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. 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

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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 example, 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 nightmarish 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 demented caprice of an unaccountableidiot fate.Yet, thesewildly extravagant 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 concerned, 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 irrational side of theirexistence. Thus, the absurd and fantasticgoings-on of the Theatre of the Absurd will, in the end, be found to reveal the irrationalityof the human conditionand the illusion of what we thought was its apparent logical structure. If the dialogue in these plays consistsof meaninglessclich6s and the mechanical,circular repetition of stereotypedphrases--how many mean- inglesscliches and stereotypedphrases do we use in our day-to-daycon- versation?If the characterschange theirpersonality halfway through the action,how consistentand trulyintegrated are the people we meet in our real life?And if people in these plays appear as mere marionettes,help- less puppetswithout any will of theirown, passivelyat the mercyof blind

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 6 The Tulane Drama Review fate and meaninglesscircumstance, do we, in fact,in our overorganized world, still possess any genuine initiativeor power to decide our own destiny?The spectatorsof the Theatre of the Absurdare thusconfronted with a grotesquelyheightened picture of theirown world: a world without faith, meaning, and genuine freedom of will. In this sense, the Theatre of the Absurd is the true theatreof our time. The theatreof mostprevious epochs reflectedan accepted moral order, a world whose aims and objectiveswere clearlypresent to the minds of all its public, whetherit was the audience of the medieval mysteryplays with theirsolidly accepted faithin the Christianworld order or the audience of the drama of Ibsen, Shaw,or Hauptmann withtheir unquestioned belief in evolution and progress.To such audiences, right and wrong were never in doubt, nor did theyquestion the then accepted goals of human endeavor. Our own time,at least in the Western world,wholly lacks such a generallyaccepted and completelyintegrated world picture. The decline of religiousfaith, the destructionof the belief in automatic social and biological progress,the discoveryof vast areas of irrational and unconsciousforces within the human psyche,the loss of a sense of control over rational human developmentin an age of totalitarianism and weapons of mass destruction,have all contributedto the erosion of the basis fora dramaticconvention in which the action proceedswithin a fixedand self-evidentframework of generallyaccepted values. Faced with the vacuum leftby the destructionof a universallyaccepted and unified set of beliefs,most serious playwrights have feltthe need to fittheir work into the frameof values and objectivesexpressed in one of the contem- poraryideologies: Marxism,psychoanalysis, aestheticism, or nature wor- ship. But these, in the eyes of a writerlike Adamov, are nothing but superficialrationalizations which tryto hide the depth of man's predica- ment,his lonelinessand his anxiety.Or, as Ionesco puts it: As faras I am concerned,I believesincerely in thepoverty of thepoor, I deploreit; it is real; it can becomea subjectfor the theatre; I also believe in the anxietiesand serioustroubles the rich maysuffer from; but it is neitherin the miseryof the formernor in the melancholiaof the latter, that I, forone, findmy dramatic subject matter. Theatre is for me the outwardprojection onto the stage of an innerworld; it is in mydreams, in myanxieties, in myobscure desires, in myinternal contradictions that I, forone, reserve for myself the right of findingmy dramatic subject matter. As I am not alone in the world,as each of us, in the depthof his being, is at the same timepart and parcelof all others,my dreams, my desires, myanxieties, my obsessions do notbelong to me alone.They formpart of an ancestralheritage, a veryancient storehouse which is a portionof the commonproperty of all mankind.It is this,which, transcending their out- ward diversity,reunites all human beingsand constitutesour profound commonpatrimony, the universallanguage....5 In other words,the commonlyacceptable frameworkof beliefsand values of formerepochs which has now been shatteredis to be replaced by

