Rhinoceros Eugene Ionesco
Concluding my recent excursion into absurdism, I took up Rhinoceros. "La Cantatrice Chauve" (for some reason I love the French title) has long been one of my favorite plays with such lines as, "We've had a lovely cartesian quarter of an hour," and "What about the Bald Soprano" [The Title of the play in English]. "I love the way she wears her hair." And so on. Ionesco, absurdist though he was, was instrumental in helping me form the surreal vision of life that has long been my bulwark and shield.
However some of the mechanical absurdity of Rhinoceros doed not wear well. There are moments that work and that are lasting, but the central thesis the central alogicity of the momentum of the play, are relics of a time and a place--largely 1950s and 1960s France and colonial holdings. From these we have Beckett, Ionesco, Sartre, and Camus, to name four who leap to mind instantly. Combine atheistic existentialism with the long hard road after World War II and you get: Waiting for Godot, Huis Clos, Rhinoceros, "La Femme Adultere," The Stranger, and other relics of this shadow empire--some speaking beyond their time, some staunchly speaking to it.
Rhinoceros narrates events in a small town during which all of the inhabitants, one by one at first, then in droves, turn into Rhinoceroses. It centers on one person who at first refuses to succumb to the crowd instinct, but then begins to reason his way to falling into line. We leave him untransformed at the end of the play, but longing to be like everyone else, and certain that he has lost his chance.
From the plot summary, you could see how something like this would appeal to the alienated and approval-seeking adolescent in all of us. And that is part of what sustains the play from falling into a completely isolated relic of a former time. There is still a message here for those who have long outlived the nihilism of the 50s and 60s and entered the Noveau Nihilism of the 70s beyond, complete with semiotics and deconstruction. Meaning becomes meaningless when the drive is to become like everyone else.
There are moments here that reek of Monty Python--"We're all individuals!"/"I'm not." Along with syllogisms that portray the inner logic of the play. Paraphrase:
Logician: All cats have four legs.Samantha has four legs.Samantha is a cat."
Old Man: My dog has four legs.
Logician: Then he must be a cat.
Perhaps we all are--or at least Rhinoceroses, trumpeting and trampling our nonthoughts and alogical propositions into those around us and making them wish they were like us. Something like Sex in the City.
**** Still worth reading, and relatively rapid at that.
However some of the mechanical absurdity of Rhinoceros doed not wear well. There are moments that work and that are lasting, but the central thesis the central alogicity of the momentum of the play, are relics of a time and a place--largely 1950s and 1960s France and colonial holdings. From these we have Beckett, Ionesco, Sartre, and Camus, to name four who leap to mind instantly. Combine atheistic existentialism with the long hard road after World War II and you get: Waiting for Godot, Huis Clos, Rhinoceros, "La Femme Adultere," The Stranger, and other relics of this shadow empire--some speaking beyond their time, some staunchly speaking to it.
Rhinoceros narrates events in a small town during which all of the inhabitants, one by one at first, then in droves, turn into Rhinoceroses. It centers on one person who at first refuses to succumb to the crowd instinct, but then begins to reason his way to falling into line. We leave him untransformed at the end of the play, but longing to be like everyone else, and certain that he has lost his chance.
From the plot summary, you could see how something like this would appeal to the alienated and approval-seeking adolescent in all of us. And that is part of what sustains the play from falling into a completely isolated relic of a former time. There is still a message here for those who have long outlived the nihilism of the 50s and 60s and entered the Noveau Nihilism of the 70s beyond, complete with semiotics and deconstruction. Meaning becomes meaningless when the drive is to become like everyone else.
There are moments here that reek of Monty Python--"We're all individuals!"/"I'm not." Along with syllogisms that portray the inner logic of the play. Paraphrase:
Logician: All cats have four legs.Samantha has four legs.Samantha is a cat."
Old Man: My dog has four legs.
Logician: Then he must be a cat.
Perhaps we all are--or at least Rhinoceroses, trumpeting and trampling our nonthoughts and alogical propositions into those around us and making them wish they were like us. Something like Sex in the City.
**** Still worth reading, and relatively rapid at that.
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