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
dream mean reality
I have always considered imaginative truth to be more profound, more loaded with significance, than every day reality... Everything we dream about, and by that I mean everything we desire, is true (the myth of Icarus came before aviation, and if Ader or Bleriot started flying it is because all men have dreamed of flight). There is nothing truer than myth... Reality does not have to be: it is simply what is.
art mean ideas
Every work of art (unless it is a psuedo-intellectualist work, a work already comprised in some ideology that it merely illustrates, as with Brecht ) is outside ideology, is not reducible to ideology. Ideology circumscribes without penetrating it. The absence of ideology in a work does not mean an absence of ideas; on the contrary it fertilizes them.
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?
mean vision theatre
Theatre is simply what cannot be expressed by any other means; a complexity of words, movements, gestures that convey a vision of the world inexpressible in any other way.
country hate mean
In the name of religion, one tortures, persecutes, builds pyres. In the guise of ideologies, one massacres, tortures and kills. In the name of justice one punishes...in the name of love of one's country or of one's race hates other countries, despises them, massacres them. In the name of equality and brotherhood there is suppression and torture. There is nothing in common between the means and the end, the means go far beyond the end...ideologies and religion... are the alibis of the means.
Everything that has been will be, everything that will be is, eveything that will be has been.
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.
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.
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.
behind hide men symptom
Banality is a symptom of non-communication. Men hide behind their clichTs.
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
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,