Manhattan Rare Book Company

“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS OF THE CLEAREST PRESENTATION OF CAMUS’S PHILOSOPHY; AN ESSENTIAL ABSURDIST AND EXISTENTIALIST TEXT.

“Although he forcefully separated himself from existentialism, Camus posed one of the twentieth century’s best-known existentialist questions, which launches The Myth of Sisyphus: ‘There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide’. And his philosophy of the absurd has left us with a striking image of the human fate: Sisyphus endlessly pushing his rock up the mountain only to see it roll back down each time he gains the top” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). 


As Camus explained in the Preface to a later edition, “Written... amid the French and European disaster, this book declares that even within the limits of nihilism it is possible to find the means to proceed beyond nihilism. In all the books I have written since, I have attempted to pursue this direction. Although ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ poses mortal problems, it sums itself up for me as a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert” (Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, 1955).

Paris: Gallimard, 1942. Octavo, original wrappers; glassine; uncut and largely unopened. Custom slipcase and chemise. A little toning to glassine. A FINE COPY.

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