Concept
Eugène Ionesco
Overview
Eugène Ionesco (; French: [øʒɛn jɔnɛsko]; born Eugen Ionescu, Romanian: [e.uˈdʒen joˈnesku] ; 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a Romanian-French playwright who wrote mostly in French, and was one of the foremost figures of the French avant-garde theatre in the 20th century. Ionesco instigated a revolution in ideas and techniques of drama, beginning with his "anti play", The Bald Soprano, which contributed to the beginnings of what is known as the Theatre of the Absurd. He wrote a number of plays that, following the ideas of the philosopher Albert Camus, explore concepts of absurdism and surrealism. He was made a member of the Académie française in 1970, and was awarded the 1970 Austrian State Prize for European Literature, and the 1973 Jerusalem Prize.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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In the broader meaning of the word, it would seem that what is called wit is a certain DRAMATIC way of thinking. Instead of treating his ideas as mere symbols, the wit sees them, he hears them and, above all, makes them converse with one another like persons. He puts them on the stage, and himself, to some extent, into the bargain. A witty nation is, of necessity, a nation enamoured of the theatre. In every wit…
Henri Bergson, Laughter
States what Eugène Ionesco is.
into a new light? towards a new sun? But who would attempt to express accurately what all these masters of new modes of speech could not express distinctly? It is certain that the same storm and stress tormented them, that they SOUGHT in the same manner, these last great seekers!
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Close in meaning to Eugène Ionesco; the term itself is not named.
A similar vision of the decline of the Greek drama and of the contrast of the old literature and the new was present to the mind of Aristophanes after the death of the three great tragedians (Frogs). After about a hundred, or at most two hundred years if we exclude Homer, the genius of Hellas had ceased to flower or blossom.
Plato, Phaedrus
Close in meaning to Eugène Ionesco; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Eugène Ionesco
- Aristophanes
- Mircea Eliade
- Marshall McLuhan
- Emil Cioran
- Mircea Vulcănescu
- Gabriel Liiceanu
- Vladimir Bibikhin
Related ideas
- Fascism
- Mircea Eliade
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Jean Genet
- Absurdism
- Nobel Prize in Literature
- Bertolt Brecht
- Emil Cioran
- Samuel Beckett
- Jerusalem Prize
- Surrealism
- Tel Aviv
- Formal fallacy
- Iron Guard
- Victor Hugo
- André Breton
- Leuven
- Dada
- Theatre of the absurd
- Albert Camus
- Martin Esslin
- Raymond Queneau
- Arthur Adamov
Place in the tradition
Part of Existentialism.