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 7 the communityof dreamsand desiresof a collectiveunconscious. And, to quote lonesco again: the new dramatistis one... who triesto link withwhat is ... up most ancient:new languageand subjectmatter in a dramaticstructure which aimsat beingclearer, more stripped of inessentials and morepurely theatri- cal; the rejectionof traditionalismto rediscovertradition; a synthesisof knowledgeand invention,of thereal and imaginary,of theparticular and theuniversal, or as theysay now, of theindividual and thecollective... By expressingmy deepest obsessions, I express my deepest humanity. I become one withall others,spontaneously, over and aboveall thebarriers of caste and differentpsychologies. I express my solitude and becomeone withall other solitudes....." What is the traditionwith which the Theatre of the Absurd-at first sight the most revolutionaryand radically new movement-is tryingto link itself?It is in facta veryancient and a veryrich tradition,nourished frommany and varied sources: the verbal exuberance and extravagant inventionsof Rabelais, the age-old clowning of the Roman mimes and the Italian Commedia dell'Arte,the knock-abouthumor of circusclowns like Grock; the wild, archetypalsymbolism of English nonsenseverse, the baroque horrorof Jacobean dramatistslike Webster or Tourneur, the harsh,incisive and often brutal tones of the German drama of Grabbe, Biichner,Kleist, and Wedekind withits delirious language and grotesque inventiveness;and the Nordic paranoia of the dreams and persecution fantasiesof Strindberg. All these streams,however, first came togetherand crystallizedin the more direct ancestorsof the presentTheatre of the Absurd. Of these, undoubtedlythe firstand foremostis AlfredJarry (1873-1907), the crea- tor of Ubu Roi, the firstplay which clearly belongs in the categoryof the Theatre of the Absurd. Ubu Roi, firstperformed in Paris on Decem- ber 10, 1896,is a Rabelaisian nonsensedrama about the fantasticadven- turesof a fat,cowardly, and brutal figure,le pare Ubu, who makes himself King of Poland, fightsa series of Falstaffianbattles, and is finally routed.As if to challengeall acceptedcodes of proprietyand thusto open a new era of irreverence,the play opens with the defiant expletive, "Merdre!" which immediatelyprovoked a scandal. This, of course, was what Jarryhad intended. Ubu, in its rollickingRabelaisian parody of a Shakespeareanhistory play, was meant to confrontthe Parisian bourgeois witha monstrousportrait of his own greed,selfishness, and philistinism: "As the curtainwent up I wanted to confrontthe public with a theatre in which,as in the magic mirror.. . of the fairytales... the vicious man sees his reflectionwith bulls' hornsand the body of a dragon,the projec- tions of his viciousness...." But Ubu is more than a mere monstrous exaggerationof the selfishnessand crude sensualityof the French bourgeois. He is at the same time the personificationof the grossnessof human nature,an enormousbelly walking on two legs. That is whyJarry

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 8 The Tulane Drama Review put him on the stage as a monstrouspotbellied figurein a highlystylized costume and mask-a mythical,archetypal externalization of human instinctsof the lowest kind. Thus, Ubu, the false king of Poland, pre- tended doctorof the pseudoscienceof Pataphysics,clearly anticipates one of the main characteristicsof the Theatre of the Absurd,its tendencyto externalize and project outwards what is happening in the deeper re- cesses of the mind. Examples of this tendencyare: the disembodied voices of "monitors" shouting commands at the hero of Adamov's La Grande et la Petite Manoeuvre which concretizeshis neurotic compul- sions; the mutilated trunksof the parentsin Beckett'sEndgame emerg- ing from ashcans-the ashcans of the main character'ssubconscious to which he has banished his past and his conscience; or the proliferations of fungithat invade the marriedcouple's apartmentin Ionesco's Amid~e and expressthe rottennessand decay of theirrelationship. All these psy- chological factorsare not only projected outwards,they are also, as in Jarry'sUbu Roi, grotesquelymagnified and exaggerated.This scornful rejectionof all subtletiesis a reactionagainst the supposed finesseof the psychologyof the naturalistictheatre in which everythingwas to be in- ferred between the lines. The Theatre of the Absurd, fromJarry on- wards, stands for explicitnessas against implicitpsychology, and in this resemblesthe highlyexplicit theatreof the Expressionistsor the political theatreof Piscator or Brecht. To be larger and more real than life was also the aim of Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918),the greatpoet who was one of the seminal forces in the rise of Cubism and who had close personal and artisticlinks with Jarry.If Apollinaire labeled his play Les Mamelles de Tiresias a "drame surrealiste,"he did not intend thatterm, of whichhe was one of the earli- est users,in the sense in which it later became famous.He wanted it to describe a play in which everythingwas largerthan life,for he believed in an art whichwas to be "modern,simple, rapid, with the shortcutsand enlargementsthat are needed to shockthe spectator."'In the prologue to Les Mamelles de Tiresias,a grotesquepamphlet purportedlyadvocating an immenserise in the French birthrate,Apollinaire makes the Director of the Company of Actorswho performthe play, definehis ideas: For thetheatre should not be an imitationof reality It is rightthat the dramatist should use All the illusionsat his disposal... It is rightthat he shouldlet crowdsspeak, or inanimateobjects If he so pleases And thathe no longerhas to reckon With time and space His universeis the play Withinwhich he is God theCreator Who disposesat will Of soundsgestures movements masses colors Not merelyin order

