Kosztolányi's Nero and Camus' Caligula are variations of the paradigmatic invariant of all absurd figures, Sisyphus. Unrestricted consciousness of freedom and its consequences form the plot. Kosztolányi's novel (1921) and Camus' play (1938) are connected not only by their choice of themes: throughout the collection of their biographical and literary texts, topoi and symbols are selected that make visible the production processes of both authors between their extraliterary and literary statements. The aim of interpretation is to control the partially extraliterary consequences and to mark those passages in both texts where equivalence relationships are constituted, which extend beyond textual correspondences regarding the representation of cultural everyday knowledge and historically developed meaning.