Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 8 Number 1, April 2007
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Ionesco beyond Absurdism
by
INTRODUCTION
In The Theatre of the Absurd, Martin Esslin identifies Eugène Ionesco as one of the forerunners of a type of drama, which he emphasizes must be studied “as a manifestation of the thinking of its age” (xxiii). Esslin asserts this thinking is found in the philosophy of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, and explains “In some senses, the theatre of Sartre and Camus is less adequate an expression of the philosophy of Sartre and Camus—in artistic, as opposed to philosophic terms—than the Theatre of the Absurd” (xx). Reducing playwrights’ work to an artistic expression of existentialist thought anchors their texts to this movement and the horrors from which it erupted in World War I and II. Although this is the environment from which Ionesco emerged, his plays don’t function merely as a manifestation of the thinking of a particular age. They are more than political or philosophical allegories; they operate on a more universal level, posing questions about living and dying that transcend history.
I would argue that the assertion that Absurdist playwrights need to be interpreted within the context of existentialism limits a reader or audience member’s experience of the timelessness of the themes at play in Ionesco’s work. Such interpretations don’t take into account the diverse backgrounds that inform Ionesco’s aesthetic, or the aesthetic of other playwrights Esslin labels as Absurdist. Esslin must have recognized this potential drawback in his analysis, because eventually he leaves off championing existentialism as the key to Absurdism, and leaves the door open for other interpretations. In the last pages of his book, Esslin suggests that “To confront the limits of the human condition isn’t only equivalent to facing up to the philosophical basis of the scientific attitude, it is also a profound mystical experience. It is precisely this experience that forms the content of Eastern as well as Christian mystical experience” (314). He singles out Zen Buddhism as an example of the kind of mysticism that “bases itself on the rejection of conceptual thinking” in the same way as do the Absurdist plays. He even references an interview in which Ionesco connects the methods of the Zen masters with those of his fellow avant-gardes (315). In the end, Esslin defines the purpose of the Absurdist as an enabling of man “to face reality in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without fear, without illusions—and to laugh at it” (316), a declaration that sounds perhaps somewhat closer to the ecstasy of Zen than it does to the nausea of existentialism.
In Present Past Past Present, Ionesco describes Exit the King as “a lesson, a sort of spiritual exercise, a gradual process, stage by stage towards the ineluctable end, which I tried to make accessible to other people” (88). Combining Ionesco’s interest in Eastern texts with his own assessment of his writing as “an enquiry into what is called the self and what is called reality” (Ionesco, 1967, 19-20), this study applies theories of consciousness and reality from Zen Buddhism to three of Ionesco’s plays in order to offer an alternative reading of these works as a story of a psycho-spiritual development towards enlightenment, thereby framing all three plays as a “spiritual exercise”. I will explicate readings informed by a Zen Buddhist perspective of Rhinoceros, The Killer, and Exit the King. Together the three plays will be considered as a trilogy that follows Bérenger on the path to enlightenment, allowing his audience to share in the experience of seeking out and rediscovering the flavor of pure phenomenal consciousness that is the aim of Zen.
While the purpose of this investigation is to provide support for a Zen reading of Ionesco’s plays, thereby instigating a reevaluation of his aesthetic, it is neither necessary nor desirable to entirely negate existentialist interpretations of his plays in order to do so. Comparisons between Zen and existentialism abound in scholarship. In the first edition of Philosophy East and West, two articles on the topic were printed; one, written by Van Meter Ames, entitled “America, Existentialism, and Zen” puts the philosophy of Sartre up against Zen as described by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, a professor of Buddhism. Ames explains that if the reader of Sartre and Suzuki does not immediately feel the same about the ideas they present “It seems to be because Zen is joyous, wholesome, humorous, whereas existentialism (especially in Sartre) is morbid, [and] depressing [. . .]” (35). In a response to this article, Suzuki, whose writings were instrumental in spreading Buddhism to the Western world in the early and mid-twentieth century, agrees with Ames, but warns that “The only caution isn’t to identify Zen with a system of philosophy, for Zen is infinitely more than that” (1956, 261). Citing Ames’ explanation of existentialism, he clarifies what it is about Zen that makes it different:
There are various brands of existentialism but they seem to agree in holding that finite man is infinitely removed from God, that “the sea of possibilities opening ahead is frightening. They mean freedom, and unlimited freedom means unbearable responsibility.” To those thoughts Zen is a stranger, because for Zen the finite is the infinite, time is eternity, man isn’t separated from God, that “before Abraham was I am.” Furthermore, Zen does not find anything frightening in infinite possibilities, unlimited freedom, never-ending responsibilities. Zen moves along with infinite possibilities; Zen enjoys unlimited freedom because Zen is freedom itself; however unending and unbearable responsibility may be, Zen bares it as if baring nothing at all. (1956, 265).
