One for all - against all

We are like the intellectual Beranger from the Rhinos, who has pistols in his hands, but he is so devoted to humanism that he allows himself to be stabbed.

Eugene Ionesco, one of the founders of the theater of the absurd, wrote his first play at the age of 11. It was about the fact that the French language is the most beautiful in the world, and French soldiers are the most fearless in the world, and if they ever were beaten, it was only through the fault of traitor allies. It was all called "For the Motherland!" But having moved with his family to Romania, Eugene realized that his opus is universal for any military, and translated it into Romanian, causing a lot of enthusiasm.

Since the famous play by Ionesco "Chairs" was released in 1952, 60 years ago, it would be a sin for us not to take this opportunity and not talk about the work of the playwright, who got to the bottom of things: his theater rips off the husks of myths from vulgar and vile reality, drowns out the drums of vulgar lies, tries to to disperse the "masses" on separate human personalities. The absurdity of Ionesco is not absurd at all, but an eternal ridicule of conformism. He is anti-totalitarian, which is why the author found himself, unlike his fellow avant-garde Sartre, in very cool relations with the USSR and China.

If somewhere there was absurdity, then it was not in the work of Ionesco, but in his life. According to the playwright, it was not success that created his fame, but the failures of his plays and the rumor about these failures. The absurdity got to the date of his life. Until the writer's death (in 1994), it was believed that he was born in 1912. And then it turned out that he was three years older.

And there was no absurdity in the work. There was complete clarity. Therefore, the production of "Rhinoceros" was banned both in the USSR and in Maoist China. His "Rhinos", written in 1959, crept along the last thawed patches of the "thaw" to the pages of "Foreign Literature" in 1965. In 1969, Natalya Tikhomirova slipped a tiny piece of The Bald Singer into her French textbook, and Valery Belyakovich, in the basement Theater in the South-West, which had no professional status, in 1982 staged the magnificent Rhinos, where Viktor Avilov played Beranger , the last person. And a little book from the library of this magazine, the collection "Bald Singer", came out with us only in 1990.

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Ionesco rips off the husks of myths from the vulgar and vile reality, drowns out the drums of vulgar lies. His absurdity is not absurd at all, but an eternal ridicule of conformism

”

Somewhere we have already seen the police from Victim of Duty (1953), who start with the most innocent questions, but for some reason ask to give them a tie, belt, shoelaces. Maybe it was their colleagues who came to Ksenia Sobchak? And doesn't it remind you of something in The Shining Quarter from The Disinterested Killer (1959), where the Killer is active at night and where only a member of the Administration can survive? And here are the elections in the same play "The Disinterested Killer". Mother Glot, with a flag depicting a white goose on a green background, wants to lead the state. “We will not conquer foreign countries, we will send an army there to liberate them! And you'll get free soup!" Any statist party has such a program.

But immortalized the name of Ionesco, of course, "Rhinos". Self-confident, happy, powerful, brainless, muscle-flexing, the same. There are more and more of them, and a herd of inhabitants chooses strength, begins to turn into them. Only Beranger remains, frail, drinking, bald, wavering. Human. And how we all look like this intellectual who has pistols in his hands, but he thinks so much and is so devoted to humanism that he allows himself to be stabbed. Quite recently, a well-known liberal said that one should not throw stones and even take a swing at the police, even if they beat innocent people ...

Oh, how many of us in the cramped cells, raising our heads to a slice of light behind bars, uttered the last words of Beranger: “One against all! Where is my gun, my gun! I will defend! I am the last man, and I will remain a man to the end! I won't capitulate!"