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The Theatre of the Absurd Author(S): Martin Esslin Source: the Tulane Drama Review, Vol

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The Theatre of the Absurd Author(S): Martin Esslin Source: the Tulane Drama Review, Vol The Theatre of the Absurd Author(s): Martin Esslin Source: The Tulane Drama Review, Vol. 4, No. 4 (May, 1960), pp. 3-15 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1124873 . Accessed: 20/11/2013 01:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Tulane Drama Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 180.149.52.49 on Wed, 20 Nov 2013 01:44:56 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Theatre of the Absurd By MARTIN ESSLIN The plays of Samuel Beckett,Arthur Adamov, and Eugene Ionesco have been performedwith astonishingsuccess in France,Germany, Scan- dinavia, and the English-speakingcountries. This reception is all the more puzzling when one considersthat the audiences concerned were amused by and applauded these plays fullyaware that they could not understandwhat theymeant or what theirauthors were drivingat. At firstsight these plays do, indeed, confronttheir public with a be- wilderingexperience, a veritablebarrage of wildlyirrational, often non- sensical goings-onthat seem to go counter to all accepted standardsof stage convention.In these plays,some of which are labeled "anti-plays," neitherthe timenor the place of the action are everclearly stated. (At the beginning of Ionesco's The Bald Soprano the clock strikesseventeen.) The charactershardly have any individualityand ofteneven lack a name; moreover,halfway through the action they tend to change their nature completely.Pozzo and Lucky in Beckett'sWaiting for Godot, for exam- ple, appear as masterand slave at one moment only to return after a while with their respectivepositions mysteriously reversed. The laws of probabilityas well as thoseof physicsare suspendedwhen we meet young ladies withtwo or even threenoses (Ionesco's Jack or the Submission),or a corpse that has been hidden in the next room that suddenlybegins to grow to monstroussize until a giant foot crashesthrough the door onto the stage (Ionesco's Amidde). As a result,it is oftenunclear whetherthe action is meant to representa dream world of nightmaresor real hap- penings. Within the same scene the action may switchfrom the night- marish poetryof high emotions to pure knock-aboutfarce or cabaret, and above all, the dialogue tends to get out of hand so that at timesthe wordsseem to go counterto the actionsof the characterson the stage,to degenerateinto listsof wordsand phrasesfrom a dictionaryor traveler's conversationbook, or to get bogged down in endless repetitionslike a phonographrecord stuckin one groove. Only in this kind of demented world can strangersmeet and discover,after a long and polite conversa- tion and close cross-questioning,that, to their immense surprise,they must be man and wife as theyare living on the same street,in the same house, apartment,room, and bed (Ionesco's The Bald Soprano). Only here can the whole life of a group of charactersrevolve around the pas- sionate discussionof the aestheticsand economics of pinball machines (Adamov's Ping-Pong).Above all, everythingthat happens seems to be beyond rational motivation,happening at random or throughthe de- mented caprice of an unaccountableidiot fate.Yet, thesewildly extrava- gant tragicfarces and farcicaltragedies, although they have sufferedtheir 3 This content downloaded from 180.149.52.49 on Wed, 20 Nov 2013 01:44:56 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 4 The Tulane Drama Review share of protestsand scandals,do arouse interestand are received with laughterand thoughtfulrespect. What is the explanation forthis curious phenomenon? The most obvious, but perhaps too facile answer that suggestsitself is that these plays are primeexamples of "pure theatre."They are living proof that the magic of the stage can persisteven outside, and divorced from,any frameworkof conceptual rationality.They prove that exits and entrances,light and shadow, contrastsin costume,voice, gait and behavior, pratfallsand embraces,all the manifold mechanical interac- tions of human puppets in groupingsthat suggest tension, conflict, or the relaxation of tensions,can arouse laughteror gloom and conjure up an atmosphereof poetryeven if devoid of logical motivationand unrelated to recognizablehuman characters,emotions, and objectives. But this is only a partial explarlation.While the element of "pure theatre" and abstractstagecraft is certainlyat work in the plays con- cerned, they also have a much more substantialcontent