32. Features of the theater of the absurd: origins, representatives, features of the dramatic structure.

Works in the list related to the theater of the absurd:

Beckett: "Waiting for Godot"

Ionesco: Rhinos

Given the pointlessness of the plot retelling of these plays, they are indeed easier to read. Below is a retelling of the plot, but this may not help.

Other representatives:

Kafka: In every introductory article about Kafka, the word "absurd" occurs at least once, but Moskvina, for example, separates Kafka's work and absurdity because of the emphasized logic of events taking place in Kafka's worlds. Camus also shares Kafka and the absurd due to the fact that his work still contains some glimmers of hope, which is unacceptable for absurdity in the understanding of Camus.

Stoppard: "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" is a prime example of absurdist tragicomedy.

Vvedensky and Kharms: domestic representatives. I do not think that they should be cited as an example just like that, given that we have a course in foreign literature, but if asked, mention them so as not to lose face.

Temporary structure:

1843 - Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling was written

1914-1918 - World War I

1916 - emergence of Dadaism

1917 - in the manifesto "New Spirits" Guillaume Apollinaire introduces the term "surrealism"

1939-1945 - World War II

1942 - publication of the essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Camus

1951 - production of "The Bald Singer" by Ionesco

1952 - production of "Chairs" by Ionesco

1953 - production of "Victims of Duty" by Ionesco

1953 - production of "Waiting for Godot" Beckett

1960 - production of Rhinos by Ionesco

1962 - publication of the book "The Theater of the Absurd" by theater critic Martin Esslin

The term "absurd":

Camus: "A world that lends itself to explanation, even the worst one, is familiar to us. But if the universe is suddenly deprived of both illusions and knowledge, a person becomes an outsider in it. A person is banished forever, for he is deprived of the memory of the lost fatherland, and hopes for the promised land. Actually, the feeling of absurdity is this discord between a person and his life, actor and scenery.

"Man is faced with the irrationality of the world. He feels that he desires happiness and rationality. Absurdity is born in this clash between the vocation of man and the unreasonable silence of the world."

"If I accuse an innocent person of a terrible crime, if I declare to a respectable person that he lusts for his own sister, then they will answer me that this is absurd. [...] A respectable person points out the antinomy between the act that I attribute to him and the principles his entire life. "This is absurd" means "this is impossible", and besides, "this is contradictory". If a man armed with a knife attacks a group of machine gunners, I consider his action absurd. But it is so only because of the disproportion between intention and reality , because of the contradiction between the real forces and the goal set [...] Therefore, I have every reason to say that the feeling of absurdity is not born from a simple examination of a fact or impression, but breaks in along with a comparison of the actual state of affairs with some kind of reality , by comparing action with the world lying outside this action. In essence, absurdity is a split. It does not exist in any of the compared elements. It is born in their collision. "

Ionesco: "I still do not really know what the word" absurd " means, except in those cases when it asks about the absurd; and I repeat that those who are not surprised that there are, who do not ask themselves questions about being, those who believe that everything is normal, naturally, while the world touches the supernatural, these people are flawed […] But the ability to be surprised will return, the question of the absurdity of this world cannot but arise, even if there is no answer to it.[... ] Let's try to ascend, at least mentally, to that which is not subject to decay, to the real, that is, to the sacred, and to the ritual, this sacred expressing - and which can be found without artistic creativity.

"Absurdity is something devoid of purpose... A person cut off from his religious, metaphysical and transcendental roots has perished; all his actions are meaningless, absurd, useless."

Esslin: "A good play has a skillfully constructed plot; plot and plot are absent in absurd plays; a good play is valued for its characters and motivations; in absurd plays, characters cannot be recognized; In the end, absurd plays often have no beginning or end; a good play is a mirror of nature and represents its era in subtle sketches; absurd plays reflect dreams and nightmares; good plays are distinguished by accurate dialogue and witty retorts; absurd plays are often incoherent babble. "

In defining the term "absurd" specifically, Esslin cites Camus ("discord between actor and set") and Ionesco ("something devoid of purpose").

Moskvina: judging by the lecture on Proust and Kafka, he perceives absurdity primarily as something illogical and irrational.

General provisions

The theater of the absurd is a type of modern drama based on the concept of a person's total alienation from the physical and social environment. These kinds of plays first appeared in the early 1950s in France and then spread throughout Western Europe and the United States.

The idea of ​​the absurdity of the human lot in a hostile or indifferent world was first developed by A. Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus), who was strongly influenced by S. Kierkegaard, F. Kafka and F. M. Dostoevsky. The roots of the theater of the absurd can be identified in the theoretical and practical activities of representatives of such aesthetic movements of the early 20th century as Dadaism and Surrealism, and in clowning, music hall, comedies by Ch. Chaplin.

On the emergence of a new drama started talking after the Paris premiere of "Bald singer" (The Bald Soprano, 1950) Ionesco and "Waiting for Godot" (Waiting for Godot, 1953) Beckett. Characteristically, in "The Bald Singer" the singer herself does not appear, but two married couples are on stage, whose incoherent, clichéd speech reflects the absurdity of a world in which language makes communication more difficult than it facilitates. In Beckett's play, two tramps are waiting on the road for a certain Godot, who never shows up. In a tragicomic atmosphere of loss and alienation, these two anti-heroes recall incoherent fragments from a past life, experiencing an unconscious sense of danger.

The art of the absurd is a modernist trend that seeks to create an absurd world as a reflection of the real world; for this, naturalistic copies of real life lined up randomly without any connection.

The basis of dramaturgy was the destruction of dramatic material. There is no local and historical concreteness in the plays. The action of a significant part of the plays of the theater of the absurd takes place in small rooms, rooms, apartments, completely isolated from the outside world. The temporal sequence of events is destroyed. So, in Ionesco's play "The Bald Singer" (1949), 4 years after death, the corpse turns out to be warm, and they bury it six months after death. Two acts of the play "Waiting for Godot" (1952) are separated by a night, and "perhaps - 50 years." The characters themselves do not know this.

The lack of historical concreteness and temporary chaos are complemented by a violation of the logic in the dialogues. The dialogue is reduced, outside the partner. The characters don't hear each other.

The very name of the plays "The Bald Singer" is also absurd: in this "anti-drama" the bald singer not only does not appear, but is not even mentioned.

They shared with existentialism the idea of ​​the world as chaos, any collision of a person with the world gives rise to a conflict, distrust of communication.

They bring the principle to artistic expression - they show the absurd by means of the absurd.

The absurdists borrowed nonsense and a combination of the incompatible from the surrealists and transferred these techniques to the stage. With scrupulous accuracy, S. Dali wrote Venus de Milo on one of his paintings. With less care, he depicts the boxes located on her torso. Each of the details is similar and intelligible. The combination of the torso of Venus with drawers deprives the picture of any logic.

Part of the proposals are in an absurd combination.

The theater of the absurd wanted to show the real world.

A person in the theater of the absurd is incapable of action. The heroes of works of art of the absurd cannot complete a single action, are unable to carry out a single idea.

Personalities in the plays are leveled, devoid of individuality, similar to mechanisms. Often the heroes of the plays have the same names, according to the figures of the theater of the absurd, people are indistinguishable from each other.

Ridiculous characters act as a hero, they do not know anything about the world and about themselves, declassed elements, or bourgeois, there are no heroes who have ideals and see the meaning of life. People are doomed to exist in an incomprehensible and unchanging world of chaos and absurdity.

In an effort to emphasize the atmosphere of ugliness, pathology that surrounds a person, Beckett depicts anti-aestheticism, the insanity of life in his plays. In order to disgust readers and viewers to the heroes of the play "Waiting for Gordo", Beckett insistently repeats that one of them "stinks at the mouth" and the other "stinks feet".

Numerous plays of the theater of the absurd in the first decade (1949-1958) are determined not by the plot of the works, but by the general atmosphere of idealism and chaos recreated on the stage.

The term "Theater of the Absurd" is introduced by Esslin in the essay of the same name: it was he who saw the similarity between the absurdist philosophy of Camus expressed in The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebellious Man and the plays of Ionesco, Beckett, Adamov and Genet.

Ionesco on the theater of the absurd

“It seems to me that half of the theatrical works created before us are absurd to the extent that, for example, it is comic; after all, comedy is absurd. And it seems to me that the progenitor of this theater, its great ancestor, could be Shakespeare, who makes his hero to say: "The world is a story told by an idiot, full of noise and fury, devoid of any meaning and meaning. "It can probably be said that the theater of the absurd dates back to even more distant times and that Oedipus was also an absurd character, since what happened to him was absurd, but with one difference: Oedipus broke laws unconsciously and was punished for breaking them. But laws and norms existed. Even if they were broken. In our theater, the characters seem to what they do not cling to, and if I may quote myself, then the old people in my play "Chairs" in a world without laws and norms, without rules and transcendental concepts. I wanted to show the same thing in a more cheerful spirit in a play like " Bald singer", for example.

It seems to me that the word "absurd" is too strong: it is impossible to call anything absurd if there is no clear idea of ​​what is not absurd, if you do not know the meaning of what is not absurd. But I can argue that the characters in "Chairs" were looking for a meaning that they did not find, they were looking for the law, they were looking for the highest form of behavior, they were looking for something that can not be called otherwise than divinity.

