Life is like
a treadmill, and, even more so the ‘wheel of Ixion,’ as Schopenhauer said. A
wheel that never stands still. Schopenhauer uses the wheel of Ixion as a symbolism
to describe our incessant will to satisfy our desires.
Ixion, the king
of the Lapiths in Greek mythology, attempted to seduce Hera, the wife of Zeus,
who rules as king of the gods of Mount Olympus. Ixion was punished for this
crime by binding to an ever-spinning wheel of fire. Ixion's suffering was eternal.
To Schopenhauer
– who was possibly the only prominent philosopher to declare himself a
pessimist, happiness was just a fleeting state of not suffering. Samuel Beckett
makes this disillusionment more exciting in his novel Watt, which is known for its philosophical and grim humour and deliberately
unidiomatic English:
‘The
Tuesday scowls, the Wednesday growls, the Thursday curses, the Friday howls,
the Saturday snores, the Sunday yawns, the Monday morns, the Monday morns. The
whacks, the moans, the cracks, the groans, the welts, the squeaks, the belts,
the shrieks, the pricks, the prayers, the kicks, the tears, the skelps, and the
yelps.’
