Ionesco was born inSlatina, Romania. His father belonged to theOrthodox Christian church. His mother was of French and Romanian heritage. According to some sources, her faith was Protestant (the faith into which her father was born and to which her originally Greek Orthodox Christian mother had converted). According to other sources, his mother had Jewish ancestry; however, this has been contested by his niece.[4][5][6] Eugène was baptized into the Orthodox Christian faith. Many sources cite his birthdate as 1912, this error being due to vanity on the part of Ionesco himself, who wanted the year of his birth to coincide with that of when his idol, Romanian playwrightCaragiale, died.[7]
He spent most of his childhood in France and, while there, had an experience he claimed affected his perception of the world more significantly than any other. As Deborah B. Gaensbauer describes inEugène Ionesco Revisited, "Walking in summer sunshine in a white-washed provincial village under an intense blue sky, [Ionesco] was profoundly altered by the light."[8] He was struck very suddenly with a feeling of intense luminosity, the feeling of floating off the ground and an overwhelming feeling of well-being. When he "floated" back to the ground and the "light" left him, he saw that the real world in comparison was full of decay, corruption and meaningless repetitive action. This also coincided with the revelation that death takes everyone in the end.[9] Much of his later work, reflecting this new perception, demonstrates a disgust for the tangible world, a distrust of communication, and the subtle sense that a better world lies just beyond our reach. Echoes of this experience can also be seen in references and themes in many of his important works: characters pining for an unattainable "city of lights" (The Killer,The Chairs) or perceiving a world beyond (A Stroll in the Air); characters granted the ability to fly (A Stroll in the Air,Amédée,Victims of Duty); the banality of the world which often leads to depression (theBérenger character); ecstatic revelations of beauty within a pessimistic framework (Amédée,The Chairs, the Bérenger character); and the inevitability of death (Exit the King).
He returned to Romania with his father and mother in 1925 after his parents divorced. There he attended Saint Sava National College, after which he studied French Literature at the University of Bucharest from 1928 to 1933 and qualified as a teacher of French. While there he metEmil Cioran andMircea Eliade, and the three became lifelong friends.[10]
In 1936, Ionesco married Rodica Burileanu. They had one daughter, Marie-France Ionesco, for whom he wrote a number of unconventional children's stories. With his family, he returned to France in 1938 to complete his doctoral thesis. Caught by the outbreak of World War II in 1939, he returned to Romania, but soon changed his mind and, with the help of friends, obtained travel documents which allowed him to return to France in 1942, where he remained during the rest of the war, living in Marseille and then moving with his family to Paris after its liberation.
Though best known as a playwright, plays were not his first chosen medium. He started writing poetry and criticism, publishing in several Romanian journals. Two early writings of note areNu, a book criticizing many other writers, including prominent Romanian poets, andHugoliade, or, The grotesque and tragic life of Victor Hugo a satirical biography mockingVictor Hugo's status as a great figure in French literature. TheHugoliade includes exaggerated retellings of the most scandalous episodes in Hugo's life and contains prototypes for many of Ionesco's later themes: the ridiculous authoritarian character, the false worship of language.
Ionesco began his theatre career later in life; he did not write his first play until 1948 (La Cantatrice chauve, first performed in 1950 with the English titleThe Bald Soprano). At the age of 40, he decided to learn English using theAssimil method, conscientiously copying whole sentences in order to memorize them. Re-reading them, he began to feel that he was not learning English, rather he was discovering some astonishing truths such as the fact that there are seven days in a week, that the ceiling is up and the floor is down; things which he already knew, but which suddenly struck him as being as stupefying as they were indisputably true.[11]
This feeling intensified with the introduction in later lessons of the characters known as "Mr. and Mrs. Smith". To her husband's astonishment, Mrs. Smith informed him that they had several children, that they lived in the vicinity of London, that their name was Smith, that Mr. Smith was a clerk, and that they had a servant, Mary, who was English like themselves. What was remarkable about Mrs. Smith, Ionesco thought, was her eminently methodical procedure in her quest for truth. For Ionesco, the clichés and truisms of the conversation primer disintegrated into wild caricature and parody with language itself disintegrating into disjointed fragments of words. Ionesco set about translating this experience into a play,La Cantatrice Chauve, which was performed for the first time in 1950 under the direction ofNicolas Bataille. It was far from a success and went unnoticed until a few established writers and critics, among themJean Anouilh andRaymond Queneau, championed the play.
