Table Of ContentPENGUIN MODERN �LASSICS
THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS
fu. �n
Albert Camus was bom Algeria in 1913 of Bre
and Spanish parentage. He was brought up in No�
Africa and had many jobs there (one of them playing
goal for the Algiers football team) before he caim� to.
Metropolitan France and took up' journalisiµ. He "'.as
active in the Resistance during the German occupation
and became editor of the cla11destine paper Combat.
Before the war he had written a play Caligula (193!)),
and during the war the two books which brought hlin
·
fame, L'Etranger (The Outsider) and Le Mythe de
Sisyphe. Abandoning politics and jQurnalism he devoted
himself to writing and established :In international repu
tation with such books as La Peste (The Plague) (1947};
Les ]ustes (1949), and La Chute (The Fall) (1956). The
Plague, The Fall, The Outsider, The•Rebel and Exile and
the Kingdom have been published'in«Penguins. 'He was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957· In
January 1960 he was killed in a road accident.
ALBERT CAMUS
ThMey tohf
Sisyphus
Translatedfr om the French by
JUSTIN O'BRIEN
0 my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but
exhaust the limits of the possible
-PINDAR, Pythian iii
(�)
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Originpaulbllyi sihnFe rda nasc eLe �ythe de Sisyphe (Gallim19a42r)d. ,
The otheers sahyaS'v bte!e tna kferno tmh vea ricooulsl ec01t eiosnssay s
byA lbeCratm upsu blisbhyLe idb raGiarlilei mard
First published in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton 1955 "
Published in Penguin Books 1975
Reprinted 1976, '1977 (twice), 1979
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Contents
Preface 7
THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS 9
An Absurd Reasoning 10
Absurdity and Suicide II
Absurd Walls 17
Philosophical Suicide 32
Absurd Freedom 51
The Absurd Man 64
Don Juanism 66
Drama 73
Conquest 79
Absurd Creation 86
Philosophy and Fiction 86
Kirilov 95
Ephemeral Creation 102
The Myth of Sisyphus 107
Appendix II2
r;_
Hope and the Absurd in the Work of Franz Kafka
SUMMER IN ALGIERS 125
THE MINOTAUR or THE STOP IN ORAN 139
HELEN'S EXILE 165
RETURN TO TIPA SA 173
THE ARTIST AND HIS TIME 185
5
Al
Preface
FoR me The Myth of Sisyphus marks the beginning of an idea
which I was to p�ue in The Rebel. It attempts to resolve the
problem of suicide, as The Rebel attempts to resolve that of
murder, in both cases without the aid of eternal values which,
temporarily perhaps, are absent or distorted in contemporary
Europe. The fundamental subject of The Myth of Sisyphus is
this : it is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has
a meaning; therefore it is legitimate to meet the problem of
suicide face to face. The answer, underlying and appearing
through the paradoxes which cover it, is this : even if one does
not believe in God, suicide is not legitimate. Written fifteen
years ago, in 1940, amidst the French and European disaster,
this book declares that even within the limits of nihilism it is
possible to find the means to proceed beyond nihilism. In all
the books I have written since, I have attempted to pursue this
direction. Although The Myth of Sisyphus poses mortal prob
lems, it sums itself up for me as a lucid invitation to live and
to create, in the very midst of the desert.
It bas hence been thought possible to append to this philo
sophical argument a series of essays, of a kind i have never
ceased writing, which are somewhat marginal to my qther
books. In a more lyrical form, they all illustrate that essential
fluctuation from assent to refusal which, in my view, defines
the artist and bis difficult calling. The unity of this book resid�
in the reflection, alternately cold and impassioned, in which an
artist may indulge as to bis reasons for living and for creating.
After fifteen years, I have progressed beyond several of the ·
positions which are set down here; but I have remained faithful,
it seems to me, to the exigency which prompted them. That is
7
PREFACE
why this book is in a certain sense the most personal of those
I have published in English. More than the others, therefore, it
has need of the indulgence ind understanding of its readers.
Paris ALBERT CAMUS
March r955
. The Myth of Sisyphus
FOR
PASCAL PIA
AN ABSURD REASONING
THE pages that follow deal with an absurd sensitivity tha,f can
be found wide5pread in the age -and not with an absurd philo
sophy which our time, properly speaking, has not known. It is
therefore simply fair to point out, ;at the outset, what these
pages owe to certain ,contemporary thinkers. It is so far from
my intention to hide this, that they will be found cited and
commented upon throughout this work.
But it is useful to note at the same time that the absurd,
hitherto taken as a conclusion, is considered in this essay as a
starting point. In this sense it may be.said that there is some
thing provisional in my commentary : one cannot prejudge the
position it entails. There will be found here merely the descrip
tion, in the pure state, of an intellectual malady. No metaphysic,
no belief is involved in it for a moment. These are the limits
and the only bias of this book. Certain personal experiences
urge me to make this clear.
IO