The theater of the absurd was also the theater of struggle - and that is exactly what it was for me - against the bourgeois theater, which he sometimes parodied, and against the realistic theater. I have maintained and continue to maintain that reality is not realistic, and I have criticized and fought against the realistic, social realist, Brechtian theater. I have already said that realism is not reality, that realism is a theatrical school that treats reality in a certain way, just like romanticism or surrealism. In the bourgeois theater, I did not like that it was engaged in trifles: business, economics, politics, adultery, entertainment in the Pascalian sense of the word. It can probably be said that the theater of adultery in the 19th and early 20th centuries originates from Racine, with the only huge difference that in Racine people died from adultery, he killed. And for post-Rasinov authors, this is nothing more than a trifle. Another drawback of the realistic theater is that it is ideological, that is, to some extent a deceitful, dishonest theater. Not only because it is not known what reality is, not only because not a single person of science is able to say what “real” means, but also because the realistic author sets himself the task of proving something, recruiting people, spectators , readers on behalf of an ideology in which the author wants to convince us, but which does not become any more true from this. Every realistic theater is a fraudulent theater, even and especially if the author is sincere. Genuine sincerity comes from the farthest, from the depths of the irrational, the unconscious. Talking about oneself is much more convincing and truthful than talking about others, than drawing people into always controversial political associations. When I talk about myself, I'm talking about everyone. A real poet does not lie, does not dissemble, does not want to recruit anyone, because a genuine poet does not deceive, but invents, and this is completely different.

Characters without metaphysical roots, perhaps in search of a forgotten center, a point of support that lies outside them. Beckett wrote about the same thing, more coldly, perhaps more clairvoyantly. We wanted to bring to the stage and show the audience the very existential existence of a person in its fullness, integrity, in its deep tragedy, its fate, that is, awareness of the absurdity of the world. The same story "told by an idiot"

Esslin on the theater of the absurd

"It is worth emphasizing that the playwrights whose plays are considered under the general title of "the theater of the absurd" do not represent any self-proclaimed or self-sufficient school. On the contrary, each of these writers is a person who considers himself lonely, outsider, circumcised and isolated from the world, existing in his own sphere. Each of them has his own idea of ​​form and content; their roots, origins, experience. If they are also understandable and, despite everything, have in common with others, this is due to the fact that their work is a true mirror, reflecting anxieties, feelings and thoughts of an important hypostasis of the life of the modern West.

A distinctive feature of this trend is that, rejected by past centuries, considered unnecessary and discredited, our century has swept aside as cheap and childish illusions. The decline of religion was masked until the end of World War II by a surrogate belief in progress, nationalism and other totalitarian delusions. All of this was shattered by the war. In 1942, Albert Camus coolly asked why, if life has lost its meaning, a person no longer sees a way out in suicide.

The feeling of metaphysical suffering and the absurdity of the human lot in general terms is the theme of the plays by Beckett, Adamov, Ionesco, Genet [...]. But this is not the only theme of the theater of the absurd. Such a perception of the meaninglessness of life, the rejection of the devaluation of ideals, purity, purposefulness is the theme of the plays by Giraudou, Anouilh, Salacre, Sartre and, of course, Camus. But these playwrights essentially differ from the playwrights of the absurd in their sense of the irrationalism of the human condition in a very clear and logically reasoned form. The theater of the absurd seeks to express the meaninglessness of life and the impossibility of a rational approach to it by an open rejection of the rational schemes of discursive ideas. While Sartre or Camus put new content into old forms, the theater of the absurd takes a step forward in an effort to achieve a unity of basic ideas and forms of expression. In a sense, in the theater of Sartre and Camus, artistic expression is not adequate to their philosophy, different from the way the theater of the absurd resorts.

The theater of the absurd strives for a radical devaluation of language: poetry must be born from the concrete material images of the stage itself. In this concept, the element of language plays an important but subordinate role, but what happens on and off the stage often contradicts the words that the characters say. [...]

The theater of the absurd is part of the "anti-literary" movement of our time, expressed in abstract painting, which abandoned the "literary" elements in the paintings; in the "new French novel" based on the subject image and refusing empathy and anthropomorphism.

Esslin on Beckett's "Waiting for Godot"

"Beckett's plays require a careful approach in order to avoid the pitfalls that simplify their meaning. This does not mean that we cannot undertake a thorough study, isolating the series of images and themes, trying to understand their structural basis. Results will be easier to achieve by following the author's idea, knowing what can be obtained, if not answers to his questions, then at least understand the questions he asks.

"Waiting for Godot" has no plot; a static situation is being investigated. "Nothing happens, no one comes, no one leaves, it's scary."

On a country road, near a tree, two old tramps Vladimir and Estragon are waiting. At the beginning of the first act - an open situation. At the end of the first act, they are informed that Monsieur Godot, whom they believe they are to meet, cannot come, but he will definitely come tomorrow. The second act repeats this situation. The same boy comes and reports the same thing.

There is an element of crude, grassroots humor in the play, characteristic of the music hall or circus tradition: Estragon loses his trousers; a gag with three hats stretched out for a whole episode, which the tramps put on, then take off, then pass to each other, creating an endless confusion, and the abundance of this confusion causes laughter. The author of a talented dissertation on Beckett, Niklaus Gessner, lists about forty-five remarks indicating that one of the characters is losing the vertical position that symbolizes human dignity.

Many ingenious attempts have been made to establish the etymology of the name Godot, to find out whether Beckett's intention was conscious or unconscious to make him the object of Vladimir and Estragon's search. It can be assumed that Godot is a weakened form of God, a diminutive name similar to Pierre - Pierrot, Charles - Charlot plus an association with the image of Charlie Chaplin, his little man, who is called Charlot in France; his bowler hat is worn by all four characters in the play.

Whether Godot means the intervention of supernatural forces, or whether he symbolizes the mythical basis of being, and his arrival is expected to change the situation, or whether he combines both, in any case, his role is secondary. The theme of the play is not Godot, but the act of waiting as a characteristic aspect of the human condition. Throughout life, we are waiting for something, and Godot is the object of our expectation, whether it be an event or a thing, or a person, or death. Moreover, in the act of waiting, the flow of time is felt in its purest, most visual form. If we are active, then we tend to forget about the passage of time, not paying attention to it, but if we are passive, then we are faced with the action of time. As Beckett writes in a study of Proust: "This is not an escape from hours and days. Not from tomorrow, not from yesterday, because yesterday we were deformed or deformed by us. ... Yesterday is not a milestone that we have passed, but a sign on the beaten track of years, our hopeless fate, heavy and dangerous, it sits inside us ... We are not only more tired of each yesterday, we become different and by no means more desperate than we were. The run of time confronts us with the main problem of being: the nature of our "I", a constantly changing subject in time, which is in perpetual motion, and therefore is always beyond our control. "Man can perceive reality only as a retrospective hypothesis. A slow, dull, monochrome process of transfusion into a vessel containing the fluid of the past time, multicolored, driven by the phenomenon of this time, is constantly going on in him."

Expectation is the recognition by experience of the action of time, which is constantly changing. In addition, since nothing really happens, the passage of time is just an illusion. The incessant energy of time speaks against itself, it is aimless and therefore ineffective and meaningless. The more things change, the more they stay the same. And this is the terrifying immutability of the world. "The tears of the world are a constant value. If someone starts crying, it means that somewhere someone has stopped crying." One day is like another, and we die as if we were never born. Pozzo speaks about this in the last monologue-explosion: “How much can you scoff, asking questions about the damned time? .. It’s not enough for you that ... every day is like another, one fine day he was numb, and another fine day I went blind, and such a beautiful day will come when we all go deaf, and on some beautiful day we were born, and the day will come and we will die, and there will be another day, exactly the same, and after it another, the same ... They give birth right on the graves : only the day will dawn, and now it is already night again.

Soon Vladimir agrees with this: "They give birth in agony right on the graves. And below, in the pit, the gravedigger is already preparing his shovel."

When Beckett was asked what the theme of "Waiting for Godot" was, he sometimes quoted Blessed Augustine: "Augustine has a wonderful saying. I would like to quote it in Latin. It sounds better in Latin than in English: thieves was saved. Do not take into account that the other was condemned to eternal torment.” Sometimes Beckett added: "I am interested in some ideas, even if I do not believe in them ... This saying has an amazing image. It affects"

A characteristic feature of the play is the suggestion that the best way out of the vagabonds' situation - and they say this - is to prefer suicide to the expectation of Godot. "We thought about it when the world was young, in the nineties. ... Join hands and jump off the Eiffel Tower among the first. Then we were still quite respectable. 60 But now it's too late, they won't even let us in there." Committing suicide is their favorite solution, impracticable due to their incompetence and lack of tools for suicide. The fact that suicide fails every time, Vladimir and Estragon explain by expectation or feign this expectation. "I wish I knew what he would propose. Then we would know whether to do it or not." The hope of salvation may simply be a way to escape the suffering and pain that contemplation of the human condition creates. This is an amazing parallel between the existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and the creative intuition of Beckett, who never consciously expressed existentialist views. If for Beckett, as for Sartre, the moral obligation of a person is to face life, realizing that the essence of being is nothing, and freedom and the need to constantly create oneself make one choice after another, then Godot, in the terminology Sartre, may well personify "bad faith": "The first act of bad faith is to evade what is impossible to evade, to evade evasion."

Despite possible parallels, we should not go far in trying to attribute Beckett to any philosophical school. The singularity and splendor of "Waiting for Godot" is that the play involves many interpretations from the positions of philosophical, religious, psychological. In addition, this is a poem about time, the fragility and mystery of life, the paradox of variability and stability, necessity and absurdity"

Esslin on "Rhino" Ionesco

"The world recognition of Ionesco, as the central figure of the theater of the absurd, began with the "Rhino".

The hero of "Rhino" is Beranger.

