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EUGENE IONESCOS THEATRE:
A NEW DRAMATIC STRUCTURE
Irina Izverna-Tarabac
Stony Brook Univeristy
In an essay about Kafka, Eugene Ionesco says: Every-thing which does not
have a purpose is absurd... Cut of from his religious or metaphysical roots, man is
lost, all his approach becomes reckless, useless, sufocating.
1
This defnition of the absurd is not far from the one given by Camus in 1942,
in The Myth of Sisyphus A world which you can explain, even with bad arguments,
is a familiar world. But, on the contrary, suddenly deprived of illusions and lights,
man feels like a stranger. This exile cannot be cured, because man is deprived of the
memory of a lost native country or of the hope of a promised land. Probably, this
divorce between man and his life, between the actor and his scenery represents
the feeling of the absurd.
2
In order to remain in the French context, we could men-
tion that relatively similar defnitions of the absurd are given by Sartre-the concept
of nausee, nausea, designates this feeling (which is at frst perceived as a sen-
sation, very difuse in the beginning, clearer and dearer afterwards)-and, starting
from the 30
ies
, by Malraux.
However, no matter how fast and superfcial the comparison between these
two authors might be, we shall notice that the theme of the absurd, present in the
works of all of them, controls a whole network of subthemes, all of them deduced
from it, which are also present in the works of all of them, under easily recognizable
forms, like incommunicability, the alienation in a hostile and meaningless universe
(or rather, hostile because it is meaningless), anxiety in front of death, anonymity
and reifcation of the human being, etc. But, noticing these similarities - between
two successive generations of writers we shall have to notice what diferentiates
them, as well. ..What diferentiates them can also require a detailed explanation,
it can be expressed also by the simple syntagm: a new type of writing, which can
be transcribed also as a new literary convention, radically opposed to the old one,
which proclaims its opposition also programmatic cally by the obstinate and trium-
phant reiteration of the prefx anti-: Abstract theatre, Eugene Ionesco says in Notes
and Counter notes
3
. Pure drama. Anti-thematic, anti-ideological, ant - realistic-so-
cialist anti-philosophical, anti-psychological boulevard, anti-bourgeois drama. At
least three of these epithets-anti-thematic, anti-philosophical, anti-ideological-can
be related to the existentialist theatre written by Camus and Sartre which, be-
cause of the theme which it favours, could have been called theatre of the absurd,
as the theatre invented by Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett was called ffteen
years later, a name which undoubtedly is more suitable.
Writers like Malraux, Camus, Sartre, in their short-stories, novels and in the
case of the latter two, their plays, try to communicate us their feeling regarding the
absurd of human condition in a logical, rational construction and in the elegant
sty leg paying attention to the property of the terms and the impeccable classical
syntax of a 17th century moralist, whereas Ionesco - and Beckett, Adamov, Genet,
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ANUL EUGNE IONESCO
following the same direction, although each of them has his own way - completely
give up this kind of discourse which can involve persuasive-didactic and demon-
strative-thesist nuances in its subtext. Formally, because of its order and rationality,
this comes into confict with a theme which always remains external to it, as far as
in art communication does not take place on a conceptual way- by means of con-
catenations of arguments-but on a sensible way, by means of the quasi-tangible
presence of some forms, of the adequate forms.
Eugene Ionescos theatre tries (and it succeeds in doing it) the creation of
such new forms, which could be completely adequate for the sensation, the mood,
the feeling, even the idea of the absurd. Instead of some bright demonstrations of
virtuosity expressing mans alienation in the universe, in Eugene Ionescos theatre
we are that abandoned man who cannot escape from a threatening universe. The
new structures, which are disordered, chaotic - at least apparently -with a confu-
sing discontinuity always unpredictable, always surprising in their development,
creatively destroy the old structures of a world which dozes with contentment
among the meanings which it thinks that it still has. Eugene Ionesco revolution-
izes the theatre not by new themes- which could never renew literature radically-,
but by a new language, because of which even the themes of the absurd become
really new, that is for the frst time they acquire a real, efcient, active presence.