Ionesco's earliest theatrical works, considered to be his most innovative, were one-act plays or extended sketches:La Cantatrice chauve translated asThe Bald Soprano orThe Bald Prima Donna (written 1948),Jacques ou la soumission translated asJack, or The Submission (1950),La Leçon translated asThe Lesson (1950),Les Salutations translated asSalutations (1950),Les Chaises translated asThe Chairs (1951),L'Avenir est dans les oeufs translated asThe Future is in Eggs (1951),Victimes du devoir translated asVictims of Duty (1952) and, finally,Le Nouveau locataire translated asThe New Tenant (1953). These absurdist sketches, to which he gave such descriptions as "anti-play" (anti-pièce in French) express modern feelings of alienation and the impossibility and futility of communication withsurreal comic force, parodying the conformism of the bourgeoisie and conventional theatrical forms. In them Ionesco rejects a conventional story-line as their basis, instead taking their dramatic structure from accelerating rhythms and/or cyclical repetitions. He disregards psychology and coherent dialogue, thereby depicting a dehumanized world with mechanical, puppet-like characters who speak innon-sequiturs. Language becomes rarefied, with words and material objects gaining a life of their own, increasingly overwhelming the characters and creating a sense of menace.
WithTueur sans gages translated asThe Killer (1959; his second full-length play, the first beingAmédée, ou Comment s'en débarrasser in 1954), Ionesco began to explore more sustained dramatic situations featuring more humanized characters. Notably this includes Bérenger, a central character in a number of Ionesco's plays, the last of which isLe Piéton de l'air translated asA Stroll in the Air.
Bérenger is a semi-autobiographical figure expressing Ionesco's wonderment and anguish at the strangeness of reality. He is comically naïve, engaging the audience's sympathy. InThe Killer he encounters death in the figure of a serial killer. InRhinocéros he watches his friends turning into rhinoceroses one by one until he alone stands unchanged against this mass movement. It is in this play that Ionesco most forcefully expresses his horror of ideological conformism, inspired by the rise of thefascistIron Guard in Romania in the 1930s.Le Roi se meurt translated asExit the King (1962) shows him as King Bérenger I, aneveryman figure who struggles to come to terms with his own death.
Ionesco's later work has generally received less attention. This includesLa Soif et la faim translated asHunger and Thirst (1966),Jeux de massacre (1971),Macbett (1972, a free adaptation ofShakespeare'sMacbeth) andCe formidable bordel (1973).
Ionesco also wrote his only novel,The Hermit, during this later period. It was first published in 1975.
Apart from thelibretto for the operaMaximilien Kolbe (music byDominique Probst) which has been performed in five countries, produced for television and recorded for release on CD, Ionesco did not write for the stage afterVoyage chez les morts in 1981. However,La Cantatrice chauve is still playing at theThéâtre de la Huchette today, having moved there in 1952. It holds the world record for the play that has been staged continuously in the same theatre for the longest time.[12][13]
LikeShaw andBrecht, Ionesco contributed to the theatre with his theoretical writings (Wellwarth, 33). Ionesco wrote mainly in attempts to correct critics whom he felt misunderstood his work and therefore wrongly influenced his audience. In doing so, Ionesco articulated ways in which he thought contemporary theatre should be reformed (Wellwarth, 33).Notes and Counter Notes is a collection of Ionesco's writings, including musings on why he chose to write for the theatre and direct responses to his contemporary critics.
In the first section, titled "Experience of the Theatre", Ionesco claimed to have hated going to the theatre as a child because it gave him "no pleasure or feeling of participation" (Ionesco, 15). He wrote that the problem with realistic theatre is that it is less interesting than theatre that invokes an "imaginative truth", which he found to be much more interesting and freeing than the "narrow" truth presented by strict realism (Ionesco, 15). He claimed that "drama that relies on simple effects is not necessarily drama simplified" (Ionesco, 28).Notes and Counter Notes also reprints a heated war of words between Ionesco andKenneth Tynan based on Ionesco's beliefs and Ionesco's hatred for Brecht and Brechtian theatre.