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To photographwhat is calleda sliceof life But to bringforth life itself and all its truth... Accordingly,in Les Mamelles de Tiresias the whole population of Zanzi- bar, where the scene is laid, is representedby a single actor; and the heroine,Thrsr6e, changes herself into a man by lettingher breastsfloat upwards like a pair of toy balloons. AlthoughLes Mamelles de Tiresias was not a surrealistwork in the strictestsense of the term,it clearlyfore- shadowed the ideas of the movementled by Andr6 Breton.Surrealism in that narrower,technical sense found little expression in the theatre. But Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), another major influencein the devel- opment of the Theatre of the Absurd,did at one timebelong to the Sur- realistgroup, althoughhis main activityin the theatretook place after he had broken with Breton. Artaud was one of the most unhappy men of geniusof his age, an artistconsumed by themost intense passions; poet, actor,director, designer, immensely fertile and original in his inventions and ideas, yet always living on the bordersof sanityand never able to realize his ambitions,plans, and projects. Artaud, who had been an actor in Charles Dullin's company at the Atelier,began his venture into the realm of experimentaltheatre in a series of productionscharacteristically sailing under the label ThUdtre AlfredJarry (1927-29). But his theoriesof a new and revolutionarythea- treonly crystallizedafter he had been deeplystirred by a performanceof Balinese dancers at the Colonial Exhibition of 1931. He formulatedhis ideas in a seriesof impassionedmanifestoes later collected in the volume The Theatre and Its Double (1938), which continuesto exercise an im- portantinfluence on the contemporaryFrench theatre. Artaud named the theatreof his dreams Thidtre de la Cruautd,a theatreof cruelty,which, he said, "means a theatredifficult and cruel above all formyself." "Every- thingthat is really active is cruelty.It is around this idea of action car- ried to the extremethat the theatremust renew itself." Here too the idea of action larger and more real than life is the dominant theme. "Every performancewill contain a physicaland objective element that will be feltby all. Cries,Wails, Apparitions,Surprises, Coups de Thidtre of all kinds,the magical beauty of costumesinspired by the model of certain rituals...." The language of the drama must also undergo a change: "It is not a matterof suppressingarticulate speech but of giving to the wordssomething like the importancethey have in dreams." In Artaud's new theatre"not only the obverseside of man will appear but also the reverseside of the coin: the realityof imaginationand of dreams will here be seen on an equal footingwith everydaylife." Artaud'sonly attemptat puttingthese theories to the teston the stage took place on May 6, 1935 at the Folies-Wagram.Artaud had made his own adaptation ("afterShelley and Stendhal") of the storyof the Cenci, that sombre Renaissance storyof incest and patricide. It was in many waysa beautifuland memorableperformance, but full of imperfections

