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Rethinking Ionesco's Absurd: the Bald Soprano in the Interlingual Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications and Other Works Faculty Publications 3-2018 Rethinking Ionesco’s Absurd: The Bald Soprano in the Interlingual Context of Vichy and Postwar France Julia Elsky Loyola University Chicago, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/modernlang_facpubs Part of the Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons, Modern Languages Commons, and the Modern Literature Commons Recommended Citation Elsky, Julia. Rethinking Ionesco’s Absurd: The Bald Soprano in the Interlingual Context of Vichy and Postwar France. PMLA, 133, 2: 347-363, 2018. Retrieved from Loyola eCommons, Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications and Other Works, http://dx.doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2018.133.2.347 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Publications at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications and Other Works by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. © The Author 2018 133.2 ] Rethinking Ionesco’s Absurd: The Bald Soprano in the Interlingual Context of Vichy and Postwar France julia elsky UGÈNE IONESCO’S LA CANTATRICE CHAUVE (THE BALD SOPRANO) IS Eone of the most performed plays in the world. It debuted in May 1950 at the Parisian héâtre des Noctambules, and since 16 February 1957, actors at the héâtre de la Huchette in the Latin Quarter of Paris have been performing it ive times a week, follow- ing the director Nicolas Bataille’s original conception. To date, the Hu chette’s Le spectacle Ionesco (he Ionesco Show), which includes La cantatrice chauve and La leçon (he Lesson), has been staged over eighteen thousand times and seen by more than two million viewers (“L’histoire”). hroughout most of its performance history, scholars have understood La cantatrice chauve along the lines of an article by Martin Esslin, published in 1960 and later expanded into a book, in which he coined the term “heatre of the Absurd” to explain the avant- garde theater movement that developed ater the Second World War (“heatre” and heatre). he movement included igures such as Ionesco, Arthur Adamov, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Har- old Pinter. Esslin focuses on postwar antitheater’s representation of passive and empty language, envisioning incoherent language as representing the meaninglessness of language in a conformist post- war bourgeois world. Scholars, even those who react against Esslin’s reading, have retained the postwar narrative of the development of the theater of the absurd and thus have not appreciated the extent to JULIA ELSKY is assistant professor of which the play is inseparable from its almost unknown dual linguistic French at Loyola University, Chicago. political context. It is well- known that in the play Ionesco parodies She is completing a book manuscript en- the Assimil method of the En glish- language textbook L’anglais sans titled “Writing Occupation: Jewish Émi- gré Writers and Wartime France.” This peine (“En glish without Pain”), a method that is based on “acquisi- essay is part of her second book project, tion automatique” (“automatic acquisition”; Chérel 1) and features a on Eugène Ionesco and the origins of prominent irst stage described as “entièrement passif” (“entirely pas- the theater of the absurd. sive”; 2). However, the interlingual implications of the play’s origins in © 2018 julia elsky PMLA 133.2 (2018), published by the Modern Language Association of America 347 348 Rethinking Ionesco’s Absurd [ PMLA a language- teaching manual, which by deini- opted language. With signiicant exceptions, tion crosses language barriers, have yet to be recent scholarship avoids discussion of his in- explored. Moreover, little discussion has been volvement in Romanian cultural diplomacy devoted to Ionesco’s original version of La can- under Ion Antonescu’s authoritarian military tatrice chauve, the Romanian play Englezește dictatorship while he was in Vichy France fără profesor (“En glish without a Teacher”), composing the original play.3 In contrast, I which was written in 1943, during the war, trace Ionesco’s double- language experience and is in part based on a Romanian- language and its political exploitation. he Romanian textbook with a similar name, Engleză fără play and its context reveal what the transla- profesor (“En glish without a Teacher”).1 his tion theorist Lawrence Venuti deems the “eth- version, irst published in a Romanian review nocentric violence that is inherent in every in 1965 (Ionescu, “En gle zește”), takes its inspi- translation process” (22). Ionesco was writing ration not only from a passive- learning text- during a period of strained and violent rela- book but also from language pedagogies that tions between those nations whose languages point to active engagement in language learn- were the topics of the textbooks he used; these