It is this sense of freedom that Ionesco sometimes captures in his work. Although much of his writing is dark and heavy with the burden of living, these images have a different flavor when taken as a counterpart to the fleeting moments of light and weightlessness that also recur in his work. Juxtaposed, these elements reveal the sacred in the profane.
Zen is a school of Buddhism developed from the enlightenment-experience of Śākyamuni, founder of the Mahāyāna wing of Buddhism. It has grown into a practical form of spiritual training that depends on neither a deity, nor inspiration as the catalyst for enlightenment. Direct experience, not thought or supernatural intervention leads to enlightenment in Zen. This enlightenment is called satori; it is an insight into the nature of self. Zen is therefore not a religion; there are no gods to worship in the practice of Zen. There are no rites to practice and no concern for an immortal soul. Although Zen developed out of Buddhism, which many people practice as a religion, Zen dismisses the Buddhist teachings as set forth in the sūtras and śāstras as intellectual frippery. Neither is Zen a philosophy in the Western sense of the word. Suzuki explains that unlike a philosophy, Zen isn’t a system grounded in logic and analysis, but in experience. “If anything, it is the antipode to logic, by which I mean the dualistic mode of thinking” (1964, 38).
Where logical thinking hits a wall in trying to understand the nature of the self and reality, mysticism and religious passion carries the individual forward and dissolves contradictions. Logical discursive thought isn’t a tool that can assist in spiritual awakening; based on dualistic thinking, logic is problematic in Zen because it perpetuates a misconception of dualism of self and other, which is exactly the problem Zen seeks to shake off. Whether or not the intellect has any interest in the nature of the perceiving subject, it is incapable of directly apprehending the true nature of the mind because it serves the ego, which divides itself from everything else. Suzuki explains this is one reason that “Zen is decidedly not a system founded upon logic and analysis. If anything it is the antipode to logic, by which I mean the dualistic mode of thinking [. . .] Zen wants to rise above logic, Zen wants to find a higher affirmation where there are no antitheses” (1964, 38-9).
“To understand Zen one must abandon all he has acquired by the way of conceptual knowledge and stand before it stripped of every bit of intellection he has patiently accumulated around him” (Suzuki, 1956, 349). In so doing, he perceives by experiencing something beyond his intellect. This enlightenment is an emancipation from the illusion of the logically constructed self (1949, 49). This is the basic idea of Zen, to contact the inner workings of our being, and to do this in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external and superadded. “Absolute faith is placed in a man’s own inner being. For whatever authority there is in Zen, all comes from within” (1964, 44).
Although it is unnecessary to demonstrate that Ionesco may have been exposed to Buddhism in order to apprehend a Zen reading of his texts, it is interesting to note the facts that show the possibility of such a connection. Ionesco was known to be a reader of philosophy, especially of Eastern thought, and there is a strong series of mystical or metaphysical images and experiences in the plays he wrote during and after his avant-garde period. As a playwright, his sources are many and disparate, coming from “history of religions, mythology, the European classics, Gnostic and Byzantine mystic texts” (Lamont, 1993, 10). Ionesco read widely; he loved Russian philosopher Lev Shestov, studied Faulkner and Proust, Spengler, Keyserling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Plato, and Plotinus. Rosette C. Lamont recalls that there was one book, which was “beloved” to him—so much so that she suggests the final monologue of Queen Marguerite, if not the entirety of Exit the King, is inspired in part by it: The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1995, 22).
