Even if the accidents of life are rare, one must distrust everything else. How little it takes, a crack in the sky, an accident of the whole destiny, that death is. But if man is alone, everything becomes narrative. Yes, Sisyphus is the absurd hero. But must we imagine that he is unaware of his torment? No, he knows it. For the whole question is whether one should prefer life or the hope of another life. Two conclusions present themselves: either suicide, or the restoration of a vision. Sisyphus, silent, descends. He is brave, he must be, he is alone. And this solitude is the price of his greatness. All that is adventure of the soul belongs to him. His destiny belongs to him alone. His rock is his own affair. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe that suddenly falls silent before him, the ear of the rock rises above the unconscious and mute beings of nature. But pain is consciousness. Yes, it is the hour of consciousness and the return to life. Sisyphus suddenly looks at the path of the descent. This walk is strange, no doubt, but it is the necessary effort of a reflecting consciousness. There lies the rock; there is his affair. On reaching the summit, that moment is but a brief possession. He descends again, but this descent is marked by the smile of the hero. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. Man is everything: eyes that see, hands that touch, lips that keep silent, a heart that listens. If he knows the whole language of his being, he keeps himself informed. The sordid energy that flows from the nature of the world, the martyrdom of nature, are the same. He is the measure of all things. There is no destiny. It is quite true that nothing holds firm, nothing is so petty, so derisory as the drama of Sisyphus. One may also say: I am not alone. There are brothers in me. But I can only join them by losing them. I am not free. I shall be free when I am alone. A whole world of delicious exuberance has blossomed on this end of a sentence: a whole world of tenderness, of renunciation, of nobility. Sisyphus, during his silence, calls forth in men a faithful and stable universe. Everything is for him. This is why I stop with this subject. It is not only reason that plays, it is the heart that attaches itself. The great proud signature of man is found here: the absurd is reason falling, but also the heart falling silent. Chance has its rights. There is an age when one measures one's glory by what one possesses. But the essential thing is not to live; it is to know what living is, and to know that existence is a feverish and desperate feeling. This is why, all over the world, there are men who know. The goodness of the world is sometimes terrible. Literature, that moment when man seeks to say it, that whole world which a heart creates by what it offers in images and in strength, is in the image of that heart. I shall not elaborate further. But there is no greater meaning, no supreme justice. The belief in the value of words is enough for me. Life, as it appears to me, is a source of happiness. It is a struggle that leads to the grandeur of man. The myth of Sisyphus is the story of the king of Corinth who, having chained Death, condemned the gods and defied their power, was condemned to push eternally a rock to the summit of a mountain from which it endlessly rolled back down. But the fall of the rock is still his own affair. Sisyphus, in descending, takes possession of his destiny. If he wishes, he may return to existence. The works of man, those that enlighten him, are the only ones that survive him. And I see men who die. I see them die greatly. Yes, everything is order and everything is providence. But the lucidity of the absurd man, that clarity of soul that accompanies him, is the image of his solitude. Man cannot live without the certainty that the world has a meaning. But if the world has none, the absurd man invents one, and that is his greatness. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.