Entrevista a Eugène Ionesco, Dramaturgo (1981) | Ricardo Rocha — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:05Eugene Ionesco. Today, in memory of the
2. 0:08great master of the stage, we will
3. 0:10bring back from oblivion an interview
4. 0:12we held with him some years ago. First,
5. 0:16a portrait of the theater master,
6. 0:19Eugene Ionesco, a Romanian who has
7. 0:22lived in France for 56 years. The
8. 0:26phrase seems to correspond to a
9. 0:27restrained way of speaking about the
10. 0:29dead. who are occasionally magnified to
11. 0:32excess. But in the case of this
12. 0:35playwright, every praise is deserved,
13. 0:37since, like no one else, he knew how to
14. 0:40be a chronicler of our time; to record,
15. 0:42with efficiency, sarcasm, and charm,
16. 0:44the void brought on by the anonymous
17. 0:46life of cities, the intrinsic
18. 0:48loneliness of living in a crowd, and,
19. 0:50above all, the surrealism of the daily
20. 0:52absurd. Ionesco, in short,
21. 0:56revolutionized contemporary theater
22. 0:58with works as recognized today as The
23. 1:00Bald Soprano, perhaps one of the most
24. 1:02performed plays in theater history, as
25. 1:04in France alone it has reached a run of
26. 1:0725,000 performances. But it was not the
27. 1:11only one to attract the world's
28. 1:13attention and give Ionesco the relevant
29. 1:15place he deserves in theater, since
30. 1:17other works also appear today as
31. 1:19masterpieces of contemporary dramaturgy
32. 1:21, such as The Chairs, a harsh plea
33. 1:23against transcendence, solemnity, and
34. 1:26loneliness. The Lesson, which forced a
35. 1:30revision of pedagogical forms;
36. 1:31Rhinoceros, which is a song to
37. 1:33individual freedom and a protest
38. 1:35against totalitarianism, as well as
39. 1:37some other pieces. However, these were
40. 1:41not his only works, nor was theater his
41. 1:44only means of expression, as he also
42. 1:47wrote a novel. Doctor Honoris Causa
43. 1:51from various universities, among which
44. 1:53New York, Louvain, and Tel Aviv stand
45. 1:55out, he received the Grand Prix for
46. 1:57Theater and the European Prize for
47. 1:58Literature. He was also a Knight of the
48. 2:02Legion of Honor and a member of the
49. 2:03French Academy. We had the privilege of
50. 2:07interviewing him, and today we
51. 2:09rebroadcast the words and gestures of
52. 2:11this exceptional theater artist as a
53. 2:14modest but warm and sincere tribute.
54. 2:21Ionesco is one of the men who has most
55. 2:24influenced the thinking of young people
56. 2:28, especially in the second half of this
57. 2:32century and particularly among those
58. 2:35who have used art as a form of
59. 2:38expression. Mr. Ionesco, with the
60. 2:42perspective of all these years of
61. 2:48Ionesco on perhaps of the absurd
62. 3:07because to talk about the absurd, one
63. 3:14must know the model of what is not
64. 3:18absurd. So, I cannot say of this
65. 3:27theater that it is absurd, nor that it
66. 3:35is not absurd. In any case, it is
67. 3:40called, this theater is called absurd.
68. 3:45This label was given by an English
69. 3:52critic, Martin Esslin, who is a who is
70. 4:02an excellent friend and who was the
71. 4:07first to notice that this theater was
72. 4:14different from the theater usually
73. 4:19played on the world's stages. Uh, he
74. 4:26called it the theater of the absurd
75. 4:28because it was the era when people
76. 4:32talked a lot about the absurd. around
77. 4:361950, we talked about the absurd
78. 4:42regarding Sartre, Bataille, Camus. That
79. 4:49is to say, I believe I understand that
80. 4:53this absurd we speak of is the sign of
81. 5:00the fact that we do not fit into the
82. 5:05world. We have the impression that the
83. 5:12world is not made for us and that we
84. 5:18are not made for the world. For
85. 5:21centuries, revolutions have followed
86. 5:26one another, societies have succeeded
87. 5:31one another after upheavals. Each
88. 5:38revolution has come about to establish
89. 5:46justice, liberty, fraternity, equality
90. 5:56and the revolutionaries only succeeded
91. 6:00in establishing castes that were
92. 6:06super-privileged. in place of justice,
93. 6:10tyranny and vengeance in place of
94. 6:20fraternity, the most intense hatred. At
95. 6:28this moment, after centuries of
96. 6:32revolution, the whole world is in an
97. 6:39indescribable state of irrationality,
98. 6:46of contradiction, of slaughter. I
99. 6:52repeat what I have said several times.
