Eugène Ionesco (Romanian spelling: Eugen Ionescu) (November 26, 1909 – March 29, 1994) was one of the foremost playwrights of the theatre of the absurd. Beyond ridiculing the most banal situations, Ionesco's plays depict in a tangible way the solitude of humans and the insignificance of one's existence. November 26 is the 330th day (331st on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1909 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... March 29 is the 88th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (89th in Leap years). ... 1994 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ... A playwright is an author of plays for performance in the theater. ... The Theatre of the Absurd is a phrase used in reference to particular plays written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has evolved from their work. ...

Biographical information

Ionesco was born in 1909 in Slatina, Romania, to a Romanian father and a French mother. Many sources cite his birthdate as 1912, this error being due to vanity on the part of Ionesco himself (see 'Eugène Ionesco's Life', on www.ionesco.org (http://www.ionesco.org/vie-en.html)). He spent most of his childhood in France, but returned to Romania with his father in 1925 after his parents divorced. There he studied French Literature at the University of Bucharest from 1928 to 1933 and qualified as a teacher of French. While there he met Emil Cioran and Mircea Eliade, and the three became lifelong friends. 1909 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Slatina (population: 79,171) is a town in the Olt county, Romania, on the river Olt. ... 1912 is a leap year starting on Monday. ... 1925 was a common year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... French literature is literature written in the French language; and especially, literature written in French by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written in other languages of France. ... University of Bucharest University of Bucharest is a university founded in 1864 by decree of Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza to convert the former Saint Sava Academy into the current University of Bucharest. ... 1928 was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1933 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Emil Cioran (known in French as Émile Cioran), (April 8, 1911 - June 20, 1995) was a writer noted for his somber works in the French language. ... Mircea Eliade Mircea Eliade (March 9, 1907, Bucharest - April 22, 1986, Chicago) was a Romanian historian of religions and writer (fantasy and autobiographical). ...

In 1936 Ionesco married Rodica Burileanu. Together they had one daughter for whom he wrote a number of unconventional children's stories. He and his family returned to France in 1938 for him to complete his doctoral thesis. Caught by the outbreak of war in 1939, he remained there, living in Marseilles during the war before moving with his family to Paris after its liberation in 1944. 1936 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1938 was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... 1939 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Marseilles redirects here. ... 1944 was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ...

In 1967 Ionesco made a visit to Israel and in the second volume of his autobiography he affirmed his Jewish origins.

Ionesco was made a member of the Académie française in 1970 (accession speech, in French (http://www.academie-francaise.fr/immortels/discours_reception/ionesco.html)). He also received numerous awards including Tours Festival Prize for film, 1959; Prix Italia, 1963; Society of Authors Theatre Prize, 1966; Grand Prix National for theatre, 1969; Monaco Grand Prix, 1969; Austrian State Prize for European Literature, 1970; Jerusalem Prize, 1973; and honorary doctorates from New York University and the universities of Leuven (Belgium), Warwick (England), and Tel Aviv (Israel). The Académie française, or French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. ... 1970 was a common year starting on Thursday. ... 1959 was a common year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1963 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1966 was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1966 calendar). ... 1969 was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1969 calendar). ... 1969 was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1969 calendar). ... 1970 was a common year starting on Thursday. ... 1973 was a common year starting on Monday. ... Leuven in 2004 Leuven (Louvain in French, Löwen in German) is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Flemish Brabant, of which it is the capital. ... Location within the British Isles. ... Royal motto: Dieu et mon droit (French: God and my right) Englands location within the UK Official language English de facto Capital London de facto Largest city London Area  - Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population  - Total (2001)  - Density Ranked 1st UK 49,138,831 377/km² Religion... Tel Aviv at night Dizengof Center Allenby Street Tel Aviv-Yafo (Hebrew תל אביב-יפו; Arabic تل ابيب-يافا Tal Abīb-Yāfā) is an Israeli city on the coast of the Mediterranean sea. ...