Beranger in Rhinoceros works in the production department of a publishing house of legal literature, as Ionesco worked at one time. He is in love with his colleague Mademoiselle Desi. Her name is reminiscent of Beranger's first love, Dani. He has a friend Jean. On Sunday morning they saw, or think they saw, one or perhaps two rhinoceroses rushing along the main street of the town. Gradually, rhinos are becoming more and more. The inhabitants have contracted a mysterious disease, rhinocerosity, which not only turns them into rhinos, but gives rise to a desire to turn into these strong, aggressive and thick-skinned animals. In the finale in the entire city, only Berenger and Desi remain human. But Desi cannot resist the temptation to become like everyone else. Berenger is left alone; the last man, he courageously declares that he will not capitulate.

Rhinoceros is known to reflect the feelings of Ionesco before leaving Romania in 1938, when more and more of his acquaintances joined the fascist Iron Guard movement. He said: “As always, I indulged in my thoughts. All my life I remembered how I was stunned by the possibility of manipulating opinion, its instantaneous evolution, the power of its infection, turning into an epidemic. People allow themselves to suddenly accept a new religion, doctrine, surrender to fanaticism. … At such moments, we become witnesses of a real mental mutation.I don’t know if you noticed, if people don’t share your views, and you stop understanding them, and they stop understanding you, you get the impression of confronting monsters, for example rhinoceroses.Sincerity and cruelty are mixed in them. They will kill you with a clear conscience. Over the past quarter century, history has shown that people not only became like rhinos, but turned into them."

At the premiere in Düsseldorf at the theater Schauspielhaus the German public immediately recognized the arguments of the characters, who felt that they should follow the general trend: the audience heard or used such arguments themselves at a time when the German people could not resist the temptations of Hitler. Some characters in the play wished to become thick-skinned: they admired the brutal strength and simplicity that arose when too weak human feelings were suppressed. Others did so because it would be possible to turn rhinos back into humans if one could learn to understand their way of thinking. She also a group, especially Desi, just couldn't afford to be different from the majority. Rhinocerosity is not only a disease called totalitarianism, characteristic of the right and left, but also the desire for conformism. "Rhinoceros" is a witty play. It is full of brilliant effects; it differs from most of Ionesco's plays in that it gives the impression of being understandable. London Times posted a review titled "Ionesco's play is clear to everyone."

But is it really that easy to understand? Bernard Francuel in CahiersduCollé gedePataphysique noticed in a witty article that Beranger's final confession and his previous reflections on the superiority of humans over rhinoceroses are strangely reminiscent of cries of "Long live the white race!" in the plays "The Future in Eggs" and "Victims of Duty". If we examine the logical train of thought of Beranger in a conversation with a friend Dudar, we will see that he defends his desire to remain a man with the same outbursts instinctive feelings that he condemns in rhinos, and when he notices his mistake, he only corrects himself, replacing "instinct" with intuition. Moreover, at the very end, Beranger bitterly regrets that it seems to him that he cannot turn into a rhinoceros! His latest bold declaration of faith in humanism is nothing more than a fox's contempt for grapes that are too green. Berenger's farcical and tragicomic challenge is far from genuine heroism, and the final meaning of the play is not as clear as some critics have thought. The play shows the absurdity of the challenge to the same extent as the absurdity of conformism, the tragedy of an individualist who cannot merge with a happy mass of people who are not as sensitive as he is, the feeling of an artist who feels like a pariah. These are the themes of Kafka and Thomas Mann. To a certain extent, Beranger's final situation is reminiscent of the victim of another metamorphosis - Gregor Samsa in Kafka's Metamorphosis. Samza turns into a huge insect, the rest do not change; Beranger's last man finds himself in the same situation as Samsa, for now it is normal to turn into a rhinoceros, to remain a man is monstrous. In the final monologue, Berenger regrets that he has white soft skin and dreams of rough, dark green, shell-like skin. "Only I am one monster, only me!" he screams until he finally decides to remain human.

Rhinoceros is a pamphlet against conformism and insensitivity (the latter is definitely present in the play), a mockery of the individualist, who only makes a sacrifice of necessity, emphasizing the superiority of his finely organized artistic nature. Where the play goes beyond propagandistic simplification, it turns into proof of the fatal complexity and absurdity of human life. And only a performance that reveals the duality of Beranger's position in the finale can give a complete picture of the play."

Story

The term "theater of the absurd" was first used by theater critic Martin Esslin ( Martin Esslin), who wrote a book with that title in 1962. Esslin saw in certain works the artistic embodiment of Albert Camus' philosophy of the meaninglessness of life at its core, which he illustrated in his book The Myth of Sisyphus. It is believed that the theater of the absurd is rooted in the philosophy of Dadaism, poetry from non-existent words and avant-garde art. Despite sharp criticism, the genre gained popularity after World War II, which pointed to the significant uncertainty of human life. The introduced term was also criticized, there were attempts to redefine it as "anti-theater" and "new theater". According to Esslin, the absurdist theatrical movement was based on the productions of four playwrights - Eugene Ionesco ( Eugene Ionesco), Samuel Beckett ( Samuel Beckett), Jean Genet ( Jean Genet) and Arthur Adamov ( Arthur Adamov), but he emphasized that each of these authors had their own unique technique that went beyond the term "absurdity". The following group of writers is often distinguished - Tom Stoppard ( Tom Stoppard), Friedrich Dürrenmatt ( Friedrich Durrenmatt), Fernando Arrabal ( Fernando Arrabal), Harold Pinter ( Harold Pinter), Edward Albee ( Edward Albee) and Jean Tardieu ( Jean Tardieu).

The movement was inspired by Alfred Jarry ( Alfred Jarry), Luigi Pirandello ( Luigi Pirandello), Stanislav Vitkevich ( Stanislaw Witkiewicz), Guillaume Apollinaire ( Guillaume Apollinaire), surrealists and many others.

The "theater of the absurd" (or "new theatre") movement apparently originated in Paris as an avant-garde phenomenon associated with small theaters in the Latin Quarter, and after some time gained worldwide recognition.

In practice, the theater of the absurd denies realistic characters, situations, and all other relevant theatrical devices. Time and place are uncertain and changeable, even the simplest causal relationships are destroyed. Senseless intrigues, repetitive dialogues and aimless chatter, dramatic inconsistency of actions - everything is subordinated to one goal: to create a fabulous, and maybe even terrible, mood.

New York Untitled Theater Company No. 61 (Untitled Theater Company #61) announced the creation of a "modern theater of the absurd", consisting of new productions in this genre and arrangements of classic stories by new directors. Other initiatives include Festival of works by Eugene Ionesco.

“The traditions of the French theater of the absurd in Russian drama exist on a rare worthy example. You can mention Mikhail Volokhov. But the philosophy of the absurd is absent in Russia to this day, so it has to be created.

Theater of the Absurd in Russia

The main ideas of the theater of the absurd were developed by members of the OBERIU group back in the 30s of the 20th century, that is, several decades before a similar trend appeared in Western European literature. In particular, one of the founders of the Russian theater of the absurd was Alexander Vvedensky, who wrote the plays "Minin and Pozharsky" (1926), "God is all around" (1930-1931), "Kupriyanov and Natasha" (1931), "Yolka at the Ivanovs" (1939), etc. In addition, other OBERIUTs worked in a similar genre, for example, Daniil Kharms.

Representatives

• Adamov, Arthur (Arthur Adamov)
• Beckett, Samuel
• Albee, Edward
• Ionesco, Eugene
• Havel, Vaclav
• Pinter, Harold
• Stoppard, Tom (Tom Stoppard)
• Mrozhek, Slawomir (Slawomir Mrozek)
• Genet, Jean (Jean Genet)
• Camus, Albert
• Carroll, Lewis

Notes

Literature

• Martin Esslin, The Theater of the Absurd (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1962)
• Martin Esslin, Absurd Drama (Penguin, 1965)
• E.D. Galtsova, Surrealism and theater. To the question of the theatrical aesthetics of French surrealism (Moscow: RGGU, 2012)

Links

• Scandalous playwright Mikhail Volokhov about swearing and the philosophy of the theater of the absurd

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This term has other meanings, see Theater of the Absurd (meanings). Theater of the Absurd Genre Arthouse Director Maxim Apryatin Producer Dima Bilan ... Wikipedia

This term has other meanings, see Theater of the Absurd (meanings). Theater of the Absurd ... Wikipedia

The Theater of the Absurd The Theater of the Absurd is an absurd movement in Western European drama and theater. Theater of the Absurd is a music album released by the rock group Piknik in 2010. Theater of the Absurd 2011 film directed and screenwriter Maxim Apryatin ... ... Wikipedia

The first attempts to organize a state public theater in St. Petersburg were made at the beginning of the 18th century. In 1711 16 there were public performances in the theater, organized by the sister of Peter I, Tsarevna Natalia Alekseevna. In 1723 24 in St. Petersburg gave ... St. Petersburg (encyclopedia)

