Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
I've been contemplating suicide, but it really doesn’t suit my style
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. (1)
The subject of this essay is precisely this relationship between the absurd and suicide, the exact degree to which suicide is a solution to the absurd. (5)
By the mere activity of consciousness [...] I refuse suicide. (62)
One must imagine Sisyphus happy. (119)
“The absurd...
is born of [a] confrontation between the human need [for a coherent meaning to the life that we lead] and the unreasonable silence of the world. (26)
lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation. (28-9; it is “essentially a divorce”)
is not in man [...] nor in the world, but in their presence together. (29)
is lucid reason noting its limits. (47)
does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. ‘Everything is permitted’ does not mean that nothing is forbidden. The absurd merely confers an equivalence on the consequences of those actions. (65)
Black and white and red all over
In certain situations, replying ‘nothing’ when asked what one is thinking about may be pretense in a man. [...] But if that reply is sincere, if it symbolizes that odd state of soul in which the void becomes eloquent, in which the chain of daily gestures is broken, in which the heart vainly seeks the link that will connect it again, then it is as it were the first sign of absurdity.” (11)
He recognizes the struggle, does not absolutely scorn reason, and admits the irrational. Thus he again embraces in a single glance all the data of experience and he is little inclined to leap before knowing. (35; re: the “confrontation” (28-9) between word and image in my paintings)
Consciousness illuminates it by paying attention to it. Consciousness does not form the object of its understanding, it merely focuses, it is the act of attention (41; cf. Brecht?)
[The work of art] marks both the death of an experience and its multiplication (92; cf. Barthes in Camera Lucida)
A profound thought is in a constant state of becoming; it adopts the experience of a life and assumes its shape, likewise, a man’s sole creation is strengthened in its successive and multiple aspects: his works. One after another, they complement one another, correct or overtake one another, contradict one another too. (111; cf. Foucault in Photogenic Painting and Schwabsky Object or Project)
History
“If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences. (17)
“Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them” (116; cf. Barthes, “Perhaps we have an invincible resistance to believing in the past, in History, except in the form of myth”
A mitigated narrative authority
Antinomy: A contradiction between principles or conclusions that seem equally necessary and reasonable; a paradox.
All things are not explained by one thing but by all things. [...] There is no longer a single idea explaining everything, but an infinite number of essences giving a meaning to an infinite number of objects (43)
Of whom and of what indeed can I say: ‘I know that!’ This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers. I can sketch one by one all the aspects it is able to assume, all those likewise that have been attributed to it, this upbringing, this origin, this ardor or these silences, this nobility or this vileness. But aspects cannot be added up. This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. (17)
Kafka
Merely to announce to us that uncommon fate is scarcely horrible, because it is improbable. But if its necessity is demonstrated to us in the framework of everyday life, society, state, familiar emotion, then the horror is hallowed. In that revolt that shakes man and makes him say: ‘That is not possible,’ there is an element of desperate certainty that ‘that’ can be (124; cf. Melancholia’s opening scene)
“These perpetual oscillations between the natural and the extraordinary, the individual and the universal, the tragic and the everyday, the absurd and the logical, are found throughout his work and give it both its resonance and its meaning. These are the paradoxes that must be enumerated, the contradictions that must be strengthened, in order to understand the absurd work. (122)
This needs to be my aim, too:
“His secret consists in being able to find the exact point where they meet in their greatest disproportion.” (133)