456
LIONEL ABEL
But let us consider Esslin's main contention that there is a Theatre
of the Absurd at this time, quite apart from his other contention that it
pre-existed its own
raison d'etre.
Is it true that Beckett, lonesco, Adamov,
Genet, Albee, Arrabal, Grass, Pinter, and Simpson can be best understood
if considered as instigators of a new theatrical
art,
the Theatre of the
Absurd? Some of the playwrights listed above have, to be sure, written
plays to Esslin's specifications, but only one of these, lonesco,
is
really
important. The three major figures, as I am sure Esslin himself would
agree, are lonesco, Beckett, and Genet. But of these three, only lonesco
fits Esslin's formula.
One individual, to be sure,
if
an artist of rank, has as much interest
as a whole school. And lonesco is a remarkable playwright with some
five or six masterpieces to his credit. He has great invention and an
exuberant humor; unfortunately, his ideas are topical, adventitious: the
last thing one could say about them is that they are "new." One
typically "new" idea of lonesco's is that there are no new ideas, even
in the construction of plays. Here he is quite wrong. He has written
some plays that are really novel as structures. It is the ideas expressed
in them that are all too familiar and which spring from the prevailing
climate of political and metaphysical pessimism.
What is objectionable in lonesco's theatre is curiously akin to what
is objectionable in Esslin's whole concept. lonesco thinks "absurdity" is
something new*; Esslin wants to give us news of the "absurd."
Esslin talks a lot about Samuel Beckett and Jean Genet. But
in the fairly detailed analyses he makes of their lives and work he is
una:ble to illuminate much of their
art
or even to give us the feeling that
he has judged it wisely.
Beckett he discusses under this rubric: "The Search for the Self."
And Esslin searches accordingly in Richard Ellmann's biography of
James Joyce (who knew Beckett) for such data as might throw light on
Waiting for Gadat
and
Endgame.
Now Ellmann's book is valuable on
Beckett as well as on Joyce. For instance, it appears that Beckett is given
to long silences and when he visited Joyce they often stared at each
other for hours without uttering a word. Now this certainly tells us
something about the kind of dialogue we have come
to
expect from
Beckett. But what has the personal data about Beckett to do with a
general cultural crisis, or with any modern feeling for "absurdity?"
*
I don't think Ionesco regards "absurdity" as an "idea," but as an "anti-idea."
His theatre has been called "anti-theatre."
