BORN: 1909, Slatina, Romania DIED: 1994, Paris, France NATIONALITY: Romanian, French GENRE: Fiction, drama, nonfiction MAJOR WORKS: The Bald Soprano (1950) The Chairs (1952) Rhinoceros (1960)

Eugene Ionesco was one of the founders of a style of drama called the Theater of the Absurd. He revolutionized drama with his radical new perspective on language, demonstrating its subversion, ordinariness, and humorous explosiveness, as well as its domineering power. His works feature nightmarish scenes with sometimes tragic, sometimes ludicrous characters whose surrealistic and grotesque attempts to deal with the absurdity of life fail. Eugene Ionesco Ionesco, Eugene, photograph. The Library of Congress.

His plays have been translated into most European languages, as well as Chinese, Japanese, and Hebrew, and have been performed all over the world.

Works in Biographical and Historical Context

Growing Up Amidst Familial Instability Eugene Ionesco was born Eugen Ionescu in Slatina, Romania, on November 13, 1909. He was the second of Eugen and Marie-Therese Ionescu’s three children. His father, a lawyer, moved his family to France in 1910 to complete his law degree in Paris, but he returned to Romania in 1916 to fight in World War I. Initially, when the war first broke out in 1914, Romania had declared neutrality. However, in 1916, under pressure from France and other Allied countries, Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary. The elder Ionescu left his wife in Paris to care for their children, eventually divorcing her. When Ionesco was thirteen, his mother, unable to provide for her children, returned to Romania and transferred them to their father’s custody.

Provoking Controversy From 1929 to 1933, Ionesco attended the University of Bucharest, where he completed a degree in French language and literature. During these years, he became famous for his public literary debates with his professor of aesthetics, Mihail Dragomirescu. Ionesco’s first publication was a volume of poetry, Elegii pentru fiinte mici (Elegies for Minuscule Creatures), published in Romania in 1931. Ionesco’s first volume of essays, Nu (No; translated into French as Non, 1986), was published in 1934 and sparked debate in Romanian literary circles. Ionesco attacked revered Romanian writers of the time— most prominent among them the novelist Camil Petrescu and the poets Tudor Arghezi and Ion Barbu.

Marriage, Emigration, and Diplomacy After graduating from the University of Bucharest, Ionesco worked as a high school teacher in the Romanian provinces and in Bucharest. In 1936, he married Rodica Burileanu, a philosophy student. In 1938, Ionesco moved to Paris to work on his dissertation, which he never finished. He and his wife returned to Romania in 1940, but he clung to the hope of leaving the country. In 1941, Romania entered World War II as part of the Axis powers, allied with Germany, Italy, and Japan. When offered a diplomatic appointment in 1942, Ionesco accepted and relocated with his wife to France, never returning to Romania. He arrived in German-occupied France as a representative of the pro-Nazi Romanian government. In 1944, Ionesco’s wife Rodica gave birth to their only child, Marie-France.

Introducing the Theater of the Absurd In 1949 Ionesco translated into French a play he had originally written in Romanian, Englezeste fara profesor (English without a Professor). A friend, Monica Lovinescu, introduced him to Nicolas Bataille, a young director, who produced the play in Paris in 1950 under the title La Cantatrice chauve (The Bald Soprano). The play failed miserably at its premiere, although it was enthusiastically received by prominent surrealists such as Andre´ Breton and Philippe Soupault. La Cantatrice chauve is an attack on bourgeois conformism and a reflection on the impossibility of communication. It remains a superb example of the Theater of the Absurd.

Absurd Multiplicity The problematic nature of language and communication is a dominant theme in Ion-esco’s early works, including his first two plays, La Cantatrice chauve (1950; The Bald Soprano) and La Leçon (1951; The Lesson). As his career progressed, Ionesco began to use multiplying objects as a metaphor for the absurdity of life. In one of his most acclaimed works, Les Chaises (1952; The Chairs), an elderly couple serves as hosts for an audience who assemble to hear a speaker deliver a message that will save the world. As the couple arranges seating for their guests, the stage becomes crowded with chairs. This image is symbolic of the irrational, foolish, or nonsensical.

Death and the Fantastic The subject of death becomes an overriding concern in many of Ionesco’s later plays; for example, in La Soif et la faim (1964; Hunger and Thirst). The dreamlike images that pervade Ionesco’s drama also become more prominent in his later works. In L’Homme aux valises (1975; The Man with the Suitcases) and Voyages chez les morts (1980; Journeys among the Dead), the protagonists engage in conversations with the dead. The episodic nature of these plays, coupled with their fantastic elements, creates the impression of a dream.

Best known as a dramatist, Ionesco has also written a novel, Le Solitaire (1972; The Hermit), and several volumes of essays and criticism. These works, like his drama, are marked by a sense of anguish and a vehement opposition to totalitarianism and oppression.

Ionesco actively participated in conferences in support of human rights, wrote harsh indictments against the Romanian government as well as against other totalitarian regimes, and helped dissidents of such countries. Ionesco signed many petitions for freedom of speech and wrote articles against anti-Semitism and in support of the right to existence of the state of Israel. His ties to Romania became stronger after the 1989 revolution that brought down Nicolae Ceaus¸escu’s dictatorship, at which time he acknowledged in interviews that he felt Romanian again. In the last decade of his life, he gave up writing and devoted himself to painting and exhibiting his works. He died in Paris on March 28, 1994.

Works in Literary Context

With Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, and Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco is widely recognized as a defining playwright of the Theater of the Absurd. Ionesco’s originality largely consisted of his revolutionary rediscovery of language, which was influenced by his own rediscovery of language during his attempts to learn the English language. While studying, Ionesco came to view modern perspectives on language as absurd, and his ridicule of this ‘‘language worship’’ would later become a common theme in his works. It is notable that one of Ionesco’s favorite authors was William Shakespeare, whom he considered to have been a precursor of the Theater of the Absurd.

Thematic Evolution Ionesco’s theater evolved during his career. His first plays focus more on language as a means of non-communication, as an expression of automatism and banality, and as a barrier to knowledge of the self and of others. Later, Ionesco became interested in the psychoanalytical aspect of memory and in revealing characters’ inner worlds on stage, especially their deep anxieties and obsessions with death. His allusions to politics in the early plays turn into political statements in the later plays. Then, at the very end of his career, Ionesco’s plays became highly autobiographical and oneiric.

Ridicule of Language Worship and Conformity Ionesco was appalled by the hateful and violent anti-Semitic outbursts he had witnessed in Romania. He also was disturbed and mystified by the large number of intellectuals who fell prey to fascist ideologies and mass hysteria. Rhinoceros, his most successful play was inspired in part by the mass hysteria described by Denis de Rouge-ment in his report on a Nazi rally he attended in 1938 in Nuremberg. In his play, Ionesco seeks to represent the process by which human individuals are drawn into collectivities, appearing to undergo transformations so substantial as to strip them of their humanity. The deafening roar of the rhinoceroses in the play represents the overwhelming clamor characteristic of rallies such as the one in Nuremberg. The comical parallel dialogues in the first scene underline the power of rhetoric more than the power of logic. Ultimately, however, Berenger—the protagonist, an ordinary man—refuses to conform, suggesting the possibility of individual choice despite social pressure.

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