Eugène Ionesco facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Eugène Ionesco
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Ionesco in 1993
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| Born | Eugen Ionescu 26 November 1909 Slatina, Romania |
| Died | 28 March 1994 (aged 84) Paris, France |
| Resting place | Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris |
| Occupation | Playwright, dramatist |
| Nationality | Romanian, French |
| Period | 1931–1994 |
| Genre | Theatre |
| Literary movement | Avant-Garde, Theatre of the Absurd |
Eugène Ionesco (born Eugen Ionescu; 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a famous Romanian-French playwright. He mostly wrote in French and was a leading figure in the French avant-garde theatre of the 20th century. Avant-garde means new and experimental.
Ionesco changed how plays were written and performed. His "anti-play" called The Bald Soprano helped start a style known as the Theatre of the Absurd. This type of theatre explores ideas about how life can sometimes seem meaningless or without purpose, a concept also discussed by the philosopher Albert Camus. Ionesco became a member of the important Académie française in 1970. He also won several awards, including the 1970 Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the 1973 Jerusalem Prize.
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Biography
Ionesco was born in Slatina, Romania. His father was Romanian Orthodox, and his mother had French and Romanian roots and was Protestant. Eugène was baptized into the Orthodox Christian faith. Many sources incorrectly say he was born in 1912. This was because Ionesco himself wanted his birth year to match the death year of a Romanian playwright he admired, Caragiale.
He spent much of his childhood in France. There, he had a special experience that he said changed how he saw the world. One sunny day in a small village, he suddenly felt a strong, bright light. He felt like he was floating and had a wonderful feeling of happiness. When this feeling passed, he saw the real world as full of problems, decay, and boring, repeated actions. He also realized that everyone eventually dies. Much of his later work shows this new way of seeing things. It often expresses a dislike for the physical world, a doubt about how well people can communicate, and a quiet feeling that a better world is just out of reach. You can see hints of this experience in many of his plays.
In 1925, he returned to Romania with his parents after they divorced. He went to Saint Sava National College. Later, he studied French Literature at the University of Bucharest from 1928 to 1933 and became a French teacher. During this time, he met Emil Cioran and Mircea Eliade, who became his lifelong friends.
Ionesco married Rodica Burileanu in 1936. They had a daughter, Marie-France Ionesco, for whom he wrote some unusual children's stories. In 1938, he moved back to France with his family to finish his doctoral studies. When World War II started in 1939, he returned to Romania. However, he soon changed his mind and, with help from friends, got documents to go back to France in 1942. He stayed there for the rest of the war, living in Marseille before moving to Paris after it was freed.
Literary career
Early Writings in Romania
Even though he is best known for his plays, Ionesco first wrote poetry and literary criticism. He published his work in several Romanian magazines. Two important early writings were Nu, a book that criticized many other writers, and Hugoliade, a funny and sad story about Victor Hugo. This story made fun of Hugo's status as a great French writer. Hugoliade included exaggerated tales of Hugo's most shocking moments. It also showed early versions of ideas Ionesco would use later, like silly, bossy characters and the false worship of language.
How His First Play Began
Ionesco started writing for the theatre later in his life. He didn't write his first play, La Cantatrice chauve (later called The Bald Soprano), until 1948. It was first performed in 1950. When he was 40, he decided to learn English using a special method. He copied whole sentences to memorize them. As he read them again, he felt like he wasn't just learning English. He felt like he was discovering amazing truths, like there are seven days in a week, or that the ceiling is up and the floor is down. These were things he already knew, but they suddenly seemed incredibly true and surprising.
This feeling grew stronger when the English lessons introduced characters named "Mr. and Mrs. Smith." Mrs. Smith told her husband that they had children, lived near London, their name was Smith, Mr. Smith was a clerk, and their servant, Mary, was English. Ionesco found Mrs. Smith's way of finding truth very organized. For him, the common phrases and obvious statements in the English textbook turned into a wild, funny parody. Language itself broke down into disconnected words. Ionesco turned this experience into his play, La Cantatrice Chauve. It was first performed in 1950 but wasn't very successful at first. However, some famous writers and critics, like Jean Anouilh and Raymond Queneau, later supported the play.
His Early Plays
Ionesco's first plays for the theatre are seen as his most creative. They were short, one-act plays or longer sketches. Some of these include The Bald Soprano (written 1948), Jack, or The Submission (1950), The Lesson (1950), and The Chairs (1951). He called these "anti-plays." They show modern feelings of being alone and how hard it is for people to truly communicate. They use funny, surreal humor to make fun of how people try to fit in and how traditional plays are made.
In these plays, Ionesco doesn't use a normal story. Instead, he builds the play's structure with fast rhythms or repeating patterns. He doesn't focus on characters' feelings or clear conversations. This creates a world where people act like robots or puppets, speaking in ways that don't make sense. Language itself becomes strange, and words or objects seem to come alive, making characters feel overwhelmed and creating a sense of danger.
The Full-Length Plays
With The Killer (1959), Ionesco started to explore longer stories with characters who felt more human. A key character in several of his plays is Bérenger. He appears in plays like The Killer and A Stroll in the Air.
Bérenger is a character who is a bit like Ionesco himself. He shows Ionesco's surprise and worry about how strange reality can be. Bérenger is often funny and innocent, which makes the audience feel for him.
Later Works
Ionesco's later plays have received less attention. These include Hunger and Thirst (1966), Jeux de massacre (1971), and Macbett (1972), which was his own version of Shakespeare's Macbeth. He also wrote his only novel, The Hermit, which came out in 1975.