and meaning. Not only do all these plays make sense, thoughperhaps not obvious or conventionalsense, theyalso give expressionto some of the basic issues and problemsof our age, in a uniquely efficientand meaningfulmanner, so thatthey meet some of the deepestneeds and unexpressedyearnings of their audience. The three dramatiststhat have been grouped togetherhere would probably most energeticallydeny that theyform anything like a school or movement.Each of them,in fact,has his own roots and sources,his own verypersonal approach to both formand subject matter.Yet they also clearly have a good deal in common. This common denominator that characterizestheir works might well be describedas the elementof the absurd. "Est absurdece qui n'a pas de but.. ." ("Absurd is thatwhich has no purpose, or goal, or objective"), the definitiongiven by Ionesco in a note on Kafka,1certainly applies to the playsof Beckettand Ionesco as well as thoseof ArthurAdamov up to his latestplay, Paolo Paoli, when he returnedto a more traditionalform of social drama. Each of these writers,however, has his own special type of absurdity: in Beckettit is melancholic,colored by a feelingof futilityborn fromthe disillusionmentof old age and chronichopelessness; Adamov's is more active, aggressive,earthy, and tingedwith social and political overtones; while Ionesco's absurdityhas its own fantasticknock-about flavor of tragi- cal clowning.But theyall share the same deep sense of human isolation and of the irremediablecharacter of the human condition. As ArthurAdamov put it in describinghow he came to writehis first play, La Parodie (1947): I began to discoverstage scenesin the mostcommon-place everyday events.[One day I saw] a blindman begging;two girlswent by without seeinghim, singing: "I closedmy eyes;it was marvelo-us!"This gave me the idea of showingon stage,as crudelyand as visiblyas possible,the lonelinessof man,the absence of communicationamong human beings.2 This content downloaded from 180.149.52.49 on Wed, 20 Nov 2013 01:44:56 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MARTIN ESSLIN 5 Looking back at his earliesteffort (which he now regardsas unsuccessful) Adamov defineshis basic idea in it, and a numberof subsequent plays, as the idea "that the destiniesof all human beings are of equal futility, that the refusalto live (of the charactercalled N.) and the joyfulaccept- ance of life (by the employee)both lead, by the same path, to inevitable failure,total destruction." It is the same futilityand pointlessnessof human effort,the same impossibilityof human communicationwhich Ionesco expressesin ever new and ingenious variations.The two old people making conversationwith the empty air and living in the ex- pectationof an orator who is to pronounce profoundtruths about life, but turnsout to be deaf and dumb (The Chairs), are as sardonically cruel a symbolof this fundamentallytragic view of human existence as Jack (Jack or the Submission),who stubbornlyresists the concertedurg- ings of his entire familyto subscribeto the most sacred principle of his clan-which, when his resistancefinally yields to theirentreaties, turns out to be the profoundtruth: "I love potatoeswith bacon" ("J'adore les pommesde terreau lard"). The Theatre of the Absurd shows the world as an incomprehensible place. The spectatorssee the happeningson the stage entirelyfrom the outside, without ever understandingthe full meaning of these strange patternsof events,as newlyarrived visitors might watch life in a country of which theyhave not yet masteredthe language.' The confrontation of the audience withcharacters and happeningswhich theyare not quite able to comprehendmakes it impossiblefor them to share the aspirations and emotionsdepicted in the play. Brecht'sfamous "Verfremdungseffekt" (alienation effect),the inhibitionof any identificationbetween spectator and actor, which Brecht could never successfullyachieve in his own highlyrational theatre,really comes into its own in the Theatre of the Absurd. It is impossibleto identifyoneself with charactersone does not understandor whose motivesremain a closed book, and so the distance betweenthe public and the happeningson the stage can be maintained. Emotional identificationwith the charactersis replaced by a puzzled, criticalattention. For while the happeningson the stage are absurd,they yetremain recognizable as somehowrelated to real lifewith its absurdity, so that eventuallythe spectatorsare broughtface to face with the irra- tional side of theirexistence. Thus, the absurd and fantasticgoings-on of the Theatre of the Absurd will, in the end, be found to
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