The dimensions of this revolution are clearer and clearer as they become more
distant in time and we become more capable of measuring its proportions and
consequences. In drama, this is comparable to what took place in poetry due to the
modern poets of the end of the 19th century. Rimbaud, Lautreamont, Nerval and
the surrealism, in novel due to the works of Proust, Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Kafka, etc.
and, even during the years of the forming of the Theatre of the Absurd, due to the
New Novel. Thus, a new kind of writing replaces the one which had dominated Eu-
ropean literature for many centuries, that is since its beginning. As Ionescos main
exegetes notice, this is a new kind of knowledge and a new way of knowing, which
we consider to be isomorphic to the one in the other literary genres- if the term
genre still has any meaning here, but also to the one in human sciences and
positive sciences. This knowledge is no longer related to a causal univocal deter-
minism- which reached the climax of its development in the 19th century-, but to
a statistic plurivocal determinism (if we maintain this term as an operative one),
because it is organised according to the summing up of some multiple truths, sta-
tistically determinable, which result from the measuring of some multiple angles
of the same object, and this process obeys some laws diferent from the ones of
formal logics which implies starting from an unique premise generating an uni-
vocal chain of reasoning processes, arguments, truths which can be deduced one
from the other.
In a genre - the dramatic one - obeying the rules of some rigorous construc-
tions more than any other genre, according to the traditional conventions, which,
even when it gave up any other rules - which in fact happened in the theatre of the
beginning of the 20th century to a large extent-preserved the rules of the expo-
sition, the climax and of the denouement, Ionesco, who had never liked another
type of theatre, since his frst play, The Bald-headed Soprano (1950), introduces a
completely diferent order, controlled by a completely diferent logic, hard or im-
possible to understand by his frst spectators. But now we become more and more
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aware of the truths proposed by this new logic, which indicates us how we are (and
how we speak, because speech is also a mode of our being) in our most authentic
expression.
As he admits in several metatexts, Eugene Ionesco writes his plays in a way
somehow similar to the one in which a modern poet, especially one who belongs
to the surrealist modality, writes his poems: Obviously, it is difcult to write ft a
play. It requires a considerable physical efort: you have to get up, which is very
difcult, then you have to sit down, right when you had got used to standing, then
you have to look for paper, which you do not fnd, and you have to sit down in front
of a table, which very often seems to fall under your weight On the contrary, it is
relatively easy to make the play without writing it. It is easy to imagine it, to dream
of it, while you are lying down on a bed, half awake. All you have to do is abandon
yourself to that mood, remaining motionless, without controlling yourself in any
way. A character appears suddenly, you dont know from where, he brings along
other characters too. The frst one begins to speak, you have the frst line, you have
the tone, the other lines link up naturally, automatically. You remain passive, you lis-
ten to and you watch what happens on the inner screen. But, poor me, my memo-
ry has gaps and I have to take notes, in order not to forget. These ghosts do not like
being disturbed and sometimes they are upset for a while, they keep silent, they
disappear. These accidents are easily repaired: you wait for their appearance and,
after a while, they come back: the imaginary space (we underline) is populated by
presences, this space has its land, its sky, its logic, its own laws deriving from itself
naturally. The play is made; the only thing to do is write it. The difculty is to suc-
ceed in interfering with the development of the dream which you had when you
were awake: to have the paradoxical impression that you are out-side.
4
Such a description of the creative act-a description whose authenticity is
doubtless-reminds us, if it were a coincidence, of the method of the surrealist po-
ets, writers, in general: the automatic dictation (la dicte automatique). It seems
that he presents us one of those meetings of onirism, during which surrealists -
especially the most gifted ones for this kind of experience, like Robert Desnos -
would transcribe their dreams. Like for the surrealists, for Eugene Ionesco, the issue
of the suspension, implying that any raftional process, control is put in brackets, is
far from being simple. It is more difcult to annihilate reason during this creative
activity than to make it work, because its efort is somehow minor, since it sets
In motion and it combines commonplaces, stereotypes established by the literary
tradition, in a kind of development which is also quasi-automatic, facing existing
conventions, rules and canons in order to comply with them (however, we have t
mention that, in the case of the real work of art, even when such a rational process
dominates, it is doubled by the irrational activity, by all the inventive unpredicta-
bility which it presupposes, be it to a small extent.)
