Earlier this year, for no apparent reason, I started writing a series of poems in which the mythical Greek king Sisyphus has conversations with various historical and fictional characters. I was probably inspired by teaching Albert Camus to my Year 11 Literature class, who made the figure of Sisyphus into a powerful metaphor of humanity in the modern world. And I was probably inspired by how often I feel like Sisyphus who, if you’re not familiar with the story, was punished for his rebellion against the gods by having to spend eternity trying to roll the same boulder to the top of a hill, only to start at the bottom of the hill again each day. Often our work, whether it’s paid or domestic, can feel Sisyphean, like it never ends, never accomplishes anything. So I suppose I used these poetic dialogues with Sisyphus to imagine other ways of understanding our labours and our struggles. Today, for World Mental Health Day, I’m adding a new one to the series, this time putting Sisyphus in dialogue with my all-time favourite Tolkien character, Niggle, from the little-known short story (not set in Middle Earth), “Leaf by Niggle”.
If you haven’t read the story, you should. But, in short, Niggle is an artist who excels at painting leaves but never manages to paint a whole tree. He is constantly interrupted by his neighbour who frustrates him and yet to whom he feels an irritating obligation. I don’t want to give away too much of the story, but the ending is, I’m sure, a vision of heaven, in which Niggle’s art and his imperfect love of his neighbour are brought together and revealed to be part of the same kingdom-building creative process.
Niggle is one of my heroes, not because he is heroic – he most certainly isn’t, particularly by Tolkien’s standards – but because his imperfection is made perfect by grace and, in the process, makes something beautiful.
Today, when I reflect on how often I feel the Sisyphean urge to give up on the boulder-roll, I want to offer Niggle as an alternative: the one who labours not because he is doomed to but because he is caught up by the beauty of an eternal kingdom that will make all his labours perfect one day. If you need the comfort of this poem too today, then it’s my gift to you.
Sisyphus, Niggle and the Resurrection
Sisyphus
It all comes to this, you see,
the senselessness of the struggle:
my days of taunting and thwarting the gods are over, reduced
to the farce of the exercise, this daily
failure to generate revenue, meet KPIs. I haven’t networked
in millennia, the long-awaited
sealing of the deal forever fleeing at first
sign of daylight. Art always
struck me as futile. No-one ever
duped Hades with a watercolour tree, let alone
an isolated, granulated leaf. Leave it be.
No good ever came of artifice, even mine.
Niggle
That’s as may be. I’ll grant you, it does all seem pointless,
snatching these distracted moments with the brush, a fleeting
flick of paint before my neighbour calls me: Niggle, Niggle…
and so much left undone: the dishes piling
in puddles beside the sink, those bills
unpaid, my long-intended journey
never even begun. What’s the point? I’ll give you that.
I ask that one myself.
Sisyphus
And the grinding
in my muscles, this
constant stretching and crushing, this
senseless, endless body of death!
Who will rid me?
Tantalus over there has it easy;
who needs fruit anyway? But this
mortifying, flesh-soldering agony. The gods are
snarling at me; I hear them.
Niggle
Not snarling. Sometimes I fancy I hear it too, like a
kingfisher loving the joke. There’s Niggle, he chuckles.
What laugh! What a laugh! But nothing
that made creation laugh can snarl.
I make nothing happen with each brushstroke;
I wish my house were cleaner;
today, I confess, I hated
my neighbour as myself. But then
at sunset the leaves tickled the light like
perfection at play, and I saw
glimmer atop the hill a boulder
sparkling as though
it would all be somehow
golden in delight, in completeness, when
the sun finally lifts me over the hill.
So I went again to my easel and painted
a sunlit leaf to mark the day.
The Consolations of Writing 