Pavese, Camus and the myth of Sisyphus: among peasants and stones of life

Abstract

The significance of considering Camus' essay "Le Mythe de Sisyphe" in reading Pavese's La luna e i falò lies in investigating the nature of two divergent and contrastive philosophies which are, nonetheless, loosely, chronologically coexistent, that is, evolve from the war - the former implicitly, being allegorical and ontological, the latter more overtly, being retrospectively historical and realist. But just as Camus refutes the message of the myth, it is Pavese who reconstitutes its truth, albeit in what appears as sub-plot, in La luna e i falò.