Ionesco, Eugène

Ionesco, Eugène (1909-1994), French playwright, the chief exponent of the Theatre of the Absurd.

Born in Slatina, Romania, Ionesco spent his childhood in Paris and Romania. He taught French in Bucharest before returning to Paris in 1938 to write. Ionesco’s plays depict the ridiculous, futile existence of human beings in an unpredictable universe, who, because of their innate limitations, cannot effectively communicate with one another. This pessimistic philosophy was incorporated as a tenet of the Theatre of the Absurd, a movement in French and English theatre that lamented the senselessness of the human condition. Although Ionesco’s intent is serious, his plays are rich in humour and comic invention. Avant-garde, chiefly one-act works, they employ the techniques of stifling, meaningless language and illogical situations to emphasize human isolation and estrangement.

La Cantatrice Chauve (1950; The Bald Prima Donna, 1965) is a satire that exaggerates aspects of routine living to demonstrate their pointlessness. The characters speak in gibberish and are therefore unable to communicate with each other. Ionesco uses the same chattering technique in La Leçon (1951; The Lesson, 1955), in which a raving professor ultimately kills his young students, developing the themes of fear and horror of death that are manifest in his later works. In Les Chaises (1952; The Chairs, 1968) two old people chat with non-existent guests. Amédée, ou Comment s’en Débarrasser (1954; How to Get Rid of It, 1958) is about a couple whose deadness of mutual feeling produces a corpse that grows threateningly until it surrounds them. Le Nouveau Locataire (1956; The New Tenant, 1958) is centred on a character confined to the space of an armchair. In Rhinocéros (1960), perhaps Ionesco’s best-known work, the people of a small town are transformed into rhinoceroses. The main character, initially an average-man prototype, becomes isolated from the town’s inhabitants as he struggles against their conformity. La Soif et la Faim (1966; Hunger and Thirst, 1969) portrays a man who, stifled by his stable marriage, unsuccessfully seeks fulfilment elsewhere. Ionesco’s other plays include Jeux de Massacre (1970; The Killing Game, 1974) and L’Homme aux Valises (The Man with Bags, 1977). Ionesco was elected to the Académie Française in 1970. Many of his plays were produced in the United States. He also wrote commentary on the theatre, memoirs such as Présent Passé Passé Présent (1968; Present Past, Past Present, 1971), and the novel Le Solitaire (1974).