Sisyphus2.0007_Mitchell

Sisyphus2.0007_Mitchell

ogcma Sisyphus1.0000_Reid
Classical Sources:
Homer, Od. 11.593-600
Aeschylus, Sisyphus Petrokylistes, fragment
Sophocles, Sisyphus(?), fragment
Euripides, Sisyphus (?), fragment
Alcaeus 38.5.10=fr. 110.5-10 ML p.360
Ovid Met. 4.460-68, 10.44, 13.26-33
Lucretius 3.995-1006

Apollodorus Libr. 1.9.3
Hyginus Fabulae 60, 201
Pausanias, 2.1.3, 2.5.1

Stephen Mitchell, "The Myth of Sisyphus," Parables and Portraits (New York: Harper Perennial 1994) = N. Kossman, Gods and Mortals 165.

Mitchell's poems " Orpheus", "Narcissus", "The Myth of Sisyphus", "Cassandra", and "Cerberus" are anthologized by Kossman.

"The Myth of Sisphyus" by Stephen Mitchell

... The Truth is that Sisyphus is in love with the rock...

The objective of this miniature homily is to debunk the "myth" that Sisyphus must suffer his anguishing torment. Mitchell's novel observation is that Sisyphus has reached a point where he needs the rock. Without it, the sufferer's existence would be incomplete, "unimaginable". Bearing it constantly upward defines him.

Mitchell's sufferer "doesn't realize" that the toil is needless. In this conception "at any moment he is permitted to step aside...."

Indeed, Homer's observation does not assert why Sisphyus pushes that boulder upward, merely that he does so again and again.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300 - 1990's, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.