100. 6:58Love one another? That translates into
101. 7:03the facts as distrust one another, kill
102. 7:11one another, devour one another. It is
103. 7:17useless to look for any reasons because
104. 7:22that and for explanations in sociology
105. 7:29or in any other philosophy or even in
106. 7:33theologies is useless. The facts are
107. 7:43there, brutal. And the truth of our
108. 7:51desires is evident in Ionesco, what you
109. 8:01say is brutal, very terrible. If man
110. 8:08does not find his answers in his
111. 8:12reality, then he will find his answers
112. 8:18in fantasy, in philosophy, in religion.
113. 8:27All these paths are personally closed
114. 8:30to me and I believe they are also
115. 8:39closed in truth to everyone. The
116. 8:51imagination or fantasy, as you say,
117. 8:56cannot provide any answer. It can only
118. 9:04show with even more evidence the
119. 9:10inadmissibility of the condition in
120. 9:12which we find ourselves. Moreover, now
121. 9:19it is useless to look for anything at
122. 9:24all in the imagination because the
123. 9:29imagination is surpassed by the by the
124. 9:36atrocious reality. What is the future
125. 9:39then that you see, Ionesco? Is it an
126. 9:45apocalyptic future or do you not
127. 9:48believe man can overcome his state of I
128. 9:54believe we live in a world where the
129. 9:59apocalypse is occurring in its most
130. 10:05brutal form because we have lived in
131. 10:11the apocalypse all the time. But now,
132. 10:16it is reaching its most violent point.
133. 10:27Uh, it was, moreover, predicted and the
134. 10:33reason why I think I can still believe
135. 10:36in religion, it is that it was foreseen
136. 10:45in the gospels and in the Bible uh to
137. 10:54provide an answer to the questions. We
138. 11:02must wait for the end of times. Perhaps
139. 11:07then we will have some kind of answer
140. 11:16unless everything is, as Martine
141. 11:18Nessine said, just absurd and that
142. 11:26perhaps the human adventure has lasted
143. 11:29long enough and it is time for it to
144. 11:35end. place is the place of the smile,
145. 11:51of love
146. 11:53of the good will to solve the problems.
147. 12:00Indeed, it is only charity that can
148. 12:06help to prevent the exploitation of man
149. 12:11by man, the homicides, the idiotic
150. 12:17hegemonies that we see developing at
151. 12:25this moment. Empires replace other
152. 12:30empires
153. 12:34and all empires collapse one after the
154. 12:36other. The empire itself is threatened
155. 12:41with collapse. I do not see a solution
156. 12:50for it. I cannot answer anything else.
157. 12:59Uh and no one can answer, except
158. 13:02perhaps a mystic. But the mystic can
159. 13:09only answer to themselves because the
160. 13:14mystical experience is incommunicable.
161. 13:18It seems to me that you are very modest
162. 13:24and that in the bottom of your heart
163. 13:29there is a great hope for the future
164. 13:37but I do not know. Finally, he touched
165. 13:44on the topic of theater. it is the
166. 13:50future of theater especially thinking
167. 13:54about the social responsibility of it
168. 14:02is better that writers and artists do
169. 14:09not concern themselves with social
170. 14:11responsibility that they especially do
171. 14:16not try to save the world. Those who
172. 14:20want to save the world have made it
173. 14:25even more violent. The usefulness of
174. 14:34the work of art and its uselessness.
175. 14:40But the uselessness is indispensable.
176. 14:46It must teach people again to forget
177. 14:52the excess of politics. Mr. Ionesco, I
178. 15:00have a terrible suspicion that the
179. 15:05smile, the laughter is the hope that is
180. 15:12kept in the bottom of the heart. of it
181. 15:21laughter as an instrument to live a
182. 15:26life you understand he will start again
183. 15:40of course is not in this world. The
184. 15:47creation is perhaps a failure and he
185. 15:53hopes for another manifestation of
186. 15:58divinity, another universe, another
187. 16:05planet, that is not enough, but another
188. 16:10universe, another creation.