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 10 The Tulane Drama Review and a financialdisaster which marked the beginningof Artaud'seventual descent into despair, insanity,and abject poverty.Jean-Louis Barrault had some small part in thisventure and Roger Blin, the actor and director who later played an importantpart in bringingAdamov, Beckett, and Ionesco to the stage,appeared in the small role of one of the hired assassins. Jean-Louis Barrault,one of the most creativefigures in the theatreof our time,was in turn,responsible for anotherventure which played an importantpart in the developmentof the Theatre of the Absurd. He stagedAndr6 Gide's adaptationof Franz Kafka'snovel, The Trial, in 1947 and played the part of the hero K. himself.Undoubtedly this perform- ance which broughtthe dreamworldof Kafka to a triumphantunfolding on the stageand demonstratedthe effectivenessof thisparticular brand of fantasyin practical theatricalterms exercised a profound influenceon the practitionersof the new movement.For here,too, they,saw the externalization of mental processes,the acting out of nightmarishdreams by schematizedfigures in a world of tormentand absurdity. The dreamelement in the Theatre of the Absurdcan also be traced,in the case of Adamov, to Strindberg,acknowledged by him as his inspira- tion at the timewhen he began to thinkof writingfor the theatre.This is the Strindbergof The Ghost Sonata, The Dream Play and of To Da- mascus.(Adamov is the authorof an excellentbrief monograph on Strind- berg.) But if Jarry,Artaud, Kafka, and Strindbergcan be regardedas the de- cisive influencesin the developmentof the Theatre of the Absurd,there is another giant of European literaturethat must not be omittedfrom the list-James Joyce,for whom Beckettat one time is supposed to have acted as helper and secretary.Not only is the Nighttownepisode of Ulyssesone of the earliestexamples of the Theatre of the Absurd-with its exuberant mingling of the real and the nightmarish,its wild fan- tasies and externalizationsof subconscious yearnings and fears, but Joyce'sexperimentation with language, his attemptto smash the limita- tions of conventionalvocabulary and syntaxhas probablyexercised an even more powerfulimpact on all the writersconcerned. It is in its attitudeto language that the Theatre of the Absurd is most revolutionary.It deliberatelyattempts to renew the language of drama and to expose the barrennessof conventional stage dialogue. Ionesco once describedhow he came to writehis firstplay. (Cf. his "The Tragedy of Language," TDR, Spring, 1960.) He had decided to take English les- sons and began to studyat the Berlitzschool. When he read and repeated the sentencesin his phrase book, those petrifiedcorpses of once living speech,he was suddenlyovercome by theirtragic quality. From themhe composed his firstplay, The Bald Soprano. The absurdityof its dialogue and its fantasticquality springsdirectly from its basic ordinariness.It exposes the emptinessof stereotypedlanguage; "what is sometimesla-

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 11 beled the absurd," Ionesco says,"is only the denunciationof the ridicu- lous natureof a language whichis emptyof substance,made up of cliches and slogans ."' Such a language has atrophied; it has ceased to be the expressionof ... anything alive or vital and has been degraded into a mere conventionaltoken of human intercourse,a mask for genuine meaning and emotion. That is why so often in the Theatre of the Absurd the dialogue becomes divorced fromthe real happeningsin the play and is even put into direct contradictionwith the action. The Professorand the Pupil in Ionesco's The Lesson "seem" to be goingthrough a repetition of conventional school book phrases,but behind this smoke screen of language the real action of the play pursues an entirelydifferent course with the Professor,,vampire-like, draining the vitalityfrom the young girl up to the finalmoment when he plungeshis knifeinto her body. In Beckett'sWaiting for Godot Lucky'smuch vaunted philosophicalwisdom is revealed to be a floodof completelymeaningless gibberish that vaguely resemblesthe language of philosophicalargument. And in Adamov's re- markableplay, Ping-Pong, a good deal of the dramaticpower lies in the contrapuntalcontrast between the trivialityof the theme-the improve- ment of pinball machines-and the almost religiousfervor with which it is discussed.Here, in order to bringout the full meaningof the play, the actorshave to act againstthe dialogue ratherthan with it, the fervor of the deliverymust stand in a dialectical contrastto the pointlessness of the meaning of the lines. In the same way, the author implies that mostof the ferventand passionatediscussion of real life (of political con- troversy,to give but one example) also turnsaround emptyand meaning- less clich6s.Or, as Ionesco saysin an essayon Antonin Artaud: As our knowledgebecomes increasingly divorced from real life,our cul- tureno longercontains ourselves (or onlycontains an insignificantpart of ourselves)and formsa "social"context in whichwe are notintegrated. The problemthus becomes that of again reconciling our culturewith our lifeby makingour culturea livingculture once more. But to achievethis end we shall firsthave to kill the"respect for that which is written"...it becomes necessaryto breakup our languageso thatit maybecome possible to put it togetheragain and to reestablishcontact with the absolute, or as I should preferto call it, withmultiple reality. This quest for the multiple realityof the world which is real because it exists on many planes simultaneouslyand is more than a mere uni- directional abstractionis not only in itselfa search for a reestablished poetical reality(poetry in its essence expressingreality in its ambiguity and multidimensionaldepth); it is also in close accord with important movementsof our age in what appear to be entirelydifferent fields: psy- chologyand philosophy.The dissolution,devaluation, and relativization of language is, afterall, also the theme of much of present-daydepth- psychology,which has shown what in formertimes was regarded as a rational expression of logically arrived at conclusions to be the mere