He died at 84 and is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France. The Cimetière du Montparnasse is a famous cemetery in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris, France. ...

Although Ionesco wrote almost entirely in French, he is one of Romanians' proudest citizens. There is much resentment over what could be called the French's "adoption" of him, specifically the fact that most of the world knows him as Eugène Ionesco, rather than his birth name and name in his native Romanian language, Eugen Ionescu.

Ionesco the author

The origins of his first play

Like Beckett, Ionesco came to the theatre late: he did not write his first play until 1948 (La Cantatrice Chauve, first performed 1950, English title The Bald Soprano or The Bald Prima Donna). At the age of 40 he decided to learn English using the Assimil method, conscientiously copying whole sentences in order to memorize them. Re-reading them, he began to feel that he was not learning English, rather he was discovering some astonishing truths such as the fact that there are seven days in a week, that the ceiling is up and the floor is down; things which he already knew, but which suddenly struck him as being as stupifying as they were indisputably true. Quantum Leap A scene from Waiting for Godot, Becketts breakthrough play which was first performed in 1953. ... 1948 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Bald Soprano (French:La Cantatrice Chauve) was the first play written by Eugène Ionesco. ...

This feeling only intensified with the introduction in later lessons of the characters Mr and Mrs Smith. To his astonishment, Mrs Smith informed her husband that they had several children, that they lived in the vicinity of London, that their name was Smith, that Mr. Smith was a clerk, that they had a servant, Mary, who was English like themselves. What was remarkable about Mrs. Smith, he thought, was her eminently methodical procedure in her quest for truth. For Ionesco, the clichés and truisms of the conversation primer disintegrated into wild caricature and parody with language itself disintegrating into disjointed fragments of words.

Ionesco set about translating this experience into a play, La Cantatrice Chauve, which was performed for the first time in 1950 under the direction of Nicolas Bataille. It was far from a success and went unnoticed until a few established writers and critics, among them Jean Anouilh and Raymond Queneau, championed the play. 1950 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jean Anouilh(June 23, 1910- October 3, 1987) was a major French dramatist of the 20th century. ... Raymond Queneau (February 21, 1903 - October 25, 1976) was a French poet and novelist. ...

Early works

Ionesco's earliest works, and his most innovative, were one-act nonsense plays: La Cantatrice chauve (1950), La Leçon (1951), Les Chaises (1952), and Jacques ou la Soumission (1955). These absurdist sketches, to which he gave such descriptions as "anti-play" (anti-pièce in French) express modern feelings of alienation and the impossibility and futility of communication with surreal comic force, parodying the conformism of the bourgeoisie and conventional theatrical forms. In them Ionesco rejects a conventional story-line as their basis, instead taking their dramatic structure from accelerating rhythms and/or cyclical repetitions. He disregards psychology and coherent dialogue, thereby depicting a dehumanized world with mechanical, puppet-like characters who speak in non-sequiturs. Language becomes rarefied, with words and material objects gaining a life of their own, increasingly overwhelming the characters and creating a sense of menace. 1950 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1951 was a common year starting on Monday; see its calendar. ... 1952 - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ... 1955 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Surrealism is an artistic movement and an aesthetic philosophy that aims for the liberation of the mind by emphasizing the critical and imaginative powers of the unconscious. ... Non sequitur is Latin for it does not follow. ...

