Eugene Ionesco
Eugene Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco; 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a Romanian-French playwright who wrote mostly in French, and one of the foremost figures of the French Avant-garde theatre. Beyond ridiculing the most banal situations, Ionesco's plays depict the solitude and insignificance of human existence in a tangible way...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth26 November 1909
CountryFrance
wall doe world
The human comedy does not attract me enough. I am not entirely of this world. I am from elsewhere, and it is worth finding this elsewhere beyond the walls...but where is it?
mean theatre doe
I am, it seems, an avant-garde dramatist. It would even seem obvious since I am present here at discussions on the avant-garde theatre. It is all entirely official. But what does the term avant-garde mean?
art useless doe
If one does not understand the usefulness of the useless and the uselessness of the useful, one cannot understand art.
emotional explain fall hunger initial jealousy marx necessity
Marx was wrong; jealousy and pride, emotional forces, are just as responsible as hunger and necessity for our actions; they explain the whole of History, and the initial fall of man.
Everything that has been will be, everything that will be is, eveything that will be has been.
attempt claims dream history humbug reality simply stops truer
There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to ''realize'' myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have ''succeeded,'' this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is ''realizable.'' Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.
confusion function identify nowadays people society tempted today unpleasant
The unpleasant thing about society today is nowadays is that there is a confusion between people and their function; or rather, people are tempted to identify with the function they perform. This is what's happening, particularly in totalitarian soc
behind hide men symptom
Banality is a symptom of non-communication. Men hide behind their clichTs.
ancient becomes breath hot idiom imagery language larger magic people saying unchanging
Idiom is larger than geography; it is the hot breath of a people singing, slashing, explorative. Imagery becomes the magic denominator, the language of a passage, saying the ancient unchanging particulars.
aware dreamed dreaming dreams fleeting image life lived memory moving profoundly quite sure whether
I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water.
life-and-death forever born
Why was I born, if it wasn't forever?
trying despair way
Every message of despair is the statement of a situation from which everybody must freely try to find a way out.
ridiculous certain mankind
It's not a certain society that seems ridiculous to me, it's mankind,
illusions-of-grandeur people triviality
Many people have delusions of grandeur but you're deluded by triviality.