despair and in favour of life – accompanied by five much shorter essays each exemplifying Camus’s healthy lust for living. It sums itself up as a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert. ![]()
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