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• theater of the absurd. Performances on the political stage, Gubenko Nikolai Nikolaevich, Nikolai Nikolaevich Gubenko - a famous actor, director, screenwriter, head of the theater `Commonwealth of Taganka Actors` - is also known for his social and political activities. He was... Category:

from lat. absurdus - ridiculous, incongruous, meaningless) A direction in theatrical art that arose in France in the early 50s. 20th century Its founders were the Romanian E. Ionesco and the Irishman S. Becket, who lived in France. Significant effect on A.t. rendered existentialist (see: existentialism) philosophical and aesthetic ideas of J.-P. Sartre and K. Camus about the absurdity, the absurdity of existence, choice, borderline situation, alienation, loneliness, death. In the language of the theater, the concept of existence found its expression in the alogism of the words and actions of the characters, their lack of communication skills, spatio-temporal shifts, the absence of cause-and-effect relationships, and the methods of shock aesthetics (see: Shock) associated with the aestheticization of the ugly. Another source of A.t. - aesthetics of surrealism: the opposition between the real, the ordinary and the surreal - the imaginary, the dreamy, the hallucinatory, the supernatural, the mystical - is removed; naturalistic details fit into an unrealistic context. Significant impact on A.t. also had the work of F. Kafka, A. Jarry. In A.t. the absurd is represented as absurd, devoid of meaning and logical connections, incomprehensible to the mind. Man appears as a timeless abstraction, a creature doomed to search for a non-existent meaning of life. His chaotic actions among the ruins (in the physical and metaphysical sense of the word) are marked by repetition, monotony, aimlessness; their mechanical-automatic nature is associated with a weakening of the plot, psychologism, inhibition of the stage tempo-rhythm, monologism (with a formal dialogic structure), openness of the finals (non-fmito). Favorite tricks of A.T. - parody, grotesque; the most typical genre is tragic farce. Absurdist intellectual plays do not lend themselves to naturalistic, realistic, psychological directorial interpretations. They gravitate toward the le-zidrama (reading drama) genre. The path to their stage decisions is the creation of an illusory atmosphere of an intellectual game, a linguistic tournament, whose prize is an artistic paradox. Receptions A.t. playwrights A. Adamov and J. Genet (France), G. Pinter and N. Simpson (England), F. Arrabal (Spain). Ideas A.T. found an organic development in the aesthetics of theatrical postmodernism. Thus, in the concept of "theater without a performance" by C. Bene (Italy), aimed at demystifying the classical "theatre-performance", the key to postmodern deconstruction is the absurdist message, bypassing the text and traditional action. Unlike existentialism, postmodernism interprets absurdity not as the absence of meaning, but as an implicit, inaudible meaning: nonsense produces an excess of meaning, not nonsense (J. Deleuze). Aesthetics A.t. It also has a retrospective application: it is often resorted to when interpreting the classics. Just as the work of Dostoevsky, which influenced existentialism, caused a wave of existentialist interpretations of his novels, the works of the classical paradoxists of the world theater provoke absurdist interpretations. The most significant among them are associated with the names of W. Shakespeare (existentialist-absurdist interpretation of "Hamlet" by I. Bergman) and A.P. Chekhov (performances by P. Brook, S. Solovyov). Through the prism of A.T. the work of futurists, OBERIUTs and some other figures of the Russian avant-garde is considered. In the modern cultural situation, A.t. acquired a nominal value associated with the phenomenon of "shifted" artistic consciousness - a conscious "nonsense" of non-classics. Lit .: As always, about the avant-garde. Anthology of the French theatrical avant-garde. M., 1992; French Literature 1945-1990. M., 1995; The?tre fran?ais anjour?hu?. l, 2. M., 1969. H. M..

CHAPTER EIGHT. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ABSURD

When Zarathustra came down from the mountains to preach, he met a holy hermit. The old man urged him to stay in the forest with him instead of going to the cities to the people. When Zarathustra asked the hermit what he was doing all alone, he replied; “I compose songs and sing them; composing songs, I laugh, cry, mumble; so I glorify God."

Zarathustra refused the elder's offer and continued on his way. But, left alone, he turned to his heart: “Is it possible? The holy elder in the woods has not yet heard that God is dead!”1

Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra was first published in 1883. Since then, the number of people for whom God has died has increased immeasurably, and mankind has learned the bitter lesson of lies and the evil of vulgar surrogates who have replaced God. After two catastrophic wars, there have been many people trying to accept the message of Zarathustra in search of a way to confront with dignity the universe, which has deprived them of the core and living purpose that they once had, and the world, which has taken away the common, integrating basis, which has shifted, become useless, absurd.

The theater of the absurd is one of the manifestations of these searches. He boldly faces the fact that the world, having lost its main interpretation and meaning, can no longer be expressed in artistic forms based on standards and concepts that have lost their effectiveness; it makes it possible to know the laws of life and the true values ​​that follow from an accurate understanding of the purpose of man in the universe.

Expressing the tragic sense of loss of certainty, the theater of the absurd paradoxically affirms the closeness to the religious quest of the age. He makes an attempt, no matter how timid and hypothetical it may be, to sing, laugh, cry and mutter, if not for the glory of the Lord, whose name, according to Adamov, has long been humiliated by appeals that have lost all meaning, then at least in the name of the search for a Saint. This is an attempt to help a person realize the true reality of the conditions of his existence, to return to him the lost sense of surprise and primordial suffering, to shock him with going beyond the limits of a banal, mechanical, self-satisfied, unworthy existence, that is, to give knowledge. God died mainly to the day-to-day masses, having lost all contact with the main phenomena and mysteries of life, with which in the past people kept in touch through the living ritual of religion, which made them part of a real community, and not just atoms of a divided society.

The theater of the absurd is a continuous attempt by the true artists of our time to break through the blank wall of self-satisfaction and automatism and restore knowledge of the real conditions of life. As such, the theater of the absurd has a double purpose and presents it to the public with a double absurdity.

One of its aspects is a cruel, satirical critique of the absurdity of life without understanding and awareness of reality. This indifference and meaninglessness of a semi-conscious existence, the sensation of “people hiding inhumanity”, is described by Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus: “At certain hours of clarity of mind, the mechanical gestures of people, their meaningless pantomime, appear in all their stupidity. A man is talking on the phone behind a glass partition; he is not heard, but his trivial gestures are visible. The question arises, why does he live? This feeling of dissatisfaction, generated by our own inhumanity, this is the abyss into which we fall when we see ourselves, this is “nausea”, as a modern writer defines this state, and absurdity”2.

This experience is reflected in the plays “Bald Singer” and “Chairs” by Ionesco, “Parodies” by Adamov, “Deafening Strum” by N. F. Simpson through a satirical, parodic aspect, due to which social criticism is manifested, the desire to pillory an inauthentic, limited society . This is an accessible and therefore the most recognized message of the theater of the absurd, but not its most essential and significant feature.

More importantly, following the satirical exposure of the absurdity of inauthentic ways of life, the theater of the absurd peers without fear into the deep layers of the absurdity of a world in which the decline of religion has deprived man of confidence. When it is difficult to accept absolute, true value systems and religious revelations, it is necessary to look to the ultimate reality. Therefore, playwrights of the absurd consider a person facing a choice as the main situation of his existence, outside the random circumstances of social position or historical context. In the plays of Beckett and Gelber, man is turned to face time and waits between birth and death; in Vian's play, a man runs away from death, climbing the floors higher and higher; passively fading in anticipation of death at Buzzati; rebels against her, opposes her and admits her in Ionesco's "The Disinterested Killer"; in Genet's plays, hopelessly entangled in mirages of illusions, in mirrors reflecting mirrors, a person has forever closed himself off from reality; in Manuel de Pedrolo's parabola, a man broke free only to be deprived of it; in Pinter's plays, he tries to find a modest place in the cold and darkness surrounding him; in Arrabal, a person struggles in vain with morality, inaccessible to his understanding; in Adamov's early plays, he is faced with an inevitable dilemma, and efforts to resolve it lead to the initial situation - passive idleness, absolute uselessness and death. In most of these plays, the person is always alone, imprisoned in his individualism and unable to understand his neighbor.

Concerned about the basic realities of life, preoccupied with relatively few fundamental problems of life and death, issues of isolation and communication, the theater of the absurd can manifest itself grotesquely, superficially and irreverently, returning to the original, religious function of the theater - opposing man to the realm of myth and religious truth. Like ancient Greek tragedy, medieval mysteries and baroque allegories, the theater of the absurd aims to tell the public about the fragile, mysterious position of man in the universe.

The difference between Greek tragedy or comedy, between medieval mysteries, baroque auto sacramental and the theater of the absurd in that in past epochs the basic realities were well-known and universally recognized metaphysical systems; the theater of the absurd states the absence of any generally accepted comprehensive system of values. Therefore, his goals are more modest: he does not pretend to explain the ways of God to man. He can only express fear or ridicule the intuitive knowledge of a person based on realities comprehended from his own experience - the result of immersion in the depths of his personality, dreams, fantasies and nightmares.

If previous attempts to confront a person with the conditions of existence embodied a clear, generally accepted version of the truth, then the theater of the absurd speaks of the most intimate and personal knowledge of the situation, based on the intuition of the poet, feeling of being vision of the world. This amounts to content theater of the absurd and defines it shape, which, of necessity, must be conditional, different from the "realistic" theater of our time.

The theater of the absurd does not provide information, does not pose problems, does not deal with the fate of characters outside the spiritual world of the author, does not comment on theses or controversial ideological positions, events, fates or adventures of characters. All this is replaced by a re-creation of the basic situation of the personality. It is a theater of the situation, different from the theater of successive events, so it uses concrete images, avoiding arguments and discursive speech. Without trying to convey a sense of being, he does not explore and does not solve the problems of norms or morality.

Since the theater of the absurd projects a purely authorial world, there is no need for objectively created characters, a clash of opposing characters, an exploration of human passions compressed in conflict, and therefore the theater of the absurd is not theatrical in the generally accepted sense. He does not tell stories to teach a moral or social lesson. This is the goal of the narrative, "epic" theater of Brecht. In the plays of the theater of the absurd, action does not mean the plot, but the transmission of poetic images. One example is "Waiting for Godot". The circumstances of the play do not build either the plot or the plot; they are an image of Beckett's intuitive knowledge of what is in life nothing ever happens. A play is a complex poetic image, a puzzling model of secondary images and themes interwoven like the themes of a musical composition, not as in “well-made plays” - for the sake of development, but in order to fully develop a complex idea of ​​​​the main static situation in the minds of the audience . One can draw an analogy between the theater of the absurd and a symbolist or Imagist poem, which also represents a model of images and associations in a mutually interdependent structure.