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 12 The Tulane Drama Review rationalizationof subconsciousemotional impulses. Not everythingwe say means what we intend it to mean. And likewise,in present-dayLogi- cal Positivisma large proportionof all statementsis regardedas devoid of conceptual meaning and merelyemotive. A philosopherlike Ludwig Wittgenstein,in his later phases, even tried to break throughwhat he regardedas the opacity,the misleadingnature of language and grammar; forif all our thinkingis in termsof language, and language obeys what after all are the arbitraryconventions of grammar,we must strive to penetrateto the real contentof thoughtthat is masked by grammatical rules and conventions.Here, too, then is a matterof gettingbehind the surfaceof linguisticclich6s and of findingreality through the break-up of language. In the Theatre of the Absurd,therefore, the real contentof the play lies in the action. Language may be discardedaltogether, as in Beckett's Act WithoutWords or in Ionesco's The New Tenant, in whichthe whole sense of the play is contained in the incessantarrival of more and more furnitureso that the occupant of the room is, in the end, literally drowned in it. Here the movementof objects alone carriesthe dramatic action, the language has become purely incidental,less importantthan the contributionof the propertydepartment. In this,the Theatre of the Absurd also reveals its anti-literarycharacter, its endeavor to link up with the pre-literarystrata of stage history:the circus,the performances of itinerantjugglers and mountebanks,the music hall, fairgroundbark- ers,acrobats, and also the robustworld of the silentfilm. Ionesco, in par- ticular,clearly owes a greatdeal to Chaplin, BusterKeaton, the Keystone Cops, Laurel and Hardy, and the Marx Brothers.And it is surelysig- nificantthat so much of successfulpopular entertainmentin our age shows affinitieswith the subject matterand preoccupationof the avant- garde Theatre of the Absurd. A sophisticated,but neverthelesshighly popular, filmcomedian like JacquesTati uses dialogue merelyas a barely comprehensiblebabble of noises, and also dwells on the loneliness of man in our age, the horrorof overmechanizationand overorganization gone mad. Danny Kaye excels in streamsof gibberishclosely akin to Lucky's oration in Waiting for Godot. The brilliant and greatlyliked team of Britishradio (and occasionallytelevision) comedians, the Goons, have a sense of the absurd thatresembles Kafka's or Ionesco's and a team of grotesquesingers like "Les FreresJacques" seemsmore closelyin line with the Theatre of the Absurd than with the conventionalcabaret. Yet the defiantrejection of language as the main vehicle of the dramatic action, the onslaught on conventional logic and unilinear conceptual thinkingin the Theatre of the Absurd is by no means equivalent to a total rejection of all meaning. On the contrary,it constitutesan earnestendeavor to penetrateto deeper layersof meaning and to give a truer,because more complex, picture of realityin avoiding the simpli- ficationwhich results from leaving out all the undertones,overtones, and

