The Influence of Existentialism on the Theatre of the Absurd
Transcript of The Influence of Existentialism on the Theatre of the Absurd
The influence of existentialism on the Theatre of the Absurd
After two devastating world wars in the beginning of the twentieth century
existentialism became a defining philosophy of the theatre of the time,
namely the Theatre of the Absurd.
Frederick Nietzsche's claim “God is dead” (referring to man's relationship
with God) triggered the minds of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus to
explore what it really means to exist.
Sartre called freedom a curse. He believed the human race did not ask for
it and that no facts and events have eternal meaning, but the meaning
each individual attaches to it. Each individual has to find his or her own
truth in the world and must accept the consequences of the choices made.
To Albert Camus the modern world (post World War Two) made no sense.
People were isolated and communication became difficult. Camus used the
Myth of Sisyphus to clarify his theory. Sisyphus angered the gods and was
condemned to push a boulder up a hill only to have it rolling down again
once it reached the top. Camus saw the post war society in the same light.
He believed their lives to have been ones of endless repetition with no
significant progression.
These existentialist beliefs are clearly demonstrated in the theatre
movement known as Theatre of the Absurd. Well known playwrights of the
time such as Pirandello, Beckett and Ionesco portrayed this clearly in their
writing.
Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot must be the absurd play best known
today.When first reading the play the language seems senseless and
certain parts, such as Lucky's monologue, appear to be utter gibberish. It
is only when one takes the time to really analyze the monologue that
references to God and the fading away of men and nature is realized. An
audience only hearing the monologue once will have difficulty
understanding these references. Beckett's goal was not so much for his
audience to understand the monologue, but to realize the symbolism. With
no punctuation, repetitive words and no clear structure it reflects on the
lives of the post war society which seemed meaningless.
The second act in Waiting for Godot is very much a repetition of the
first. There is no progression in the lives of the two main characters,
Vladimir and Estragon. They keep on returning to the same place to wait
for Godot who never arrives.
The characters in the Theatre of the Absurd are far from the heroes
theatre audiences were used to. Absurd characters are anti-heroes with
more flaws than virtues. Again, portraying the post war generation.
The typical circular structure of these plays emphasizes the repetitiveness
of life where at the end no progress has been made.
Settings were either cluttered or empty. An empty stage projected the
emptiness of existence while clutter reflected on the unimportant matter
people tried to fill their lives with.
Themes in line with existentialist beliefs cover the hostility of the post war
world. Vladimir and Estragon are treated badly and are mainly ignored or
beaten up. They even sometimes question their own existence. The main
theme in Waiting for Godot is the futility of waiting. They continue to go
back and wait for Godot even though he never arrives.
While the authors portrayed live as senseless and without progression,
their aim was never to provoke negativity but rather to force the audience
to find a way out of the senselessness.
Relationship with Existentialism
The Theatre of the Absurd is commonly associated with Existentialism, and
Existentialism was an influential philosophy in Paris during the rise of the
Theatre of the Absurd; however, to call it Existentialist theatre is
problematic for many reasons. It gained this association partly because it
was named (by Esslin) after the concept of "absurdism" advocated
by Albert Camus, a philosopher commonly called Existentialist though he
frequently resisted that label. Absurdism is most accurately called
Existentialist in the way Franz Kafka's work is labeled Existentialist: it
embodies an aspect of the philosophy though the writer may not be a
committed follower. As Tom Stoppard said in an interview, "I must say I
didn't know what the word 'existential' meant until it was applied to
Rosencrantz. And even now existentialism is not a philosophy I find either
attractive or plausible. But it's certainly true that the play can be
interpreted in existential terms, as well as in other terms."
Many of the Absurdists were contemporaries with Jean-Paul Sartre, the
philosophical spokesman for Existentialism in Paris, but few Absurdists
actually committed to Sartre's own Existentialist philosophy, as expressed
in Being and Nothingness, and many of the Absurdists had a complicated
relationship with him. Sartre praised Genet's plays, stating that for Genet
"Good is only an illusion. Evil is a Nothingness which arises upon the ruins
of Good".
Ionesco, however, hated Sartre bitterly. Ionesco accused Sartre of
supporting Communism but ignoring the atrocities committed by
Communists; he wrote Rhinoceros as a criticism of blind conformity,
whether it be to Nazism or Communism; at the end of the play, one man
remains on Earth resisting transformation into a rhinoceros Sartre
criticized Rhinoceros by questioning: "Why is there one man who resists?
At least we could learn why, but no, we learn not even that. He resists
because he is there". Sartre's criticism highlights a primary difference
between the Theatre of the Absurd and Existentialism: The Theatre of the
Absurd shows the failure of man without recommending a solution. In a
1966 interview, Claude Bonnefoy, comparing the Absurdists to Sartre and
Camus, said to Ionesco, "It seems to me that Beckett, Adamov and
yourself started out less from philosophical reflections or a return to
classical sources, than from first-hand experience and a desire to find a
new theatrical expression that would enable you to render this experience
in all its acuteness and also its immediacy. If Sartre and Camus thought
out these themes, you expressed them in a far more vital contemporary
fashion". Ionesco replied, "I have the feeling that these writers – who are
serious and important -- were talking about absurdity and death, but that
they never really lived these themes, that they did not feel them within
themselves in an almost irrational, visceral way, that all this was not
deeply inscribed in their language. With them it was still rhetoric,
eloquence. With Adamov and Beckett it really is a very naked reality that
is conveyed through the apparent dislocation of language".
In comparison to Sartre's concepts of the function of literature, Samuel
Beckett's primary focus was on the failure of man to overcome
"absurdity"; as James Knowlson says in Damned to Fame, Beckett's work
focuses "on poverty, failure, exile and loss — as he put it, on man as a
'non-knower' and as a 'non-can-er' ." Beckett's own relationship with
Sartre was complicated by a mistake made in the publication of one of his
stories in Sartre's journal Les Temps Modernes. Beckett said, though he
liked Nausea, he generally found the writing style of Sartre
and Heidegger to be "too philosophical" and he considered himself "not a
philosopher".