If Brecht's epic theater tries to expand the space of the drama by introducing narrative, epic elements, then the theater of the absurd strives for the concentration and depth of the poetic image. Of course, dramatic, narrative and lyrical elements are present in any drama. The theater of Brecht, like the theater of Shakespeare, expresses lyrical elements in the form of umbrellas; even the didactics of Ibsen and Shaw have plenty of purely poetic moments. However, the theater of the absurd, having abandoned psychology, the subtlety of verbal images and the plot in the traditional sense, creates a poetic image of immeasurably greater expressiveness. If events in a play with a linear plot unfold in time, then in a dramatic form, representing a concentrated poetic image, the length of the play in time does not matter. Expressed at the level of intuition the image can theoretically be comprehended in an instant and only because it is physically unthinkable to imagine such a complex image in an instant, its comprehension is stretched for some time. Therefore, the formal structure of such a play is only a way of expressing a complex total image, revealing it in sequentially interacting elements.

The desire to communicate a total sense of being is an attempt to present a more truthful picture of reality as such. This is the reality as perceived by the individual. The theater of the absurd is the last link in the chain of evolutions begun by naturalism. The idealistic Platonic belief in immutable substances (the artist must create ideal forms in their pure form, not existing in nature) was crushed by the philosophy of Locke and Kant, which bases reality on perception and the internal structure of consciousness. Art has become an imitation of external nature. However, the imitation did not satisfy, which led to the next step - the study of the reality of consciousness. Ibsen and Strindberg are an example of this evolution. Exploring reality throughout his life, James Joyce began with detailed realistic stories and ended with the grandiosely complex structure of Finnegans Wake. The work of the playwrights of the absurd continues this evolution. Each play is an answer to the questions: “What does a person feel when confronting a situation? Under what conditions does a person look at the world without fear? What does it mean to be yourself? The answer is given in general, it is a complex and contradictory poetic image - in a separate play or in a series of complementary images in creativity playwright.

Comprehending the world in a single moment, we simultaneously receive the whole complex of various sensations and feelings. We can understand this momentary image by breaking it down into different elements, which will then be sequentially connected into a sentence or a series of sentences. In order to modify perception into conceptual terms, into logical thought and language, we perform an operation analogous to a scanner that analyzes a picture in a television camera in tables of isolated impulses. The poetic image, with its indeterminacy and simultaneous embodiment of numerous elements of sensory association, is one of the ways in which we can, although not in full, represent the reality of intuitive knowledge about the world.

The extremely eccentric German philosopher Ludwig Klages, almost completely unknown in English-speaking countries, which is unfair, is the author of the psychology of perception, based on the realization that our feelings give rise to images made up of many simultaneous impressions, which are then analyzed and disintegrated in the process of translation into conceptual thinking. . For Klages, this is part of the treacherous effect of consciousness on the creative element, described in his philosophical magnum opus "Intellect as the antagonist of the spirit" (Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele). Although a misleading attempt to turn this confrontation into a cosmic battle of creative and analytical principles is possible, nevertheless, the basic idea that conceptual and discursive thought deprives of expressiveness the inexpressible fullness of the comprehended image is fruitful as an illustration of the problem of creating poetic imagery.

In an effort to convey the basic set of perception, intuitive knowledge of being, we can find the key to the devaluation and disintegration of language in the theater of the absurd. For if this is a translation of the general intuitive knowledge of being into a logical and temporal sequence of conceptual thinking, depriving it of its original complexity and poetic truth, then the artist must look for ways to provoke the impact of discursive speech and logic. This is the main difference between poetry and prose: poetry is indefinite, associative and tends to approach the non-conceptual language of music. The theater of the absurd, creating poetry with the concrete imagery of the scene, goes beyond pure poetry, freeing itself from logical thinking and language. The stage, having many expressive means, allows the simultaneous use of visual elements, movement, light, language and is adapted to the transmission of complex images that combine the counterpoint interaction of all these elements.

In "literary" theater, language is the predominant component. In anti-literary, circus or music hall theater, language is relegated to a subordinate role. The theater of the absurd gained the freedom to use language as such, sometimes dominant, sometimes subordinate, as a component of multidimensional poetic imagery. Using the language of the stage in contrast with the action, reducing it to meaningless patter or abandoning discursive logic for the poetic logic of association or assonance, the theater of the absurd opened up new possibilities for the stage.

By devaluing the language, the theater keeps pace with the times. George Steiner, in two radio broadcasts, "The Renunciation of the Word," emphasized that the devaluation of language is characteristic not only of the evolving modern poetry or philosophy, but even more so of modern mathematics and the natural sciences. According to Steiner, "It is by no means a paradox that much of reality begins now outside language 3. ... Many areas of meaningful experience now belong to non-verbal languages, such as mathematics, formula and logical symbolism. Another type of experiment is part of an "anti-language", such as non-objective art or atonal music. The scope of the word has shrunk."4 Moreover, the rejection of language as the best tool in the system of notation in mathematics and symbolic logic goes hand in hand with a clear weakening of faith in its practical application. Language is more and more contrary to reality. The general trend of thought, which has a huge influence on the concepts now common, confirms this trend.

An example of this is Marxism. Between well-known social relations and social reality behind them, there is a difference. From an objective point of view, the employer is an exploiter and therefore an enemy of the working class. He can sincerely tell the worker that he sympathizes with his views, but objectively his words are meaningless. However, no matter how much sympathy for the worker he declares, he remains his enemy. Language in this case manifests itself purely subjectively and therefore is devoid of objective reality.

This trend extends to modern fundamental psychology and psychoanalysis. Today, even children know how great is the gulf between the conscious and the expressed thought, the psychological reality behind the spoken words. The son speaks of love and respect for the father, and objectively this is beyond doubt, but in fact, under this lies the Oedipus complex of hatred for the father. He may not understand it, but he means the opposite of what he said.

Relativity, devaluation and criticism of language are the main trends of modern philosophy, and this is illustrated by Wittgenstein's conclusions in his last period of life. He believed that a philosopher should strive to free thought from accepted norms and grammatical rules, erroneous from the point of view of logic.

"mental image held us captive. We could not get rid of it, since it is part of our language resource, and it seems that the language invariably repeats it to us. … At what stage did we come to the fact that only destruction is interesting; what exactly is significant and important? (This can be likened to structures that are nothing but ruins.) But we have only destroyed the houses of cards and are now clearing the foundation of the language on which they rise. Subjecting the language to harsh criticism, the followers of Wittgenstein declared many formulations to be devoid of objective meaning. Wittgenstein's "word games" have much in common with the theater of the absurd.

But even more significant are the tendencies of Marxism, psychology and philosophy in our time, the ordinary person in the everyday world. Subjected to an incessant onslaught of press chatter and advertising, he is increasingly skeptical of the language that attacks him. Citizens of totalitarian countries are well aware that much of the information they receive is ambiguous and biased. They perfectly master the art of reading between the lines; when it is necessary to unravel, language hides more than it reveals. In the West, the press and pulpit sermons are full of euphemisms. Advertising, through the constant use of superlatives, contributes to the devaluation of the language, so that most of the words on advertising posters and color pages of magazines are meaningless, as is television advertising composed by rhymes. A yawning chasm opened up between language and reality.

In addition to the general devaluation of the language, increasing specialization has led to the fact that the exchange of thoughts between representatives of different fields has become impossible due to the emergence of professional jargon. Ionesco speaks about this, summarizing and expanding the views of Antonin Artaud: “Since our knowledge is separated from life, our culture no longer restrains us, or restrains a few, forming a “social” context in which we are not a single whole. It is necessary to re-enter into contact with culture, to make it alive again.

To achieve this, we must first kill in ourselves "reverence for written in black and white" ... destroy language to such an extent that it can restore contact with the "absolute", or, as I would prefer to put it, "with complex reality"; it is necessary to push people to see themselves again as they are”6.

Therefore, in the theater of the absurd, the connection between people often appears as a complete breakdown. This is just a satirical exaggeration. In the era of mass communication, language rebelled. It is necessary to return its inherent function - to express authentic content, and not to hide it. But this will be possible if respect for the spoken or written word as a mode of communication returns, and the ossified clichés that dominate thinking are replaced by a living language suitable for this, as in Edward Lear's limericks or Humpty Dumpty. This can be achieved if departures from logic and discursive language are recognized and accepted, and poetic language is used.

The way in which the playwrights of the absurd criticize our disintegrated society, mostly instinctively and unintentionally, is based on the sudden confrontation of the audience against a grotesquely exaggerated and distorted picture of a world gone insane. This shock therapy achieves an effect called estrangement in Brecht's theory, but in his theater it is ineffective. The audience is forbidden to identify with the characters (the centuries-old and effective method of traditional theater), replacing identification with an impartial, critical position. Identifying with the hero, we automatically accept his point of view, look at the world in which he exists, his eyes, experience his emotions. From the standpoint of didactic, social theater, Brecht argues that the centuries-honored psychological bond between actor and audience must be broken. How can you influence the public to critically perceived the actions of the characters, if she is ready to accept their point of view? Brecht, in his Marxist period, tried to offer several techniques to break this spell. But he never fully achieved his goal. The audience, despite zongs, slogans, abstract decorations and other forbidden devices, continues to identify with Brecht's extraordinary, attractive characters and often evades the critical position that the playwright imposes on them. The old magic of the theater is strong; the craving for identification that lies at the heart of human nature is staggering. Seeing Mother Courage mourning her son, we cannot suppress sympathy for her grief and we cannot condemn her for the fact that the war is her livelihood, and she is interested in her, despite the fact that the war inevitably destroys her children. The more attractive the stage character, the stronger the identification process.

