NORMAN MANEA
541
After being an outcast himself from a society with strict standards, those same con–
servatives take Berenger's place as radicals and he, in turn, clings to their conven–
tionalism. With the breakdown of society, Berenger's former social stance is
disqualified. Berenger seems to have adopted the ultraconservative views expressed
earlier by Jean.
("A
superior man is the one who does his duty." ) Suddenly, he is
obsessed with man's obligation to society-a notion he previously acted against.
THE ICONOCLASTIC COMMENTARY on the iconoclastic literary work
ended with a verdict to match.
The utter absurdity of Ionesco's plot that a town full of respectable citizens
turns, one by one, into a herd of stampeding Rhinoceroses, lends itself well to
the simplicity of its message. Ionesco uses the character of Berenger to illustrate
man's tragic incapacity
to
accept change and the growth and improvement that
inevitably accompany it.
The professor stopped. He seemed amazed by the words "growth and
improvement," as he heard them for the first time. In fact, he heard a
series of muted words in another language. "The Legion wipes its ass
with this country," a friend of Ionesco's whispered in
1941,
in
Bucharest. "Romania is not worthy of the Legion," another of Ionesco's
friends stated at the same time. Berenger was then called Eugen Ionescu,
a terrified witness of the rhinocerization of too many of his friends. To
him, the fascist legionaries in their rhino-green shirts were "enchained
beasts," embodying "the bestiality and endless stupidity of mankind
and cosmos," while their songs were "an iron roar, with iron and gall,
spitting gall and iron."
He nevertheless regained the blank tone that the text preserved for
the conclusion:
Berenger, seemingly the most dissatisfied, is the first (and the last) to refute the
new ideology. By fear, human beings are held back from progression.
Fear? Yes, certainly there had been fear too. But not only that. Not just
fear, he could swear, swear-not just fear!
He was ready to swear in front of the youthful audience in the New
World that disgust and lucidity and integrity too, yes, yes, integrity too,
yes, yes, ambiguities and vulnerability too had kept the poor outlaw far
from the "progress" of the new man, the new life, and the new ideology.