Ionesco is often considered a writer of theTheatre of the Absurd, a label originally given to him byMartin Esslin in his book of the same name. Esslin, placed Ionesco alongside contemporariesSamuel Beckett,Jean Genet, andArthur Adamov, calling this informal group "absurd" on the basis ofAlbert Camus' concept of the absurd. In Esslin's view, Beckett and Ionesco better captured the meaninglessness of existence in their plays than works by Camus or Sartre. Because of this loose association, Ionesco is often mislabeled an existentialist. Ionesco claimed inNotes and Counter Notes that he was not an existentialist and often criticized existentialist figureheadJean-Paul Sartre. Although Ionesco knew Beckett and honored his work, the French group of playwrights was far from an organized movement.
Ionesco on the metaphysics of death inThrough Parisian Eyes: Reflections on Contemporary French Arts and Culture byMelinda Camber Porter: "Death is our main problem and all others are less important. It is the wall and the limit. It is the only inescapable alienation; it gives us a sense of our limits. But the ignorance of ourselves and of others to which we are condemned is just as worrying. In the final analysis, we don't know what we're doing. Nevertheless, in all my work there is an element of hope and an appeal to others."
Ionesco claimed instead an affinity for’Pataphysics and its creatorAlfred Jarry. He was also a great admirer of theDadaists andSurrealists, especially his fellow countrymanTristan Tzara. Ionesco became friends withAndré Breton, whom he revered. InPresent Past, Past Present, Ionesco wrote "Breton taught us to destroy the walls of the real that separate us from reality, to participate in being so as to live as if it were the first day of creation, a day that would every day be the first day of new creations."[14]Raymond Queneau, a former associate of Breton and a champion of Ionesco's work, was a member of theCollège de ’Pataphysique and a founder ofOulipo, two groups with which Ionesco was associated.[15] Politically, Ionesco expressed sympathy with the left-libertarianTransnational Radical Party ofMarco Pannella.[16]
^[1] The Editors ofEncyclopaedia Britannica. Eugène Ionesco; French dramatist.Britannica online
^[2] The Editors ofEncyclopaedia Britannica. "Theatre of the Absurd".Britannica online
^Some sources such as theWho's Who in Jewish History (Routledge, London, 1995) and 'Ionesco Eugene' article inEncyclopaedia Judaica state that Ionesco's mother was Jewish. In his now-famous diary, Romanian playwrightMihail Sebastian recorded that Ionesco told him his mother "had been Jewish, fromCraiova." (Cf.Journal: 1935–1944, UK edition, 321.) Marie-France Ionesco, Eugène's daughter, details a more complex genealogy of her family. Marie-Therese Ipcar's father was Jean Ipcar, a Lutheran from France and her mother was Aneta Ioanid, a Romanian woman of Greek parentage and Orthodox Christian faith. Jean's biological father was a Frenchman of Lutheran faith named Émile Marin. His mother, Anna, later married a man named Sebastien Ipcher, from whom Jean got his surname, a French-Catholic variation of "Ipcher" or "Ipchier". Rumors of Marie-Therese's Jewish origin, Marie-France writes, may have originated from the fact that her paternal grandmother's surname is disputed between the FrenchLebel or German-JewishLindenberg. Whether Eugène Ionesco's great-grandmother was Jewish or not, is, according to Marie-France, unknown and irrelevant, especially in regard to Eugène Ionesco's positive view of Jews. Cf. Ionesco, Marie-France,Portrait de l'écrivain dans le siècle: Eugène Ionesco, 1909–1994, Gallimard, Paris, 2004.
Kamyabi Mask, Ahmad. Qui sont les rhinocéros de Monsieur Bérenger-Eugène Ionesco? (Etude dramaturgique) suivie d'un entretien avec Jean-Louis Barrault, Préface de Bernard Laudy. Paris: A. Kamyabi Mask, 1990.ISBN978-2-9504806-0-6
Lamon, Rosette C.Ionesco's Imperative: The Politics of Culture. University of Michigan Press, 1993.ISBN0-472-10310-5
Lewis, Allan.Ionesco. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1972.
(in Romanian) Călinescu, Matei.O carte despre Cioran, Eliade, Ionesco. On Cioran, Eliade, Ionesco. In:Revista 22, no. 636, 2002.[3]
(in Romanian)Pavel, Laura.Ionesco. Anti-lumea unui sceptic (Ionesco: The Anti-World of a Skeptic). Piteşti: Paralela 45, 2002.ISBN973-593-686-0
(in Romanian)Saiu, Octavian.Ionescu/Ionesco: Un veac de ambiguitate (Ionescu/Ionesco: One Hundred Years of Ambiguity). Bucharest: Paideia Press, 2011,ISBN978-973-596-717-8