On the other hand, in the theater of the absurd, the audience encounters characters whose motives and actions are mostly incomprehensible. It is almost impossible to identify with such characters; the more mysterious their actions and character, the less human they are and the more difficult it is to see the world through their eyes. Characters that the public does not want to identify with are always comical. Recognizing ourselves in a clown losing his pants, we would feel embarrassed and ashamed. But if the character's grotesqueness interferes with our desire for identification, we laugh at the fact that he is in an unpleasant situation and look at him from the side, without putting ourselves in his place. The inexplicable motives of actions and the often incomprehensible, mysterious nature of the actions of the characters of the theater of the absurd interfere with identification, and despite the gloomy, cruel and bitter content, the theater of the absurd is a comic theater. He goes beyond genres - both comedy and tragedy, combining laughter with horror.

By its very nature, it cannot lead to impartial social criticism, the goal pursued by Brecht. The theater of the absurd does not offer the public a set of social facts and political guidelines. It gives a picture of a disintegrated world that has lost its unifying fundamental principle, meaning and purpose, and has turned into an absurd universe. What should the public do about this puzzling encounter with an alien world that has lost its sane norms, literally turned insane?

Here we meet with the main problem - the aesthetic impact and evidence of the theater of the absurd. An empirical fact is that, contrary to most generally accepted rules of drama, the theater of the absurd is effective; convention of the absurd works. But why does it work? Much of the answer lies in the above-mentioned nature of comic and farcical effects. The misfortunes of the characters, which we look at with a cold, critical, non-identical look, funny. In the circus, the music hall, and the theater, silly characters doing somewhat insane things are always the target of mocking laughter. Such comic types usually arose within rational limits and were set off by positive characters with whom the public could identify. In the theater of the absurd, all actions are mysterious, unmotivated and, at first glance, meaningless.

In Brecht's theater, the effect of estrangement is to activate the critical, intellectual attitude of the audience. The theater of the absurd affects a deeper level of consciousness of the public. It activates psychological effectiveness, relieves hidden fears and repressed aggressions. Showing the audience a picture of the collapse, he awakens the integrating forces in the minds of the audience.

In an excellent essay on Beckett, Eva Metman writes: “In an age of religious hermeticity, the human being in the dramatic arts was protected, guided, and sometimes hit by archetypal forces. In other times, art depicted the visible, material world, in which a person realizes his destiny, passing through the invisible, non-material world. In modern drama, a new, third, opportunity has formed - to understand the surrounding reality. A person is shown not in a world consisting of divine or demonic forces, but one on one with these forces. This new form of drama displaces familiar landmarks from the audience, creating a vacuum between the play and the audience, forcing them to experience it personally, awakening in themselves the knowledge of archetypal forces, or reorient their ego, or experience both.

One does not have to be a follower of Jung or resort to his categories to see the effectiveness of this diagnosis. In everyday life, people are faced with a world that has fallen apart, that has lost its purpose; not fully realizing this situation, its destructive impact on the individual, in the theater of the absurd they are faced with an enlarged image of the schizophrenic universe. “The vacuum between the stage and the viewer becomes so unbearable that the viewer has no other alternative than not to recognize and reject this world, or to plunge into the mystery of plays that are far from his goals and perception of life”8. As soon as the viewer is immersed in the mystery of the play, he is forced to come to terms with his existence. The scene provides him with several incoherent sources of clues, which he tries to apply to an image filled with many meanings. He must make creative efforts to interpret many meanings for the sake of the integrity of the perception of the image. "The connection of times has broken"; The audience of the era of the theater of the absurd must recognize this, or rather, see that the world has turned into an absurdity, and, recognizing this, it will take the first step towards reconciliation with reality. The madness of life is that side by side there are a huge number of irreconcilable beliefs and positions: on the one hand, generally accepted morality, on the other, advertising; contradiction of science and religion; a loudly proclaimed struggle for common interests, while in reality narrow, selfish goals are pursued. On every newspaper page, the average person encounters conflicting patterns of values. It is not surprising that the art of this era shows symptoms of schizophrenia. As Jung notes in an essay on Joyce's Ulysses, this does not mean that the artist is a schizophrenic: “The clinical picture of schizophrenia is only an analogy based on the fact that the schizophrenic represents reality as completely alien to him or, on the contrary, considers himself an outsider in it. . In the modern artist, this is not the result of a disease, but the impact of our era.”9 An attempt to understand the meaning of a meaningless and incoherent process, the realization of the fact that the modern world has lost its single basis - the source of mental disorder and impasse, and therefore it is not just an intellectual exercise; it has a therapeutic effect. Greek tragedy helped viewers to understand their abandonment in the world, but also gave examples of heroic opposition to the inexorable force of fate and the will of the gods, which led to catharsis and helped to better understand their time. Such is the nature of the hangman's humor, black humor in literature, and the theater of the absurd is the latest example of this. He expresses the anxiety, in unison with time, generated by the destroyed illusions through liberating laughter, giving awareness of the fundamental absurdity of the universe. More restless and tempting is the indulgence of illusions; much more useful therapeutic effect; this is the reason for the success of Waiting for Godot at San Quentin Prison. The performance helped the prisoners, who realized the tragicomic situation of the tramps, to understand the futility of waiting for a miracle. They got the opportunity to laugh at the tramps and at themselves.

Since the theater of the absurd deals with psychological reality, expressed in images that visibly project the state of consciousness, fears, dreams, nightmares and internal conflicts of the author, the dramatic tension (dramatic tension) in such plays is fundamentally different from the anxiety caused by the expectation (suspense) theater in which characters are revealed through a narrative plot. In such a theater, exposition, conflict, denouement reflect the perception of an explicable world, the assessment of which is based on a recognizable and in most cases acceptable model of objective reality, which allows one to draw conclusions about the purpose and norms of behavior that led to this conflict.

This has a direct bearing on even the lightest type of parlor comedy, in which the action develops on the conscious deprivation of freedom of evaluation of the world. The sole purpose of the characters is for all the young men to connect with their girls. Even the most pessimistic tragedies of naturalism and expressionism ended with the public going home with a clearly formulated idea, or philosophy: the problem was not easily solved, but the final conclusion was clearly formulated. This point of view, as already mentioned in the preface, is also applicable to the theater of Sartre and Camus, based on the idea of ​​the absurdity of life. Even such plays as “Behind Closed Doors”, “The Devil and the Lord God” (“Lucifer and God”) by Sartre and “Caligula” by Camus give the audience the opportunity to go home having received an intellectual, philosophical lesson.

The theater of the absurd, based not on intellectual concepts, but on poetic images, does not pose an intellectual problem in the exposition, does not give a clear resolution that would become a lesson or instruction.

Many of his plays have a circular structure: they end the way they started. Some are built on an increase in the tension of the initial situation. Since the theater of the absurd does not accept the ideas of motivated behavior and static character, it is impossible to have anxiety caused by expectation ( suspension) arising in other dramatic settings in anticipation of solving the dramatic equation based on the problem stated in the opening scenes. In the most dramatic moments, the audience asks itself the question, what will happen next?

In the theater of the absurd, the audience is confronted with actions that lack motivation, with constantly changing characters and events that often defy rational explanation. But even then, the public may wonder what will happen next? It might happen here All. The question is not what happens next, but what going on Now. What is the meaning of the play?

This is another, but no less effective, kind of dramatic tense expectation ( suspension). Instead of finished solutions the viewer is asked to formulate questions, which he must have if he wants to come closer to understanding the play. Unlike other types of drama, in which the action moves from point A to point B, in the theater of the absurd, total action gradually creates a complex pattern. poetic image plays. Suspense arises as a result of waiting in the process of gradual formation models, allowing you to see the image as a whole. Only when this image appears in its entirety - after the curtain falls - the viewer will be able to begin explore not so much its meaning as its structure, texture and impact.

A new kind of tension suspension represents a higher level of dramatic tension ( tension) and gives the audience an aesthetic experience that is more satisfying because it is more stimulating. Of course, the poetic merits of the great dramas of Shakespeare, Ibsen and Chekhov have always produced a complex fusion of poetic associations and meanings; no matter how simple the motivations may seem at first glance, the author's intuition with which the characters are created, the many stages through which the action passes, the complex poetic language are combined into an image that goes beyond the simple, rational perception of the action or its resolution. Suspense"Hamlet" or "Three Sisters" is being created Not only anxious anticipation than run out these plays. Their eternal novelty and strength lies in the inexhaustible, ambiguous expression of the poetic image of the human condition. In Hamlet we ask what is happening? The answer is clear: it's not just a dynastic conflict or a series of murders and duels. We are faced with a projection of psychological reality and archetypes shrouded in eternal mystery.

This element for the playwrights of the absurd is the essence of dramatic convention, and, without claiming the heights of the greatest artists, they use it thanks to intuition and talent. If Ionesco, following the tradition he continues, focuses on the scenes of loneliness and degradation of Richard II, it is because they contain wonderful poetic images of the human lot: “Everyone dies alone; when a person is doomed to suffer, no values ​​​​mean anything - Shakespeare tells me about this ... Perhaps Shakespeare wanted to tell the story of Richard II: if he just told it, another person's story she wouldn't touch me. But the prison of Richard II goes beyond historical fact. Its invisible walls are still standing, and many philosophies and ideologies have perished forever. What Shakespeare depicts remains because it is the language of living evidence, not a discursive illustration. This is the theater of an ever-living presence; certainly, it corresponds to the obligatory structure of tragic truth, stage reality. ... This is the essence of the archetypes and content of the theater, theatrical language”10.

