#Imagine sisyphus happy free#

Here’s his title poem, “Imagine Sisyphus Happy”:ĭoes he ever think At least I am not at home But let’s allow Evans, who knows something about relieving unrelieved uphill climbs, show us his stuff. I’ve both warned and encouraged you: If Evans’ poetry is serious stuff, it’s not some joyless read. So, don’t get the idea that the author of Imagine Sisyphus Happy is one of those literary types writing only to other literary types and (us) English professors. The question mark of suicide, the dunce of mirrors. The poem “Deal” opens with “ deck of cards with unfamiliar suits me.” Evans’ playfulness shows in what replaces the expected hearts, clubs, diamonds, and spades in his poker hand: Social media too-check out this title: “On Seeing a Facebook Notification That Today is the Birthday of a Friend Who Died Last Week.” Evans also nods at Jim Morrison and the Doors’ “Light My Fire.” His poems include Mister Softee trucks, chaos theory, and the kind of reading glasses you find at Walgreens. If this ancient mariner has us by the wrist, he also holds us with mirth in his twinkling eye.Ībout those literary allusions I mentioned? They’re not just to the dusty classics. With lost desire? Have I forgotten my keys Catch the punning in the opening lines of “Just Like a Fool”:įirst steps. In it, the poet is still mining the ore of our troubled human existence but not so relentlessly that he can’t glance up occasionally and wink. Evans’ writing is always “the real thing,” powerful, artful, good on the ear (very good), yet it’s hard to imagine a review of this man’s work absent such adjectives as “pained,” “probing” and “profound.”Īnd in Imagine Sisyphus Happy, his new collection? Yes, pained, probing, and profound. Also the anguish of family life gone bad. Hey, I was going about my pleasant life, and here you want me to probe the depths of human angst and trouble? Life’s hard knocks haunt his poetry. Evans’ poetry occasionally includes allusions-to Virginia Woolf or Homer’s Penelope or mythology’s Tantalus and Sisyphus of the collection’s title poem-I don’t mind advancing an allusion of my own: reading Evans’ work over the years has occasionally had me feeling a bit like the wedding guest waylaid in Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Maybe Sisyphus is not happy.IMAGINE SISYPHUS HAPPY By R.G. Can we imagine Viktor Frankl telling every war survivor that their suffering has meaning? However, if another person only sees sheer horror in their own suffering, then it should be acknowledged. If someone wants to see meaning in their own suffering and finds that productive to life, then it should be respected.

#Imagine sisyphus happy free#

My position is that one should be as free as possible (debatable whether we have free will) to respond in whichever manner they wish to themselves, and to be as compassionate as possible towards other people’s suffering. Somebody wrote a long-lasting bestseller over it. If we say we can find meaning in suffering, we will.

We are natural storytellers. We tell ourselves stories. There can be deep psychological wounds that is not conscious to the person because it is always being “transcended” by an optimistic narrative, and these wounds unconsciously express themselves unhealthily in our behaviour towards ourselves and other people. We could use it to justify anything, including deliberate abuse. At this point in time (with the caveat that my existential position will continue to change for the rest of my life), I think this is akin to adopting a Pollyanna attitude to life and it diminishes suffering. There are repercussions when one doesn’t acknowledge our own or people’s suffering wholly as it is. I was initially comforted by this existential position, because even as one is subjected to a cruel, unredeemable fate, one can decide to experience that fate with happiness.īut I grew increasingly disturbed. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. Hence the famous line, “One must imagine Sisyphus as happy”: It tells of Sisyphus being punished for eternity, repeatedly rolling up a boulder up a mountain, only for it to roll down again. I was intrigued by “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus when I first knew about it. Essays/ mostly edited, structured pieces of writing (in the process of migrating from Medium) August 5, 2018ĭisagreeing with the premise that Sisyphus must be happy