ing.2 An interlingual account of La cantatrice were the languages he moved between during chauve and its Romanian origins reveals that the Second World War as a cultural secretary in the French version of the play, Ionesco for the Romanian delegation to Vichy France, writes about language acquisition as an ac- when En glish was the language of the enemy. tive political event linked to a specific local As he was composing Englezește fără profe- context. In the wartime version, language is a sor, Ionesco was directly involved in wartime tool of political violence; in the postwar ver- propaganda to promote Romanian and Ro- sion, Ionesco transforms the play to relect on manian language learning in French universi- the possibility of viewing language acquisition ties. he Romanian play depicts language and as an act of meaning making in the postwar language acquisition as implements of politi- period. By recontextualizing the play, we can cal violence. In the French version of the play, reevaluate the long- held view of its place in the he almost entirely erases this wartime politi- theater of the absurd. cal dimension. Despite La cantatrice chauve’s If we move beyond the borders of France reputation for indicting language as an empty to explore Ionesco’s Romanian background yet violent gesture, the play is actually an at- and his work for the Romanian government’s tempt to replace the earlier version’s more delegation to the French collaborationist Vi- troubled and more troubling attitude about chy government, our view of the play shits: crossing language barriers with a meditation the play is no longer about meaninglessness. on how speakers create meaning through lan- Instead, a multilingual analysis reveals it to be guage learning. We thus can understand Io- a political play largely about language acquisi- nesco in a new way: he was not writing a play tion. I read La cantatrice chauve in the context revealing the meaninglessness of language in of the Romanian version and alongside archi- a conformist world; rather, he was envision- val documents dating from Ionesco’s career ing the productive politics of communication in Vichy France, including La terre roumaine across languages. (“he Romanian Land”), his irst French play, which was broadcast on Radio Marseille in A Romanian in Vichy France 1943 and is unknown to critics (Ionesco et al.). In his wartime works, the confrontation Ionesco was not a distant bystander to the between languages in occupied France plays linguistic politics of the Second World War. out in the drama of communicating in an ad- he narrative that casts him as a Romanian 133.2 ] Julia Elsky 349 émigré writer in France who adopted French began to write for the theater; until recently as his literary language is overly simple. Born many scholars, with notable exceptions—in- in Slatina, Romania, in 1909, raised between cluding Alexandra Laignel- Lavastine, Marta France and Romania, he negotiated in his Petreu, Eugen Simion, and Ana- Maria Stan— youth a dual- language existence. He wrote of have ignored it or provided misinformation belonging and repeated displacement in terms about it.6 he scholars who do discuss this pe- of language, speciically language acquisition, riod disagree about how much Ionesco iden- or, as he put it, “[c] et apprentissage, ce désap- tiied with the delegation’s politics as well as prentissage, ce réapprentissage” (“this learn- the exact nature of his activities in France. ing, this unlearning, this relearning”; Entre la My focus here is on how his work on Roma- vie 23). Ater inishing his degree in French nian propaganda and his cultural diplomacy literature at the University of Bucharest and in Vichy France inluenced his wartime writ- completing his teaching certiication, Ionesco ings’ treatment of linguistic exchange—that taught high school French in Bucharest in is, how people communicate across languages the 1930s. He then began his literary career, and how languages come into contact with publishing literary criticism and joining vari- each other. ous circles of Francophile and oten Franco- Ionesco arrived in France as a member of phone writers. He looked toward France as a the Romanian propaganda team on 30 June cultural center—not only as the capital of the 1942, during the period when Antonescu in- “world republic of letters,” to use Pascale Ca- tensified his lobbying of France to support sanova’s term, but also as Romania’s link to Romanian control of territories that Romania western Europe. Ater a stay in Paris to start a had lost in 1940 to Hungary, one of France’s doctoral thesis, he returned to Bucharest fol- main prewar allies (“Demande” [1957]; Notes lowing the French defeat of June 1940.4 But al- 3).7 In April 1943, Ionesco became one of most immediately aterward, Ionesco sought the principal cultural secretaries of the del- to return to France, especially ater Romania egation and was put in charge of Nice, Tou- joined the Axis powers.
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