After 1981, Ionesco didn't write for the stage much, except for the story for an opera called Maximilien Kolbe. However, his play La Cantatrice chauve is still being performed today at the Théâtre de la Huchette in Paris. It has been playing there continuously since 1952, setting a world record for the longest-running play in the same theatre.
His Ideas About Theatre
Like other famous playwrights such as Shaw and Brecht, Ionesco also wrote down his ideas about theatre. He mainly wrote to correct critics who he felt didn't understand his work. In doing so, Ionesco shared his thoughts on how modern theatre should change. His book Notes and Counter Notes is a collection of his writings. It includes his thoughts on why he chose to write for the theatre and his direct replies to critics of his time.
In this book, Ionesco said he didn't like going to the theatre as a child because it didn't make him feel involved. He believed that realistic theatre was less interesting than theatre that showed an "imaginative truth." He found this kind of truth much more exciting and freeing than the "narrow" truth of strict realism. He also wrote that "drama that relies on simple effects is not necessarily drama simplified." Notes and Counter Notes also includes a strong debate between Ionesco and a critic named Kenneth Tynan. This debate was about Ionesco's beliefs and his dislike for Brecht and his style of theatre.
His Place in Literature
Ionesco is often seen as a writer of the Theatre of the Absurd. This name was first given to him by Martin Esslin in his book. Esslin grouped Ionesco with other writers like Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov. He called their work "absurd" based on Albert Camus' idea of the absurd. Esslin thought Beckett and Ionesco showed the meaninglessness of life in their plays better than Camus or Sartre. Because of this, Ionesco is sometimes wrongly called an existentialist. However, Ionesco said in Notes and Counter Notes that he was not an existentialist and often criticized Jean-Paul Sartre, a leading existentialist. Even though Ionesco knew Beckett and respected his work, these French playwrights were not an organized group.
Ionesco shared his thoughts on death in a book called Through Parisian Eyes: "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 felt a connection to ’Pataphysics and its creator Alfred Jarry. He also greatly admired the Dadaists and Surrealists, especially Tristan Tzara from his home country. Ionesco became friends with André Breton, who started Surrealism, and he looked up to him. In his book Present Past, Past Present, Ionesco wrote that Breton taught them "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." Raymond Queneau, who used to work with Breton and supported Ionesco's plays, was part of the Collège de ’Pataphysique and started Oulipo. Ionesco was connected to both of these groups.
Honours and awards
Ionesco became a member of the Académie française in 1970. He also received many awards, including the Tours Festival Prize for film in 1959, the Prix Italia in 1963, and the Grand Prix National for theatre in 1969. He won the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1970 and the Jerusalem Prize in 1973. He also received honorary degrees from New York University and the Universities of Leuven, Warwick, and Tel Aviv. In 1964, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Death
Eugène Ionesco passed away at the age of 84 on 28 March 1994. He is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.
In 2009, the Romanian Academy made Ionesco a member after his death.
Theatrical works
- Long plays
- Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It (1954)
- The Killer (1958)
- Rhinoceros (1959)
- Exit the King (1962)
- Stroll in the Air (1962)
- Hunger and Thirst (1964)
- The Killing Game aka Here Comes a Chopper (1970)
- Macbett (1972)
- Oh, What a Bloody Circus aka A Hell of a Mess (1973)
- Man with Bags (1977)
- Journeys Among the Dead (1980)
- Short plays
- The Bald Soprano (1950)
- Salutations (1950)
- The Lesson (1951)
- The Motor Show (1951)
- The Chairs (1952)
- The Leader (1953)
- Victims of Duty (1953)
- Maid to Marry (1953)
- Jack, or The Submission (1955)
- The New Tenant (1955)
- The Picture (1955)
- Improvisation (1956)
- The Foot of the Wall (1956)
- The Future is in Eggs, or It Takes All Sorts to Make a World (1957)
- Foursome (1959)
- Frenzy for Two, or More (1962)
- The Oversight (1966)
- Vignettes
- The Duel (1971)
- Double Act (1971)
- Monologue
- How to Prepare a Hard-Boiled Egg (1966)
- Ballet scenario
- Learning to Walk (1960)
- Opera libretto
- Maximilien Kolbe (1987)
Other writings
- Fiction
- The Colonel's Photograph and Other Stories (1962)
- The Hermit (1973)
- Stories 1, 2, 3, 4 (2012)
- Non-fiction
- Hugoliad, or The Grotesque and Tragic Life of Victor Hugo (1935, published 1982)
- Notes and Counter-Notes (1962)
- Fragments of a Journal (1967)
- Present Past Past Present (1968)
- Film scenarios
- Anger (1961)
- La vase (Slime) (1971)
- Television scenario
- The Hard Boiled Egg (1966)
Untranslated writings
- Non-fiction
- Nu (1934)
- Decouvertes: Les Sentiers de la Creation (1969)
- Antidotes (1977)
- Un homme en question (1979)
- Le blanc et le noir (1981)
- La quête intermittente (1987)
- Plays
- Le vicomte (1950)
- La nièce-épouse (1953)
- Exercices de conversation et de diction françaises pour étudiants américains (1966)
- Ballet scenario
- Le jeune homme à marier (1966)
- Poetry
- Elegii pentru ființe mici (1931)
See also
In Spanish: Eugène Ionesco para niños
- List of Romanian playwrights
