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Picture    Adam has just tasted the forbidden fruit; he’s bitten into the apple and he’s condemned to roll it in his mouth for eternity His mouth, wide open, is bitter The gigantic size of the apple matches in scale the enormity of the sin The same colour as the apple, a flower Looked at closely, this flower is a face What face? Sisyphus, who’s generally reduced in the mind’s eye, wrongly, to a stubborn boulder, was a crafty man, so crafty that the wordsmiths have claimed he was the father of Ulysses Wily, twisting, labyrinthine, craftiness evokes nets, laces, snares, knots And indeed, Sisyphus succeeded in chaining Thanatos who’d come to escort him to the kingdom of the dead    He’s the only mortal to have succeeded at this unheard-of exploit: cheating Death, ensnaring him, reducing him to powerlessness, to such a degree that the Immortals, jealous of their privilege, come to Death’s rescue and set him free On a corner of the apple, a squirrel… no, a hobgoblin… or rather, a bird It’s indifferent to the torments of Adam-Sisyphus and the symbolic implications of this picture    Indifferent, too, to the spectator    *   The Black Mantle    After killing the Minotaur, Theseus succeeded in getting out of the labyrinth thanks to the thread of Ariadne – Ariadne whom he would abandon (the ungrateful wretch!) on a desert island   These days, the labyrinth is empty and silent   All the same, the shadow of the Minotaur floats there, disconsolate and threatening – all in vain The shadow yearns to be set free, but it doesn’t know how to leave this sinister place and rejoin the kingdom of the dead So it continues to wander, without respite, in the inextricability of the labyrinth From time to time, it knocks into other shadows, those of its victims    On Olympus, the gods, gathered together on the occasion of a banquet, turn to Thanatos and ask him why he did he not escort the Minotaur to Hell Wrapped in his black mantle, Thanatos timidly lowers his eyes and does not answer   So the gods leave with a huge burst