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 13 inherentabsurdities and contradictionsof any human situation.In the conventional drama everyword means what it says, the situations are clearcut,and at the end all conflictsare tidilyresolved. But reality,as Ionesco pointsout in the passage we have quoted, is never like that; it is multiple,complex, many-dimensional and existson a numberof different levels at one and the same time. Language is far too straightforwardan instrumentto expressall this by itself.Reality can only be conveyedby being acted out in all its complexity.Hence, it is the theatre,which is multidimensionaland more than merelylanguage or literature,which is the only instrumentto expressthe bewilderingcomplexity of the human condition.The human condition being what it is, with man small, help- less,insecure, and unable ever to fathomthe world in all its hopelessness, death, and absurdity,the theatre has to confronthim with the bitter truththat most human endeavor is irrationaland senseless,that com- municationbetween human beings is well-nighimpossible, and that the world will foreverremain an impenetrablemystery. At the same time, the recognitionof all these bittertruths will have a liberatingeffect: if we realize the basic absurdityof mostof our objectiveswe are freedfrom being obsessedwith them and this release expressesitself in laughter. Moreover,while the world is being shown as complex,harsh, and absurd and as difficultto interpretas reality itself,the audience is yet spurredon to attempttheir own interpretation,to wonderwhat it is all about. In that sense theyare being invited to school theircritical facul- ties, to train themselvesin adjusting to reality.As the world is being representedas highlycomplex and devoid of a clear-cutpurpose or de- sign,there will alwaysbe an infinitenumber of possible interpretations. As Apollinaire points out in his Preface to Les Mamelles de Tiresias: "None of the symbolsin my play is veryclear, but one is at libertyto see in it all the symbolsone desiresand to findin it a thousandsenses-as in the Sybilline oracles." Thus, it may be that the pinball machines in Adamov's Ping-Pongand the ideologywhich is developed around them stand forthe futilityof political or religiousideologies that are pursued with equal fervorand equal futilityin the final result.Others have in- terpretedthe play as a parable on the greed and sordidnessof the profit motive.Others again may give it quite differentmeanings. The mysteri- ous transformationof human beings into rhinosin Ionesco's latest play, The Rhinoceros,was feltby the audience of its world premiereat Dues- seldorf(November 6, 1959) to depict the transformationof human beings into Nazis. It is known that Ionesco himselfintended the play to express his feelingsat the timewhen more and more of his friendsin Rumania joined the Fascist Iron Guard and, in effect,left the ranks of thin- skinnedhumans to turnthemselves into moral pachyderms.But to spec- tatorsless intimatelyaware of the moral climateof such a situationthan the German audience, other interpretationsmight impose themselves: if the hero, Bdrenger,is at the end leftalone as the only human being in

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 14 The Tulane Drama Review his native town,now entirelyinhabited by rhinos,they might regard this as a poetic symbolof the gradual isolation of man growingold and im- prisonedin the straitjacket of his own habits and memories.Does Godot, so ferventlyand vainlyawaited byVladimir and Estragon,stand forGod? Or does he merelyrepresent the ever elusive tomorrow,man's hope that one day somethingwill happen thatwill renderhis existencemeaningful? The forceand poetic power of the play lie preciselyin the impossibility of ever reaching a conclusiveanswer to this question. Here we touch the essential point of differencebetween the conventional theatreand the Theatre of the Absurd.The former,based as it is on a known frameworkof accepted values and a rational view of life,always startsout by indicatinga fixedobjective towardswhich the action will be movingor by posinga definiteproblem to whichit will supplyan answer. Will Hamlet revenge the murderof his father?Will lago suc- ceed in destroyingOthello? Will Nora leave her husband? In the conventional theatre the action always proceeds towardsa definable end. The spectatorsdo not know whetherthat end will be reached and how it will be reached. Hence, theyare in suspense,eager to findout what will happen. In the Theatre of the Absurd,on the otherhand, the action does not proceed in the manner of a logical syllogism.It does not go fromA to B but travelsfrom an unknown premise X towardsan un- knowable conclusion Y. The spectators,not knowingwhat their author is driving at, cannot be in suspense as to how or whetheran expected objective is going to be reached. They are not, therefore,so much in suspense as to what is going to happen next (although the most unex- pected and unpredictablethings do happen) as theyare in suspenseabout what the next event to take place will add to their understandingof what is happening.The action supplies an increasingnumber of contra- dictoryand bewilderingclues on a number of differentlevels, but the final question is never wholly answered.Thus, instead of being in suspense as to what will happen next,the spectatorsare, in the Theatre of the Absurd, put into suspense as to what the play may mean. This suspense continues even afterthe curtain has come down. Here again the Theatre of the Absurd fulfillsBrecht's postulate of a critical,detached audience, who will have to sharpen theirwits on the play and be stimulated by it to thinkfor themselves, far more effectivelythan Brecht'sown theatre.Not only are the membersof the audience unable to identify with the characters,they are compelled to puzzle out the meaning of what theyhave seen. Each of themwill probablyfind his own, personal meaning,which will differfrom the solution found by most others.But he will have been forcedto make a mental effortand to evaluate an ex- perience he has undergone.In this sense, the Theatre of the Absurd is the most demanding,the most intellectualtheatre. It may be riotously funny,wildly exaggeratedand oversimplified,vulgar and garish,but it will alwaysconfront the spectatorwith a genuine intellectualproblem, a philosophical paradox, which he will have to try to solve even if he knows that it is most probablyinsoluble.

