Eugene Ionesco Biography and List of Works

Romanian-born French dramatist whose one-act antiplay, LA CANTATRICE CHAUVE (1950; The Bald Soprano), inspired the Theatre of the Absurd (see also: Samuel Beckett, Alfred Jarry). Ionesco's later full-length plays centre on a constant, semi autobiographical figure, Bérenger. Since the 1970s his writing has mainly been non-theatrical. Ionesco's earlier works were characterized by the logic of nightmare, but later his plays began to employ a more straightforward plot line.

"All my plays have their origin in two fundamental states of consciousness: now the one, now the other is predominant, and sometimes they are combined. These basic states of consciousness are an awareness of evanescence and of solidity, of emptiness and too much presence, of the unreal transparency of the world and its opacity, of light and of thick darkness."
(foreword in Plays I, 1958)

Ionesco was born in Slatina, Romania, of a French mother and Romanian father. Shortly after his birth, his mother brought him to Paris, where he spent the years 1914-25. When his parents divorced, Ionesco returned to Romania, and perfected his knowledge of his father's language. He studied literature in Paris and in Romania and eventually took a degree in French at the University of Bucharest. After his graduated, he lived in Bucharest teaching French and writing poetry and literary criticism. In 1936 he married Rodica Burileano. Two years later he received a scholarship that enabled him to return to France. During World War II he lived in Marseilles, and moved to Paris after its liberation from the Germans in 1944. In 1945 he was awarded a doctorate.

Pupil: I can count up to... infinity.
Professor: That's impossible.
Pupil: Up to sixteen, then.
(from The Lesson, 1951)

While learning English in 1948, Ionesco conceived the idea for his first play, The Bald Soprano, which was produced in 1950. It was inspired by the stilted commonplaces of his textbook. The play initially went unnoticed but gained attention when such writers as Jean Anouilh and Raymond Queneau started to campaign for it. In rapid succession Ionesco wrote a number of plays, including LA LEÇON (1951), a picture of the erotic thrust of tyrannical power, LES CHAISES (1952), in which the real and the imaginary coincide in a single semicircle of chairs, which are seats for guests of an old couple, and VICTIMESDUDEVOIR (1954), a detective-story parody. AMÉDÉE (1954) portrayed a couple who share their apartment with a corpse. Bringer, a little Everyman, was featured first in TUEUR SANS GAGS (1958). By 1955 Ionesco's reputation was established in France. Gradually he was acclaimed as one of the leading exponents of the theatre of absurd.

"There are no alternatives; if man is not tragic, he is ridiculous and painful, "comic" in fact, and by revealing his absurdity one can achieve a sort of tragedy. In fact I think that man must either be unhappy (metaphysically unhappy) or stupid."
(Ionesco in the New York Times, June 1, 1958)

Among Ionesco's other well-known plays are LE ROI SE MEURT (1963) and LES RHINOCÉROS (1959). Most of his works are long one-act-plays, or untraditional three-act plays. He has also written essays, published in NOTES ET CONTRE-NOTES (1962), textbooks for children, and a novel, LE SOLITAIRE (1973). Ionesco's characters seem like robots, often enslaved by the dictatorial will of an unseen manipulator. His dramas deal with suffering, fear, and destruction, the emptiness of polite conversation. Ionesco was elected to membership in the Académie Française in 1970. He died in Paris on March 28, 1994. In his later years Ionesco devoted himself to painting.

La Cantatrice chauve (1950; The Bald Soprano) - consists mainly of a series of meaningless conversations between two couples that eventually deteriorate into babbling. The play burlesques the nonsensical stuffiness of a middle-class English home by stringing together the clichés of a foreign-language phrase book.

Rhinoceros (1959) - described by Ionesco as 'an anti-Nazi play'. Bérenger, an average middle-class citizen, shows little interest in the fact that a rhinoceros is loose in the city. He quarrels with his friend Jean and Daisy, his pretty secretary. In the office Bérenger witnesses that the staff are gradually turning into rhinoceroses. Finally Daisy and he are the only human beings, but when Daisy also turns into rhinoceros, Bérenger decides to defend his humanity with a gun.

For further reading: The Clown in the Agora: Conversations About Eugene Ionesco by William Kluback, Michael Finkenthal (1998); Eugene Ionesco Revisited by Deborah B. Gaensbauer (1996); Ionesco's Imperatives by Rosette C. Lamont (1993); Eugène Ionesco: A Bibliography by G. Hughes and R. Bury (1974); Ionesco by R. Frickx (1974); Le théâtre de dérision by E. Jacquart (1974); Eugène Ionesco; ou, À la recherche du paradis perdu by T. Saint (1973); La dynamique théatrale d'Eugene Ionesco by P. Vernois (1972); Ionesco, A stydy of his plays by R.N. Coe (1971); Brecht and Ionesco by T.H. Wulbern (1971)

ELEGII PENTRU FIINTELE MICI, (1934)