The language of stage images contains truth beyond discursive thought, and this truth is the foundation on which the theater of the absurd creates a new dramatic situation that subjugates all other laws of the stage. If the theater of the absurd focuses on stage imagery, on the projection of a vision of the world that arises from the depths of the subconscious; if he neglects the rational building blocks of theater—the polished construction of the plot and plot of a well-made play, the imitation of reality comparable to reality itself, the skillful motivation of character—is it possible to analyze rationally by applying the criteria of objective criticism? If this is a purely subjective expression of the author's vision and emotions, how can the public separate true, deeply felt art from fake?

These old questions arise at every stage in the development of modern art and literature. These are pressing questions, and it is impossible not to see outdated methods of professional criticism applied to new phenomena; art critics do not recognize the "classical beauty" in the merciless canvases of Picasso, theater critics reject Ionesco and Beckett, because their characters lack credibility, they cross the boundaries of the good manners of salon comedies.

But art is subjective, and the criteria by which success or failure is measured are always worked out. a posteriori(data-based) analysis of established and empirically successful work. The phenomenon of the theater of the absurd is not the result of a conscious search for a collectively created program or theory (as, for example, romanticism), but a response of independent authors devoid of demonstrativeness to the tendencies of the general development of the thought of the transitional period. It is necessary to analyze their work and find ideas and ways of expressing their thoughts in order to understand the artistic goal. Once we get an idea of ​​their general idea and purpose, effective evaluation criteria will emerge.

If in this book we have come to the conclusion that the theater of the absurd embodies specific poetic images in order to convey to the public the confusion that the author feels when faced with the conditions of existence, we must evaluate their success or failure on the basis of achieving the goal - the fusion of poetry and the grotesque, tragicomic fear . Evaluation, in turn, depends on the quality and strength of poetic images.

How, however, to evaluate the poetic image or the complex structure of such images? Of course, as in the criticism of poetry, there will always be an element of subjective taste or personal response to certain associations, but in general, objective criteria for evaluation are possible. These criteria are based on the suggestiveness, originality of the idea and the psychological truth of the images; their depth and versatility; the degree of skill with which they are translated into stage conditions. The superiority of such complex images as the tramps waiting for Godot or the chairs in Ionesco's masterpiece over the children's toys of early Dada theater is as obvious as the superiority of Eliot's Four Quartets over the nasty rhymes of Christmas cards. Their ambiguity, depth, ingenuity and power of craftsmanship are just as obvious. Adamov rightly puts his play "Professor Tarann" above "Findings": the image in "Professor Tarann" arose from a genuine dream; in the second play, he was artificially created. In this case, the criterion is psychological truth; without acknowledgment of the author, based on the analysis of the imagery of the plays, we come to the same conclusion: psychological truth and, therefore, efficiency are more inherent in "Professor Tarann". Compared to the piece "Findings", it is more organic, not as symmetrical and mechanically constructed, and much deeper and more logical.

Criteria such as depth, originality of conception, psychological truth cannot be reduced to quantity alone, but they are no less objective than the criteria by which a Rembrandt is distinguished from a Mannerist, or a Pope poem from a Settle poem.

There is an effective criterion for evaluating works within the category of theater of the absurd. It is more difficult to determine the best of them in the general hierarchy of dramatic art; this is an impossible task. Is Raphael taller than Brueghel, and Miró taller than Murillo? Despite the futility of this dispute, as well as the dispute about abstract art and the theater of the absurd, whether they are a product of fantasy, whether they have the right to be called art, because they lack the ease and originality in creating a group portrait or a well-made play, the dispute is fruitful and refutes some of the existing misconceptions.

By no means not true that it is much more difficult to create a rational plot than to evoke the irrational imagery of the plays of the theater of the absurd, nor is it entirely fair that a child can draw in the same way as Klee or Picasso. There is a great difference between the effective absurdity of painting and drama and the mere absurdity. This will be confirmed by all who have seriously taken up the creation of an absurd poem or play. Genuine reality always recedes before the experience and observation of an artist who invents a realistic plot or draws from life - he knows the characters, he was an eyewitness to events. Complete freedom of invention and talent create images and situations, which until now had no analogues in nature, make it possible to create a world whose logic and content will be immediately perceived by the public. Ordinary combinations of absurd situations turn into ordinary banality. Anyone who tries to confine himself to a simple recording of what has come to mind will understand that the imaginary flights of spontaneous fictions will never leave the ground, they can only give rise to incoherent fragments of reality that can never be whole. The unsuccessful opuses of the theater of the absurd, as well as abstract painting, are distinguished by the primitive transfer of fragments of reality from where they are drawn. Their creators failed to transform negative quality absence logic or certainty into positive the quality of creating a new artistic world, revealed by the personality of the creator.

This is one of the advantages of the theater of the absurd. Only when an idea arises at the deepest levels of emotion born of experience, when obsessive ideas, dreams and images are reflected in the author’s subconscious, does true art arise, instantly recognizable, not subjective, but common to all truth, the poet’s vision, which is different from illusions that mentally lead to despair. The depth and unity of the picture is immediately recognized without deception. Neither the perfection of technique nor the intellect, as in representational art or drama, can hide the poverty of the inner basis and cause no doubt.

It is possible to write a well-made problem play or a witty sitcom with hard work and a sufficiently high degree of ingenuity or intelligence. But in most cases, in order to create an effective image of the conditions of human existence, an exceptional depth of feelings, a strength of emotions and a genuine, sincere creative imagination, in short, inspiration, are required. There is a widespread vulgar misconception that the hierarchy of artistic success depends on the difficulty of creation or the diligence of the author. Arguing about a place on a scale of values ​​is useless, but if such a scale existed, the place on it would depend only on the quality, versatility, depth of imagination and the artist's ability to penetrate the essence, regardless of whether decades of hard work have been spent or whether the work was created in a fit of inspiration. .

The measure of the success of the theater of the absurd is not only in the originality of the idea, the complexity of poetic images and the art of their combination, but also, more importantly, in reality and veracity the imagination with which the images are embodied. Despite the complete freedom of fiction and spontaneity, the goal of the theater of the absurd is to convey life experience and an uncompromising, honest, fearless depiction of the real conditions of human existence.

The debate between Kenneth Tynan and Ionesco can serve as a starting point to resolve the contradiction between "realist" theater and the theater of the absurd. Kenneth Tynan rightly stated what he expects from an artist truth. However, Ionesco, claiming to be interested in his own vision does not refute Tynan's postulate. Ionesco also strives to tell the truth, but obtained by an intuitive way of knowing the conditions of human existence. An accurate study of psychological inner reality is no less truthful than a study of external, objective reality. The reality of the imagination is more immediate and closer to the essence of experience than the recreation of objective reality. Is Van Gogh's sunflower less real than the sunflower in the pages of a botany textbook? Van Gogh's painting has more truth than scientific illustration, even if his sunflower has the wrong number of petals.

The authenticity of imagination and sensation is as real as external facts that can be calculated. There is no direct contradiction between the requirements for the theater of objective reality and the theater of subjective reality. They are both realistic, but they look at different aspects of reality in all its complexity.

The same debate dotted the t's over the seeming conflict between the ideological, politically oriented theater and the seemingly apolitical, anti-ideological theater of the absurd. For program play (a piece a these) equally important are the subject and the arguments and circumstances presented for the death penalty, illustrating this case. If circumstances are truthful the play is persuasive. If they are not convincing, rigged, the play is doomed to failure. But the test of a play's veracity must ultimately be the truth. experiences characters involved in the action. Then the test for veracity and realism will coincide with inner reality. The play may have accurate statistics and details, but the dramatic truth depends on the author's ability to express the victim's fear of death, the social authenticity of a difficult situation. Then the test for veracity depends on the creative possibilities, the poetic imagination of the author. This is the criterion by which we will be able to evaluate the subjective creations of the theater as a whole, not connected with social realities.

There is no contradiction between realistic and non-realistic, objective and subjective theatre; it exists between poetic vision, poetic truth and imaginary reality on the one hand, and dry, mechanistic, lifeless, unpoetic writing on the other. A piece a these the great poet Brecht - the truth and at the same time the study of personal nightmares, as in the "Chairs" by Ionesco. The paradox is that a Brecht play in which the poetic truth exceeds the political thesis can be politically less effective than Ionesco's play, which ridicules the absurdity of the conversations of a well-mannered bourgeois society.

The theater of the absurd touches the religious realm, considering the conditions of human existence not for the sake of intellectual explanation, but for the transmission of metaphysical truth through living experience. Between knowledge translated into the conceptual realm, and his expression as living reality is a big difference. The highest achievement of all great religions is not only that they carry vast knowledge and can transmit it in the form of cosmological information or ethical norms, but also that they put their teachings into practice through a ritual filled with poetic imagery. This opportunity has been lost, but meanwhile it answers the deep inner need of all people, and the decline of religion gives rise to a sense of scarcity in our civilization. In any case, we are approaching a coherent philosophy in the scientific method, but we need a method that would make it a living reality, the true center of human life. Therefore, the theater, where people come to get a poetic or artistic impression, can be entrusted with the function of the church, replacing it with them. Totalitarian systems place great value on theater because they need to turn doctrines into living, experiential reality for followers.

This new phenomenon in theatrical art made itself known in the early 1950s. plays The Bald Singer (1950) and Waiting for Godot (1952). The strange works of Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett caused a heated discussion among critics and audiences. The "absurdists" were accused of extreme pessimism and the destruction of all the canons of the theater. However, already in the late 1960s. Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Waiting for Godot, and Ionesco's Thirst for Hunger was at the Comédie Francaise. Why has the attitude of society changed in the theater of the absurd?