Being the most introspective -and, at the same time, the most explicit-
playwright of the absurd Eugene Ionesco repeatedly describes these moments of
inspiration, when the plays seem to create themselves alone, after the outward
projection-from the subconscious or even from the innermost depths of the un-
conscious-of some spontaneous visions, which unfold like a show attended by the
auctorial subject although he has not at all participated in its realisation. We have
to catch and express the exact nuance: we do not refer to intentional projects, plans
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ANUL EUGNE IONESCO
regarding the work which is about to be made, but to the authentic-spontaneous
outburst of some images spontaneously emitted by the subconscious and the un-
conscious, according to a rhythm and an order which the passive author no longer
has to modify; he only has to transcribe them as such, completely despising of the
traditional structure and composition rules, which, obviously, implies the destruc-
turing of the old categories-the character, the dramatic confict, the ascending pro-
gression, then the denouement, the subject, the plot, the dialogue, etc.- and the
creation of some completely new ones. For Eugene Ionesco, like for the surrealists
poets, this internal logic of spontaneous visions includes its own supreme crite-
rion, because it n longer requires the conformity with the sets of rules character-
izing the traditional19 text- and in this term we include its various manifestations
during the long period preceding the theatre of the absurd-as a dramatic one. Ibis
process has such a strong autonomy as regards the will controlled by the authors
reason, that Eugene Ionesco even makes the following remark, which may seem
astounding, but which is based on a deep truth of the creation: it happens to
me that I want to write a letter, a petition, and, unwillingly, it turns out to be a
poem; to write a lesson with exemplifcations, and it turns out to be a comedy or
a tragedy: the creators deep, extraconscious intention may not correspond to his
superfcial, apparent intention.
5
From this point of view, Eugene Ionesco can be compared to Flaubert, in the
sense of an absolute prevailing of the form, of an art which exists itself and for it-
self, which cannot be conceived as socially engaged art. Which does not mean that
these forms pure of any ideological content in their spontaneous origin cannot be
recuperated as forms with meanings corresponding to new social problems there-
fore to the diferent types of engagement. Lets think only of The Rhinoceros (but in
fact we could exemplify this by any other play by Eugene Ionesco).
As an objective witness of his own subjectivity (we have quoted the
very terms which he uses), he shows that that construction which is the play is
nothing but the rise of the inner building which allows you to discover it. Like
a symphony, like a building, a theatre play (and Ionesco refers to his theatre-we
underline) is merely a monument, a living world, a combination of situations, of
words, of characters; it is a dynamic building, with its own logic, form, coherence.
6

In other words, the criterion for the perfect, balanced, harmonious building is the
fact that the authors deep inner conficts have been revealed and sublimated by
this exteriorisation. Necessarily, the form will crystallize in a balanced structure uni-
fying the contradictions. When these preformed structures, whose simplicity and
purity we can already call classical, spring in daylight, they are solutions against the
absurd. They are cathartic because they sprang from an absurd existential universe,
and their composition participates in a logic of the absurd, but in a logic which is
fnally objectivised and by which consciousness has become a healing for those
who contemplate it: for the author, but also for us, the spectators.
Notes
1. Ionesco, E. Notes et contre-notes. Paris: Gallimard, 1962. 232.
2. Ionesco, E. Le Mythe de Sisyphe. Paris: Gallimard, 1942. 18.
3. Ionesco, E. Notes contre-notes. ed.cit., p. 255.
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INTERTEXT 3-4, 2009
4.Ionesco, E. Preface. The Possessed by Dostoevski. Adaptation by Akakia Viala and Nicolas Bataille, Edition
Emile-Paul, apud Martin Esslin, Au-dela de labsurde, Buchet/Chastel. Paris, 1970, pp. 151-152.
5. Ionesco, E. Preface. The Possessed by Dostoevski. edit.cit. p. 153.
6. Ibidem.
7. Izverna-Tarabac, Irina. Essay published in Romnia literar, 3-16 august 1994.