46
PARTISAN REVIEW
characters of this theater, of my theater, are neither tragic nor comic
but derisory. The characters are cut off from all transcendental and
metaphysical roots. They cannot be but psychological puppets, or
without psychology, as one used to say. Undoubtedly, they will con–
tinue to be symbolic characters, expressions of an era.
I had thought that half of the plays that had been written before
us were absurd to the extent that they could be comical, for example,
because the comic is absurd . I also thought that the ancestor of that
theater, the great ancestor, could be Shakespeare, who has his hero
say: "The world is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury ,
signifying nothing." Perhaps one can say that this theater of the ab–
surd goes back further and that Oedipus too was an absurd
character, since what happened to him in effect was absurd. But
with a difference : unconsciously, Oedipus broke the laws and was
punished for having transgressed them. Nevertheless, there were
laws and norms , even ifhe managed to violate them. In our theater,
the characters don't seem to cling to anything, and if I may cite
myself, the oldsters of my play "The Chairs" are lost in a world
without laws, without rules, without transcendence . That is what I
also wanted to show in a cheerful play like
The Bald Soprano,
for ex–
ample: the characters without metaphysical roots, searching perhaps
for a center they have lost, a point of support beyond them. Beckett
wrote more coldly, maybe more lucidly, in the same sense.
But there already had been absurd theater that was neither
comical nor happy, written in another style . I have the audacity to
think that
The Bald Soprano, Tile Lesson, The Chairs,
and
Victims
oj
Duty
are the plays that have given a novel impetus to an absurd "new
style ." The success of my early plays is incontestable . They have
pleased the Germans, the English, the Americans , and men of the
theater who have followed us with less talent, as much talent, or
more talent. And I continue to maintain that the theater of the new
absurd soared in the 1950s, more exactly, beginning with
The Bald
Soprano
which played in 1950,
The Lesson
which was presented in
1951, The Chairs
which dates in 1952, and
Victims ofDuty
from 1953.
With much greater power than was generally realized, Beckett ar–
rived in the theater in 1953 with his unforgettable
Waitingfor Godot.
I
cannot affirm that what I wrote subsequently illustrates this style of
theater.
Exit the King,
for instance, is probably too literary, except in
the final scene which, however, is inspired by the Tibetan
Book ofthe
Dead.
I would also say that the word "absurd" is a bit forced , given