It must be said that in the second half of the XX century. in their tragically pessimistic vision of the world, the representatives of the theater of the absurd were not alone. In the philosophical works of Sartre, in the literary experiments of Faulkner, Kafka, Camus, the idea sounded with intense expression that modern man, having lost faith in God, in the omnipotence of science or in progress, “lost” the meaning of life, lives in anticipation of death. In Faulkner's words, "life is not a movement, but a monotonous repetition of the same movements." Such a “discovery” makes people feel confused and alienated, aware of the “absurdity” of their existence.

Thus, the ideas of the representatives of the new theatrical direction fully corresponded to the “spirit of the times”. At first, critics and viewers were “confused” by the deliberate combination of obvious tragedy with equally frank irony, which permeated the dramas of Beckett, Ionesco, Gennet, Pinter, Arrabal. In addition, it seemed that the plays of the “absurdists” could not be staged: they lacked the usual “full-fledged” images, there was neither an intelligible plot, nor an intelligible conflict, and the words lined up in almost meaningless chains of phrases. These works were not at all suitable for realistic theater. But when they were taken up by experimental directors, it became clear that the dramaturgy of the absurd provides the richest opportunities for original stage solutions. Theatrical conventionality revealed in the plays of the “absurdists” a plurality of semantic layers, from the most tragic to quite life-affirming, because in life despair and hope are always there.

And onesco

Eugene Ionesco

French playwright of Romanian origin, one of the founders of the aesthetic trend of absurdism, a recognized classic of the theatrical avant-garde of the 20th century. Member of the French Academy.

Ionesco himself (b. 1912) has repeatedly emphasized that he expresses an extremely tragic worldview. His plays “predict” the transformation of a whole community of people into rhinoceroses (“Rhinoceros” - 1960), tell about murderers wandering among us (“Disinterested Killer” - 1957), depict unsafe aliens from anti-worlds (“air pedestrian” - 1963).

The playwright seeks to expose the danger of a conformist consciousness that absolutely depersonalizes a person. In order to achieve his artistic goal, Ionesco decisively destroys the seemingly harmonious logic of our thinking, parodying it. In the comedy The Bald Singer, he reproduces the “automation”, “cliché” of the worldview of his characters, creates a phantasmagoria performance, exposing the absurdity of trivial phrases and banal judgments.

The famous director Peter Brook was one of the first to appreciate the stage possibilities of the dramaturgy of the absurd.

In "Victims of Duty" (1953) we are talking about people who consider themselves obliged to fulfill any requirements of the state, to be by all means loyal citizens. The play is based on the method of transforming images, changing the masks of characters. This method of external transformation of a person, which, however, does not change his essence, but only exposes his inner emptiness, is one of Ionesco's favorite in the work. He also uses it in one of his most famous plays, Chairs (1952). The heroine of the play, Semiramide, appears either as the old man's wife, or as his mother, while at the same time the old man himself is either a man, or a soldier, or “the marshal of this house,” or an orphan. The people portrayed by Ionesco are victims of the utilitarian ends of life; they cannot go beyond the narrow circle of routine, blind from birth, crippled by clichés. The lack of spiritual aspirations makes them prisoners who do not want to be released.

Beckett

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)

“To Beckett we owe perhaps the most impressive and most original dramaturgical works of our time.” Peter Brook

Irish writer, poet and playwright. Representative of modernism in literature. One of the founders of the theater of the absurd. He gained worldwide fame as the author of the play "Waiting for Godot", one of the most significant works of world drama of the 20th century. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969. Having an Irish passport, he lived most of his life in Paris, writing in English and French.

Beckett, unlike Ionesco, is interested in a different range of issues. The main theme of his work is loneliness. Beckett's heroes need communication, kindred spirits, but due to their own structure (or the structure of the world?), they are deprived of these necessary things. All their lives they peer into their inner world, trying to correlate it with the surrounding reality, but their conclusions are inconsolable, and their existence is futile.

This is how Vladimir and Estragon appear before us - the characters of the tragicomedy “Waiting for Godot”. It was not by chance that they found themselves on a deserted road, the only sign of which is a withered tree. This is a symbol of the alienation of heroes from life. They try to remember the past, but the memories are vague and inconsistent, they try to understand what led them to complete loneliness, but they are not able to do this. The dialogue and accompanying actions are built like a sad clowning. Vladimir and Estragon are surrounded by endless space, a huge world, but it seems to be closed for the heroes.

Beckett also uses the symbol of isolation in such plays as "The Game" (1954), "Happy Days" (1961), "Krapp's Last Tape" (1957), thus revealing the incompatibility of his characters with the environment. “No one comes, nothing happens” - this phrase from “Waiting for Godot” becomes the leitmotif of Beckett's dramaturgy, which tells about a man who has lost his life orientation, turned almost into a phantom. The playwright's characters are themselves not entirely sure that they still exist. Noteworthy is the order of Vladimir and Estragon, which they give to the boy sent by Godot: "Tell him that you saw us."

Unlike Ionesco or Becket, Mrozek prefers an almost realistic manner of constructing dramatic action.

An important feature of Beckett's artistic method is the combination of poetry with banality. The playwright either elevates the viewer to the heights of the struggle of the human spirit, or plunges him into the abyss of the base, and sometimes even grossly physiological.

Beckett's plays are always mysterious: they require sophisticated stage interpretations, so the playwright embodied some of his works on stage personally. So, the mini-tragedy "The Sound of Footsteps" was staged by the author in West Berlin. A special place in Beckett's work is occupied by the miniature "Decoupling" (1982), written specifically for the famous actor J.-L. Barro. In it, an assistant director prepares a performer for a role in one of Beckett's plays. He never utters a word.

Women

Genet: “I never reproduced life, but life itself involuntarily gave birth in me or highlighted, if they already existed in my soul, images that I then tried to convey through characters or events.”

Jean Genet (1910-1986). French writer, poet and playwright, whose work is controversial. The main characters of his works were thieves, murderers, prostitutes, pimps, smugglers and other inhabitants of the social bottom.

The most extravagant of the representatives of the theater of the absurd is Jean Genet. As a ten-year-old boy, he was convicted of theft and ended up in a penal colony, where, in his own words, he enthusiastically joined the world of vice and crime. Later he served in the Foreign Legion and wandered around the ports of Europe. In 1942 he went to prison, where he wrote the book “Our Lady of the Flowers”; in 1948 he was sentenced to life exile in a colony. However, many cultural figures interceded for the writer, already well-known by that time, and he was pardoned.

Genet's main task is to challenge bourgeois society, which he fully managed to achieve with talented, but scandalously outrageous plays, which include The Maids (1947), Balcony (1956), Negroes (1958) and Screens ” (1961).

J.-P. Sartre supported the "absurdists", wrote reviews of their plays, he owns a book about the life and work of Genet.

The Maids is one of Genet's most famous dramatic works. It tells how the sisters Solange and Claire, rescued by their mistress, decide to take possession of her property by poisoning the mistress. To this end, they slander her friend, trying to get him to jail. But Monsieur is unexpectedly released, and the treacherous sisters are exposed. Although the plot "suggests" a melodramatic development of the action, "The Maids" are built in a completely different, grotesque way. In the absence of Madame, the sisters take turns portraying her, so transforming into their mistress that they forget about themselves, temporarily freeing themselves from the unenviable role that they play in reality. This is a play about life, in which dream and reality collide in an ugly form. Genet's dramaturgy, as a rule, presents completely fictitious, incredible events in which the real world familiar to us is bizarrely modified, distorted, which allows the author to express his attitude towards it.

A rrabal and Pinter

Fernando Arrabal

Spanish screenwriter, playwright, film director, actor, novelist and poet. Lives in France since 1955.

The Spanish playwright Fernando Arrabal (b. 1932) was fond of Calderón and Brecht in his youth and was greatly influenced by these authors. His first play "Picnic" was staged in 1959 in Paris. The characters of the play Sapo and Sepo are soldiers of two warring armies. Sapo takes Sepo prisoner. It turns out that the soldiers have a lot in common.

Both do not want to kill anyone, both are ignorant of military affairs, and participation in battles has not separated them from the habits of civilian life: one knits a sweater in between skirmishes, and the other makes rag flowers. Ultimately, the heroes come to the conclusion that all other soldiers also do not want to fight, and they must say this out loud and go home. Inspired, they dance to cheerful music, but at that moment the machine-gun fire knocks them down, making it impossible to fulfill their plan. The absurdity of the play's situation is deepened by the fact that Sapo's parents also act in it, suddenly arriving at the front to visit their son.

Arrabal's work is characterized by the opposition of the deliberate childishness of his heroes to the cruelty of the circumstances in which they have to exist. Among the most famous works of the playwright are The Two Executioners (1956), The First Communion (1966), The Garden of Delight (1969), The Inquisition (1982).

Harold Pinter

English playwright, poet, director, actor, public figure. One of the most influential British playwrights of his time. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2005.

The artistic method of Harold Pinter (1930 - 2008), the author of the plays "Birthday" (1957), "The Silent Waiter" (1957), "The Watchman" (1960), "Landscape" (1969), is close to expressionism. His dark tragicomedies are populated by enigmatic characters whose conversations parody ordinary forms of human communication. The plot, the construction of the plays is in conflict with their apparent plausibility. Looking at the bourgeois world as if through a magnifying glass, Pinter describes in a peculiar way the suffering of people who find themselves on the sidelines of life.

Source - Great illustrated ENCYCLOPEDIA

Theater of the Absurd - Ionesco, Beckett, Genet, Arrabal and Pinter updated: August 31, 2017 by: website