The full-length plays

With Tueur sans gages (1959; his second full-length play, the first being Amédée, ou Comment s'en débarrasser in 1954), Ionesco began to explore more sustained dramatic situations featuring more humanized characters. Notably this includes Bérenger, a central character in a number of Ionesco's plays, the last of which is Le Piéton de l'air. 1959 was a common year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1954 was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Bérenger is a semi-autobiographical figure expressing Ionesco's wonderment and anguish at the strangeness of reality. He is comically naïve, engaging the audience's sympathy. In Tueur sans gages he encounters death in the figure of a serial killer. In Rhinocéros he watches his friends turning into rhinoceroses one by one until he alone stands unchanged against this tide of conformism. It is in this play that Ionesco most forcefully expresses his horror of ideological conformism, inspired by the rise of the fascist Iron Guard in Romania in the 1930s. Le Roi se meurt (1962) shows him as King Bérenger 1st, an everyman figure who struggles to come to terms with his own death. Rhinoceros is a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in the late 1950s. ... Species Ceratotherium simum Dicerorhinus sumatrensis Diceros bicornis Rhinoceros unicornis Coelodonta antiquitatis (extinct) A rhinoceros (commonly called a rhino for short) is any of five surviving species of odd-toed ungulate in the family Rhinocerotidae. ... Fascism (in Italian, fascismo), capitalized, refers to the right-wing authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini. ... The Iron Guard is the name most commonly given in English to an ultra-nationalist, anti-Semitic, fascist movement and political party in Romania in the period from 1927 into the early part of World War II. Originally founded by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu on July 24, 1927 as the Legion... 1962 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Everyman (c. ...

Later works

Ionesco's later work has generally received less attention. This includes La Soif et la faim (1966), Jeux de massacre (1971), Macbett (1972, a free adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth) and Ce formidable bordel (1973). 1966 was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1966 calendar). ... 1971 is a common year starting on Friday (click for link to calendar). ... Macbett is Eugene Ionescos satire on Shakespeares MacBeth. ... 1972 was a leap year that started on a Saturday. ... William Shakespeare—born April 1564; baptised April 26, 1564; died April 23, 1616 (O.S.), May 3, 1616 (N.S.)—has a reputation as the greatest of all writers in English. ... Scene from Macbeth by William Rimmer, depicting the witches conjuring of an apparition in Act IV, Scene I Macbeth is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, based loosely on the historical King Macbeth of Scotland. ... 1973 was a common year starting on Monday. ...

Apart from a libretto for an opera which was never produced, Ionesco did not write for the stage after Voyage chez les morts in 1981. However, La Cantatrice chauve was still playing at the Théâtre de la Huchette in 1993 having moved there in 1952. A libretto is the body of words used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, oratorio, or musical. ... The foyer of Charles Garniers Opéra, Paris, opened 1875 Opera is an art form consisting of a dramatic stage performance set to music. ... 1981 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1993 is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003) Events Media:January January 1 - Czechoslovakia divides. ... 1952 - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ...

Ionesco's works

Selected works

• La Cantatrice chauve (1950, The Bald Soprano or The Bald Prima Donna
• La Leçon (1951, The Lesson)
• Les Chaises (1952, The Chairs)
• Rhinocéros (1959, Rhinoceros)
• Tueur sans gages (1958, The Killer)
• Le Roi se meurt (1962, Exit the King)
• Le Piéton de l'air (1963, A Stroll in the Air)
• La Soif et la faim (1964, Hunger and Thirst)
• Macbett (1972)
  • Productions, 1972 to present (http://www.ionesco.org/macbett.html) (in French)

The Bald Soprano (French:La Cantatrice Chauve) was the first play written by Eugène Ionesco. ... Rhinoceros is a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in the late 1950s. ... Rhinoceros is a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in the late 1950s. ... The Killer is the name of: a 1933 story by Walter B. Gibson; see The Killer (story) a 1958 play by Eugène Ionesco; see The Killer (play) a 1989 movie directed by John Woo; see The Killer (movie) See also: Killer, Killers, The Killers This is a disambiguation page — a... Macbett is Eugene Ionescos satire on Shakespeares MacBeth. ...

Theoretical writings

• Notes and Counternotes (1962)
• Fragments of a Journal (1966)
• Le Solitaire (1973)
• Journeys among the Dead (1980)

References

• The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, (ISBN 0198661258)
• Ionesco : Théâtre complet, Pléiade edition (ISBN 2070111989)

External links

• The Eugène Ionesco Homepage (http://www.ionesco.org/)