The mediterranean sun has something tragic about it, quite different from the tragedy of fogs. Certain evenings at the base of the seaside mountains, night falls over the flawless curve of a little bay, and there rises from the silent waters a sense of anguished fulfillment. In such spots one can understand that if the Greeks knew despair, they always did so through beauty and its stifling quality ... We have exiled beauty; the Greeks took up arms for her.
- Albert Camus, from the essay "Helen's Exile," The Myth of Sisyphus