Abstract
Perfectly consistent in his “absurdist” metaphysic, Ionesco is resolved to retain his integrity as an artist and exercise his freedom of thought and expression as an apolitical writer. According to him, dreams and desires, not the tendentious stuff out of which socialist realism is compounded, are the generative and authentic medium of truth in art. What Ionesco wishes to release is the pure play of his imagination, without the intrusion of alien “realistic” elements. Consequently he is not as a dramatist drawn to problems that can be solved; what drives him to create is only the challenge of the insoluble. If the theater of his time has fallen on evil days, it is, he maintains, because it is too topical in its concerns. Predominantly political in aim and content, it echoes too faithfully the ideological slogans of the hour. In Ionesco’s critical judgment, thesis plays, problem plays, propaganda plays present only a thin doctrinaire slice of life and therefore falsify the total truth of reality. “Drama is not the idiom for ideas. When it tries to become a vehicle for ideologies, all it can do is vulgarize them. It dangerously oversimplifies.... All ideological drama runs the risk of being parochial.”1 Far from apologizing for his neglect of the social theme, Ionesco cogently defends the asocial aesthetic that governs the construction of his work. Why be forced to listen to political demagogy on the stage when such speeches can be read in the local newspaper or be heard daily on the radio or television?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Eugène Ionesco, Notes and Counter Notes. Translated by Donald Watson. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1964, p. 24.
Kenneth Tynan, Curtains. New York: Atheneum, 1961, pp. 168–69.
Jean-Paul Sartre, What Is Literature? Translated by Bernard Frechtman. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949, p. 253. Sartre later adds: “If it should be asked whether the writer, in order to reach the masses, should offer his services to the Communist Party, I answer no.” Ibid., p. 256.
Richard N. Coe, Ionesco. Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1961, p. 100.
Samuel Beckett, Happy Days. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1961, p. 51.
Samuel Beckett, Murphy. New York: Grove Press, 1938, pp. 177–78.
Samuel Beckett, How It Is. Translated by the author. New York: Grove Press, 1964, p. 144.
John Fletcher, The Novels of Samuel Beckett. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1964, pp. 232–33.
Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961, p. 156.
Jean Genet, The Balcony. Translated by Bernard Frechtman. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1958, p. 17.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genet. Translated by Bernard Frechtman. New York: George Braziller, 1963, p. 55.
In “The Revenge of Jean Genet,” Charles Marowitz defines a social dramatist as “anyone who sheds light on the nature of the struggle which people have been waging with people since the beginning of time. On this basis, Genet is a thoroughgoing social dramatist.” The Encore Reader. Edited by Charles Marowitz, Tom Milne, and Owen Hale. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1965, p. 176.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1972 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Glicksberg, C.I. (1972). A Trinity of the Absurd. In: Literature and Society. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4851-3_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4851-3_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-4619-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-4851-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive