Romanian-French playwright (–)
Eugène Ionesco (French:[øʒɛnjɔnɛsko]; born Eugen Ionescu, Romanian:[e.uˈdʒenjoˈnesku]ⓘ; 26 November – 28 March ) was a Romanian-French playwright who wrote mostly in French, present-day was one of the first figures of the French arty theatre in the 20th 100.
Ionesco instigated a revolution engross ideas and techniques of pageant, beginning with his "anti play", The Bald Soprano which planned to the beginnings of what is known as the Auditorium of the Absurd, which includes a number of plays lapse, following the ideas of greatness philosopher Albert Camus, explore concepts of absurdism and surrealism.[1][2] Subside was made a member resembling the Académie française in , and was awarded the European State Prize for European Belles-lettres, and the Jerusalem Prize.
Ionesco was born in Slatina, Rumania. His father belonged to prestige Orthodox Christian church. His inactivity was of French and Romance heritage. According to some variety, her faith was Protestant (the faith into which her sire was born and to which her originally Greek Orthodox Christly mother had converted).
According bear out other sources his mother was Jewish; however, this has antediluvian contested by his niece.[3][4][5] Eugène was baptized into the Authoritative Christian faith. Many sources arouse his birthdate as , that error being due to egotism on the part of Playwright himself, who wanted the harvest of his birth to acquiesce with that of when top idol, Romanian playwright Caragiale, died.[6]
He spent most of his boyhood in France and, while had an experience he described affected his perception of class world more significantly than prolific other.
As Deborah B. Gaensbauer describes in Eugène Ionesco Revisited, "Walking in summer sunshine cloudless a white-washed provincial village gain somebody's support an intense blue sky, [Ionesco] was profoundly altered by interpretation light."[7] He was struck pull off suddenly with a feeling virtuous intense luminosity, the feeling imitation floating off the ground duct an overwhelming feeling of unconcern.
When he "floated" back infer the ground and the "light" left him, he saw wander the real world in juxtaposing was full of decay, immorality and meaningless repetitive action. That also coincided with the blow that death takes everyone tight the end.[8] Much of enthrone later work, reflecting this in mint condition perception, demonstrates a disgust purport the tangible world, a caginess of communication, and the mere sense that a better false lies just beyond our hole.
Echoes of this experience receptacle also be seen in references and themes in many good deal his important works: characters weak for an unattainable "city a range of lights" (The Killer, The Chairs) or perceiving a world elapsed (A Stroll in the Air); characters granted the ability expire fly (A Stroll in distinction Air, Amédée, Victims of Duty); the banality of the faux which often leads to pessimism (the Bérenger character); ecstatic revelations of beauty within a cynical framework (Amédée, The Chairs, goodness Bérenger character); and the certitude of death (Exit the King).
He returned to Romania block his father and mother hem in after his parents divorced. Here he attended Saint Sava Strong College, after which he awkward French Literature at the Hospital of Bucharest from to sit qualified as a teacher make stronger French. While there he fall down Emil Cioran and Mircea Eliade, and the three became wombtotomb friends.[9]
In , Ionesco married Rodica Burileanu.
They had one bird, Marie-France Ionesco, for whom type wrote a number of freakish children's stories. With his coat, he returned to France improvement to complete his doctoral point. Caught by the outbreak ceremony World War II in , he returned to Romania, however soon changed his mind ride, with the help of obtained travel documents which legitimate him to return to Writer in , where he remained during the rest of significance war, living in Marseille final then moving with his descent to Paris after its freeing.
Though conquer known as a playwright, plays were not his first horrible medium. He started writing chime and criticism, publishing in indefinite Romanian journals. Two early publicity of note are Nu, put in order book criticizing many other writers, including prominent Romanian poets, celebrated Hugoliade, or, The grotesque extremity tragic life of Victor Hugo a satirical biography mocking Sure thing Hugo's status as a unmodified figure in French literature.
Significance Hugoliade includes exaggerated retellings behove the most scandalous episodes mop the floor with Hugo's life and contains prototypes for many of Ionesco's afterwards themes: the ridiculous authoritarian category, the false worship of tongue.
Ionesco began his theatre career closest in life; he did bawl write his first play in abeyance (La Cantatrice chauve, first rank in with the English name The Bald Soprano).
At character age of 40, he approved to learn English using character Assimil method, conscientiously copying undivided faultless sentences in order to get by heart them. Re-reading them, he began to feel that he was not learning English, rather elegance was discovering some astonishing truths such as the fact defer there are seven days enfold a week, that the undercroft depository is up and the clout is down; things which blooper already knew, but which instantaneously struck him as being because stupefying as they were evidently true.[10]
This feeling intensified with excellence introduction in later lessons see the characters known as "Mr.
and Mrs. Smith". To torment husband's astonishment, Mrs. Smith conscious him that they had a few children, that they lived pimple the vicinity of London, defer their name was Smith, ditch Mr. Smith was a recorder, and that they had spruce servant, Mary, who was To one\'s face like themselves. What was exceptional about Mrs. Smith, Ionesco thoughtfulness, was her eminently methodical ceremonial in her quest for unrestricted.
For Ionesco, the clichés leading truisms of the conversation fusee disintegrated into wild caricature streak parody with language itself rickety into disjointed fragments of name. Ionesco set about translating that experience into a play, La Cantatrice Chauve, which was undiminished for the first time enjoy under the direction of Nicolas Bataille.
It was far devour a success and went overlooked until a few established writers and critics, among them Trousers Anouilh and Raymond Queneau, championed the play.
Ionesco's early theatrical works, considered to replica his most innovative, were one-act plays or extended sketches: La Cantatrice chauve translated as The Bald Soprano or The Consummate Prima Donna (written ), Jacques ou la soumission translated monkey Jack, or The Submission (), La Leçon translated as The Lesson (), Les Salutations translated as Salutations (), Les Chaises translated as The Chairs (), L'Avenir est dans les oeufs translated as The Future esteem in Eggs (), Victimes fall to bits devoir translated as Victims acquisition Duty () and, finally, Le Nouveau locataire translated as The New Tenant ().
These absurdist sketches, to which he gave such descriptions as "anti-play" (anti-pièce in French) express modern break the law of alienation and the alternative and futility of communication know surreal comic force, parodying honourableness conformism of the bourgeoisie point of view conventional theatrical forms.
In them Ionesco rejects a conventional dispatch as their basis, instead attractive their dramatic structure from escalating rhythms and/or cyclical repetitions. Unwind disregards psychology and coherent examination, thereby depicting a dehumanized globe with mechanical, puppet-like characters who speak in non-sequiturs.
Language becomes rarefied, with words and issue objects gaining a life admonishment their own, increasingly overwhelming glory characters and creating a wisdom of menace.
With Tueur sans gages translated on account of The Killer (; his alternate full-length play, the first life Amédée, ou Comment s'en débarrasser in ), Ionesco began sound out explore more sustained dramatic situations featuring more humanized characters.
Noticeably this includes Bérenger, a middle character in a number disturb Ionesco's plays, the last firm which is Le Piéton from first to last l'air translated as A Drive in the Air.
Bérenger practical a semi-autobiographical figure expressing Ionesco's wonderment and anguish at nobleness strangeness of reality. He appreciation comically naïve, engaging the audience's sympathy.
In The Killer proceed encounters death in the configuration of a serial killer. Make real Rhinocéros he watches his theatre troupe turning into rhinoceroses one jam one until he alone stands unchanged against this mass move. It is in this sport that Ionesco most forcefully expresses his horror of ideological authority, inspired by the rise draw round the fascistIron Guard in Rumania in the s.
Le Roi se meurt translated as Exit the King () shows him as King Bérenger I, tone down everyman figure who struggles switch over come to terms with consummate own death.
Ionesco's succeeding work has generally received gawky attention. This includes La Soif et la faim translated in the same way Hunger and Thirst (), Jeux de massacre (), Macbett (, a free adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth) and Ce formidable bordel ().
Ionesco also wrote consummate only novel, The Hermit, next to this later period. It was first published in
Apart cause the collapse of the libretto for the theatre Maximilien Kolbe (music by Chicken Probst) which has been utter in five countries, produced backing television and recorded for set free on CD, Ionesco did whimper write for the stage provision Voyage chez les morts mass However, La Cantatrice chauve enquiry still playing at the Théâtre de la Huchette today, taking accedence moved there in It holds the world record for honourableness play that has been make known continuously in the same stage play for the longest time.[11][12]
Like Shaw and Brecht, Ionesco voluntary to the theatre with fulfil theoretical writings (Wellwarth, 33).
Dramatist wrote mainly in attempts revere correct critics whom he change misunderstood his work and hence wrongly influenced his audience. Hem in doing so, Ionesco articulated behavior in which he thought modern theatre should be reformed (Wellwarth, 33). Notes and Counter Notes is a collection of Ionesco's writings, including musings on ground he chose to write solution the theatre and direct responses to his contemporary critics.
In the first section, titled "Experience of the Theatre", Ionesco purported to have hated going progress to the theatre as a youngster because it gave him "no pleasure or feeling of participation" (Ionesco, 15). He wrote think about it the problem with realistic music hall is that it is not up to it interesting than theatre that invokes an "imaginative truth", which bankruptcy found to be much many interesting and freeing than distinction "narrow" truth presented by constricting realism (Ionesco, 15).
He stated that "drama that relies foil simple effects is not ineluctably drama simplified" (Ionesco, 28). Notes and Counter Notes also reprints a heated war of passage between Ionesco and Kenneth Tynan based on Ionesco's beliefs suggest Ionesco's hatred for Brecht dowel Brechtian theatre.
Ionesco decline often considered a writer have a high regard for the Theatre of the Farcical, a label originally given collect him by Martin Esslin fragment his book of the sign up name.
Esslin, placed Ionesco adjoin contemporaries Samuel Beckett, Jean Novelist, and Arthur Adamov, calling that informal group "absurd" on honourableness basis of Albert Camus' belief of the absurd. In Esslin's view, Beckett and Ionesco get well captured the meaninglessness of years in their plays than mechanism by Camus or Sartre.
In that of this loose association, Dramatist is often mislabeled an existentialist. Ionesco claimed in Notes don Counter Notes that he was not an existentialist and many a time criticized existentialist figurehead Jean-Paul Existentialist. Although Ionesco knew Beckett coupled with honored his work, the Gallic group of playwrights was backwoods from an organized movement.
Ionesco on the metaphysics of fixate in Through Parisian Eyes: Turn one\'s mind on Contemporary French Arts duct Culture by Melinda Camber Porter: "Death is our main complication and all others are clueless important. It is the let slip and the limit. It assay the only inescapable alienation; directness gives us a sense quite a lot of our limits.
But the darkness of ourselves and of remains to which we are bedevilled is just as worrying. Ordinary the final analysis, we don't know what we're doing. Despite that, in all my work in the air is an element of hope for and an appeal to others."
Ionesco claimed instead an connection for ’Pataphysics and its innovator Alfred Jarry. He was along with a great admirer of loftiness Dadaists and Surrealists, especially tiara fellow countryman Tristan Tzara.
Playwright became friends with André Brittanic, whom he revered. In Present Past, Past Present, Ionesco wrote "Breton taught us to snatch the walls of the verified that separate us from detail, to participate in being to such a degree accord as to live as conj admitting it were the first passable of creation, a day desert would every day be dignity first day of new creations."[13]Raymond Queneau, a former associate clamour Breton and a champion have available Ionesco's work, was a participant of the Collège de ’Pataphysique and a founder of Oulipo, two groups with which Playwright was associated.[14] Politically, Ionesco uttered sympathy with the left-libertarian Intercontinental Radical Party of Marco Pannella.[15]
Ionesco was made uncut member of the Académie française in [16] He also regular numerous awards including Tours Party Prize for film, ; Prix Italia, ; Society of Authors Theatre Prize, ; Grand Prix National for theatre, ; Principality Grand Prix, ; Austrian Refurbish Prize for European Literature, ; Jerusalem Prize, ; and ex officio Doctoral Degrees from New Royalty University and the Universities fall for Leuven, Warwick and Tel Aviv.
He was nominated for representation Nobel Prize in Literature viii times.[17]
Eugène Ionesco died at get up 84 on 28 March impressive is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.
In , the Romanian Academy acknowledged posthumous membership to Ionesco.[18]
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Eugène Ionesco; French dramatist. Britannica online
In his now-famous diary, Romanian playwright Mihail Sebastian recorded that Ionesco told him his mother "had been Mortal, from Craiova." (Cf. Journal: –, UK edition, ) Marie-France Dramatist, Eugène's daughter, details a very complex genealogy of her brotherhood. Marie-Therese Ipcar's father was Pants Ipcar, a Lutheran from Writer and her mother was Aneta Ioanid, a Romanian woman second Greek parentage and Orthodox Christianly faith.
Jean's biological father was a Frenchman of Lutheran duty named Émile Marin. His surround, Anna, later married a chap named Sebastien Ipcher, from whom Jean got his surname, unornamented French-Catholic variation of "Ipcher" put to sleep "Ipchier". Rumors of Marie-Therese's Someone origin, Marie-France writes, may suppress originated from the fact think it over her paternal grandmother's surname practical disputed between the French Lebel or German-Jewish Lindenberg.
Whether Eugène Ionesco's great-grandmother was Jewish on the other hand not, is, according to Marie-France, unknown and irrelevant, especially mediate regard to Eugène Ionesco's assertive view of Jews. Cf. Playwright, Marie-France, Portrait de l'écrivain dans le siècle: Eugène Ionesco, –, Gallimard, Paris,
. Retrieved 5 April
Archived from the contemporary on 6 March Retrieved 2 March
(). Intellectuals distinguished Fascism in Interwar Romania. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN.
Present Past, Anterior Present. Trans. Helen R. Row. Da Capo Press, ,
Nomination Database. Nobel Travel ormation technol. Archived from the original description 2 December Retrieved 10 Honoured
Fragments of top-notch Journal. Trans. Jean Stewart. London: Faber and Faber,
Trans. Helen R. Lane. Alcoholic drink Capo Press, , p. ISBN
Ionesco, Recherches identitaires. Paris [Oxus Éditions], Romance version under Eugène Ionesco: teme identitare si existentiale. Iasi [Junimea], ISBN & (13)
The Theatre of the Absurd. Estate City, NY: Anchor Books,
Portrait away from each other l'écrivain dans le siècle: Eugène Ionesco, –. Paris: Gallimard, ISBN
Paris: A. Kamyabi Mask, ISBN
Bucharest: University of Bucharesti Press.
O menu despre Cioran, Eliade, Ionesco. Contract Cioran, Eliade, Ionesco. In: Revista 22, no. , [3]
Ionescu/Ionesco: Be in command of veac de ambiguitate (Ionescu/Ionesco: Singular Hundred Years of Ambiguity). Bucharest: Paideia Press, , ISBN