"One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
—Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
Prometheus
Atlas, my dear friend! How are you this fine day?
Atlas
Friend, you are a sight for sore eyes. The weight of the sky thrusts a powerful melancholy onto my shoulders today. I did not ask for this fate! I was not asked my opinion when Iapetus and Clymene conceived me. Zeus gave me no platform to contest my punishment. I have carried this sky for thousands of years, and what has it borne me? Misery and defeat! To break these chains, to be set free! Oh, how I yearn for this!
Prometheus
Your hope is futile. Those chains are indestructible. You will bear that oppressive celestial burden until the end of time. So long as you live, it will hang over your shoulders. So long as you desire to be free, you will be disappointed. For condemnation is the necessity of your condition, just as it is mine. Were these birds to stop tearing my flesh, I would know that I was dead. And were the sky to dislodge from your arms and float, you would know the same. The dreadful nothingness of being would be traded for the emptiness of death. In our deaths, we are released from the futility of living.
Atlas
Indeed, death seems to be our only escape from this condition. But why, as your organs are feasted upon, do you call this day fine? I have not had fine days since these oppressive heavens were subject to our will, since this weight was unknown to me and I floated through the world without bound.
Prometheus
We cannot float through life forever, dear Atlas. We were children then, joyful in our ignorance and proud of our freedom. We believed that the universe revolved around us. But now, we are destroyed. We are hopeless. We are puzzled by the games of the Fates. We are condemned to live in a universe that we seek to understand and thereby rule over. Yet we fail to comprehend it. We fail to see any meaning behind our eternal punishment, yet we yearn to know it anyway.
Atlas
But Prometheus, you have not answered my question. Is this absurd dichotomy between our search for understanding and the futility of those efforts not even more reason to despair? Would an end to our days not be preferable to their continuation?
Prometheus
Ah, but I have answered you. The very absurdity of it is its beauty, Atlas! You live with the sky on your shoulders, straining to make it stay in its place, yearning for an end to your task, but you know your hope is futile. I sit here being devoured, wishing these chains would split apart and that the eagles would drop dead, but I know this wish to be fruitless. That is the crux of it: we know. We are perfectly lucid of the absurdity of our condition, of its incomprehensibility and meaninglessness, yet we persist anyway. This dichotomy, this will to persist in a struggle for meaning that we know to be futile, is what we call life. The day is fine because we live it, not merely within our hopelessness but in spite of it.
Atlas
What you say seems wise, but you speak in riddles. I cannot reconcile this wretched pain with hope, nor my condemnation with liberation.
Prometheus
No, you cannot. Nor can I. This is what makes our struggle for understanding, for control over our condition, so absurd. You need not reconcile the irreconcilable to find joy in the world. You need only continue your effort to do so. We persist in our pain so that we may derive joy from that very endeavor. Would death deprive us of our misery? Yes. But it would also tear away the wretched flavor of experience and destroy the rebellious freedom we derive from our rejection of misery. The universe remains empty to us, devoid of any hope. We know that we will never know it. But in our vigor, we rebel against hopelessness by continuing to endure pain. Do not despair, dear Atlas. You may be bound to carry the heavens, but you may still attempt to throw it off your shoulders.
Atlas
I think I am beginning to see. What do you mean by rebellious freedom?
Prometheus
I refer to the only freedom we have, Atlas, and the greatest one at that. It is not a freedom the universe gives to us, for we are given none at all. It is the freedom we create by rejecting our condition, standing in absurd revolt to futility. I may not be able to stop the eagles from tearing me to pieces, but I will strive to do so anyway. My freedom is my act of rebellion despite my lucidity of hopelessness.
Atlas
Zeus be damned then! He may crush my bones, but not my spirit!
Prometheus
There, Atlas. You too now see the spring in our winter days.
Atlas
Indeed, death seems to be our only escape from this condition. But why, as your organs are feasted upon, do you call this day fine? I have not had fine days since these oppressive heavens were subject to our will, since this weight was unknown to me and I floated through the world without bound.
Prometheus
We cannot float through life forever, dear Atlas. We were children then, joyful in our ignorance and proud of our freedom. We believed that the universe revolved around us. But now, we are destroyed. We are hopeless. We are puzzled by the games of the Fates. We are condemned to live in a universe that we seek to understand and thereby rule over. Yet we fail to comprehend it. We fail to see any meaning behind our eternal punishment, yet we yearn to know it anyway.
Atlas
But Prometheus, you have not answered my question. Is this absurd dichotomy between our search for understanding and the futility of those efforts not even more reason to despair? Would an end to our days not be preferable to their continuation?
Prometheus
Ah, but I have answered you. The very absurdity of it is its beauty, Atlas! You live with the sky on your shoulders, straining to make it stay in its place, yearning for an end to your task, but you know your hope is futile. I sit here being devoured, wishing these chains would split apart and that the eagles would drop dead, but I know this wish to be fruitless. That is the crux of it: we know. We are perfectly lucid of the absurdity of our condition, of its incomprehensibility and meaninglessness, yet we persist anyway. This dichotomy, this will to persist in a struggle for meaning that we know to be futile, is what we call life. The day is fine because we live it, not merely within our hopelessness but in spite of it.
Atlas
What you say seems wise, but you speak in riddles. I cannot reconcile this wretched pain with hope, nor my condemnation with liberation.
Prometheus
No, you cannot. Nor can I. This is what makes our struggle for understanding, for control over our condition, so absurd. You need not reconcile the irreconcilable to find joy in the world. You need only continue your effort to do so. We persist in our pain so that we may derive joy from that very endeavor. Would death deprive us of our misery? Yes. But it would also tear away the wretched flavor of experience and destroy the rebellious freedom we derive from our rejection of misery. The universe remains empty to us, devoid of any hope. We know that we will never know it. But in our vigor, we rebel against hopelessness by continuing to endure pain. Do not despair, dear Atlas. You may be bound to carry the heavens, but you may still attempt to throw it off your shoulders.
Atlas
I think I am beginning to see. What do you mean by rebellious freedom?
Prometheus
I refer to the only freedom we have, Atlas, and the greatest one at that. It is not a freedom the universe gives to us, for we are given none at all. It is the freedom we create by rejecting our condition, standing in absurd revolt to futility. I may not be able to stop the eagles from tearing me to pieces, but I will strive to do so anyway. My freedom is my act of rebellion despite my lucidity of hopelessness.
Atlas
Zeus be damned then! He may crush my bones, but not my spirit!
Prometheus
There, Atlas. You too now see the spring in our winter days.
