You have already grasped that Sisyphus
is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture.
His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life
won him that unspeakable penalty
in which the whole being is exerted toward
accomplishing nothing.

This is the price
that must be paid for the passions of this earth.

Nothing is told to us about Sisyphus in the underworld.
Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them.
As for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining
to raise the huge stone, to roll it, and push it up a slope a hundred times over;
one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone,
the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass,
the foot wedging it,
the fresh start with arms outstretched,
the wholly human security
of two earth-clotted hands.

At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth,
the purpose is achieved.
Then Sisyphus watches the stone
rush down in a few moments toward that lower world
whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit.
He goes back down to the plain.

It is during that return, that pause,
that Sisyphus interests me.
A face that toils so close to stones
is already stone itself!

–excerpt The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, p. 23

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Last night I joined in a exchange of ideas provoked by Albert Camus’ rendition of the ancient Myth of Sisyphus published in 1945,  I have read Camus text many times and still shudder inwardly to imagine a man trapped in a dim underworld, a man who must put his shoulder to a massive boulder, to lever the rock, by whatever means he can manage to the summit of a mountain.  The boulder is pushed to the peak, and there gravity irresistibly pulls the great rock to the base of the mountain.

Sisyphus pivots, and begins his downward descent, knowing that he will find his rock and begin again.

Sisyphus the cunning raconteur, irrepressible promoter, the lover, the skeptic, — while making the descent to refit his shoulder to the rock, his rock, the consequence of every one of his actions, – Sisyphus surmounts his fate with an inward flash of joy.

Camus’ summation on Sisyphus, the absurd hero prompts me to quiet wonder:

Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin
of all that is human,
a blind man eager to see
who knows that the night has no end,
he is still on the go.

The rock is still rolling.

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What about a tune for the day?  This one never fails to elevate!  U2, With Or Without You