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 15

In this respect,the Theatre of the Absurd links up with an older traditionwhich has almost completelydisappeared fromWestern cul- ture: the traditionof allegoryand the symbolicalrepresentation of ab- stractconcepts personifiedby characterswhose costumesand accoutre- mentssubtly suggested whether they represented Time, Chastity,Winter, Fortune,the World, etc. This is the traditionwhich stretchesfrom the Italian Trionfo of the Renaissance to the English Masque, the elaborate allegorical constructionsof the Spanish Auto sacramentaldown to Goe- the'sallegorical processions and masques writtenfor the courtof Weimar at the turn of the eighteenthcentury. Although the living riddles the charactersrepresented in these entertainmentswere by no means diffi- cult to solve, as everyoneknew that a characterwith a scytheand an hourglassrepresented Time, and although the characterssoon revealed their identityand explained their attributes,there was an element of intellectualchallenge which stimulated the audience in the momentsbe- tween the appearance of the riddle and its solution and which provided themwith the pleasure of having solved a puzzle. And what is more, in the elaborate allegorical dramas like Calder6n's El Gran Teatro del Mundo the subtle interplayof allegoricalcharacters itself presented the audience with a great deal to thinkout for themselves.They had, as it were, to translate the abstractlypresented action into terms of their everydayexperience; theycould ponder on the deeper meaning of such factsas death having taken the charactersrepresenting Riches or Poverty in a Dance of Death equally quickly and equally harshly,or that Mam- mon had desertedhis masterEveryman in the hour of death. The dra- maticriddles of our timepresent no such clear-cutsolutions. All theycan show is that while the solutionshave evaporated the riddle of our existence remains-complex, unfathomable,and paradoxical. NOTES 1 Ionesco, "Dans les Armes de la Ville," Cahiers de la Compagnie Madeleine Renaud-Jean-Louis Barrault, No. 20 (October, 1957). 2Adamov, "Note Pr6liminaire," Thddtre II, Paris, 1955. 3 Ibid. 4It maybe significantthat the threewriters concerned, although they now all live in Franceand writein Frenchhave all cometo live therefrom outside and musthave experienceda periodof adjustmentto the countryand its language.Samuel Beckett(b. 1906)came fromIreland; Arthur Adamov (b. 1908)from Russia, and EugeneIonesco (b. 1912)from Rumania. 5 Ionesco,"L'Impromptu de l'Alma,"Thddtre II, Paris,1958. 6Ionesco, "The Avant-GardeTheatre," World Theatre, VIII, No. 3 (Autumn, 1959). SJarry,"Questions de Th6Atre,"in Ubu Roi, Ubu Enchaind,and otherUbu- esque writings.Ed. Rene Massat,Lausanne, 1948. 8Apollinaire, Les Mamelles de Tiresias, Preface. 9Ionesco, "The Avant-GardeTheatre." 10Ionesco, "Ni un Dieu, ni un Demon,"Cahiers de la Compagnie Madeleine Renaud-Jean-Louis Barrault, No. 22-23 (May, 1958).

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