540
PARTISAN REVIEW
But he is, poor thing! He is, he certainly was, and he has remained a
dreamer, a champion of freedom. That's what he is, that poor bastard.
A eulogy for "the revolutionary" symbol, embodied by the cruel
"renewing" disease of rhinoceritis? An indictment of the anti-hero
Berenger? My student was overturning the premise that was so dear to
the author, his admirers, and the reader, lost in that tumble and that
American lecture room.
Although with difficulty, the professor was giving up-he had to admit
it-this hero of non-abdication, non-giving-up,
to
the humanity of his
ambiguities; he had discovered the vulnerability of the lost ones long ago
and far away, not only in Ionesco's tragicomedy but also in the comedy–
not lacking in tragic aspects-of everyday life in socialist Rhinoromania.
Do ambiguities and vulnerability hinder us and put an end to our
"progress? "
No,
THE PROFESSOR
did not voice his doubts. He continued to listen to
the alien sentences that emerged from the clear handwriting, the black
ink, the lined notebook, and evasively phrased in the adventurous pho–
netics of his new role.
Berenger shouts for his neighbors-turned-rhinoceros to maintain the laws estab–
lished by humans. ("Stop it! ...Noise is forbidden in these flats! Noise is forbid–
den!") Berenger did not maintain these laws himself; he drank consistently, missed
work, appeared socially delinquent, and yet, in this time of upheaval, Berenger
grasps on
to
the "social code" for dear life. Lacking the ability
to
live up
to
the
original social status, he is certainly not ready
to
adopt a new set of standards
however revolutionary or progressive it may be. For this weaker members (such
as Berenger) will hold a society back in a time of revolutionary change.
"New set of standards," "revolutionary change," "progressive" ...the
terms certainly had a different meaning for the young audience than the
one perverted for so long in the Colony of Rhino that the improvised
Eastern European professor kept thinking of.
He was smiling questioningly and aloofly and confusedly, looking
down at the lined sheet of paper, preparing himself to pronounce the
new-old words: "radicals," "conservatives," "conventionalism,"
"duty" ...-barbarisms twisted and turned in the DADA Barracks, with
hammer and sickle, until they could no longer be pronounced, except in
the Rhinoceros Circus.