Ionesco’s interest in this book, a work of Tibetan Buddhism, also called Lamaism, isn’t surprising in light of his lifelong friendship with Mircea Eliade, professor of history of religions at the University of Chicago. The two met in Romania before World War II, before Ionesco considered writing plays. Eliade writes that Ionesco, “like so many Rumanian writers of his generation in the ‘30s, [was] attracted by the Byzantine spirituality and the eastern-orthodox traditions,” and that in the 1940s Ionesco read many Buddhist texts, as well as the Upanishads (28). Commenting on what religious influences are found in his friend’s imagery, Eliade acknowledged that he saw Ionesco’s reading of The Tibetan Book of the Dead as having had an effect specifically in Exit the King, and further argues that it bears the mark of his also having read a Vedic text, The Brhadāranyaka-Upanishad (22).
In Ionesco’s published journals, references to Buddhism and Zen abound. In Fragments of a Journal, he discusses the problem of learning to deal with his fear of death, and compares Freudian psychology’s approach toward anxiety to that of Buddhism. He asserts the “ultimate implications of psychoanalysis aren’t far removed from Zen” (51). Later Ionesco describes an experience that came upon him in his youth. He was walking in a small town on a sunny day, when suddenly:
[. . .] the whole town was transformed. Everything became at once profoundly real and profoundly unreal. That was exactly what happened: unreality mingled with reality, the two becoming closely and indissolubly interconnected…An overflowing joy rose up from deep within me, warm and luminous itself, an absolute presence, a presentness. I said to myself that this was ‘truth’, without knowing how to define this truth” (68)
Ionesco associates this “new and unsullied” light with warmth, well-being, and a sense of oneness that he confesses now escapes him. He goes on to say that he recalled the experience to “Z” and that Z “tells me the experience as I describe it to him is quite a characteristic one. It’s what is known as a sartori, an illumination” (69). He doesn’t reveal of what exactly Z says the experience is characteristic, but the implication seems to be that it is characteristic of a Zen experience. The cultivation of the satori (sometimes anglicized as sartori in early-to-mid-20th century Occidental publications) experience is the reason for the very existence of the practice of Zen. Ionesco’s satori-like experience forms the basis of much of the imagery in his plays, injecting into the dark, heavy, grieving world of his “absurdist” plays, elements of light, youth, and flight.
In an article that identifies the spirit of Zen in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, Harold McCarthy makes an argument that could also articulate the connection between Zen and Ionesco. “For it is the a-rational, aesthetic, immediate, intuitive spirit of Zen which has haunted the fringes (and sometimes the core) of Western poetry…it is the spirit of Zen which lies at the very heart of Goethe’s outlook, and which makes him suspicious of all intellectual systems and all intellectual systemizers” (30). He explains that in the same way that the metaphysical spirit is universal, indicative of neither East nor West, so too is the spirit of Zen universal. In support of the parallels he draws, McCarthy quotes Suzuki, who says “Zen naturally finds its readiest expression in poetry rather than in philosophy because it has more affinity with feeling than with intellect; its poetic predilection is inevitable” (qtd. in McCarthy, 31). Although Ionesco wrote his dramas in prose, his work stage poetry. Like the plays of Samuel Beckett and Goethe’s Faust, Ionesco’s texts are rife with verbal and visual imagery. His absurd and fantastical use of language speaks more to the world of feeling and experience than to that of the intellect.
One of the most striking conventions Ionesco exploits in staging Bérenger’s spiritual journey is the use of contrasting images of light and dark. Ionesco had already established a tendency to make use of images of these polar opposites before he wrote The Killer. The Bald Soprano, Jack, and The Chairs all contain references to light and fire; however, in this trio he uses light and dark not only as textual images, but as visual metaphors: objective stage pictures that express Bérenger’s interior life and take the old convention to a new a level in his dramaturgy. As seen in Ionesco’s journals, these images are bound up with the playwright’s obsession with intense emotional and spiritual experiences (both positive and negative) as well as observations on the nature of spiritual illumination and how we might obtain it.
THE KILLER
The first play, The Killer, opens with what is the strongest, most pure image of light that Ionesco creates in the trio. Using nothing but bright white light to produce the mise-en-scene at the opening, Ionesco echoes the light on stage inside Bérenger, who feels as though a heavy burden of suffering has been lifted from off his shoulders when he comes into the space. The light of the radiant city renews him, makes him feel like a boy, like he could fall in love. This marks the primary stage in Bérenger’s transformation. His challenge—to overcome a profound fear of death in order to recover a lost sense of spiritual grace—is one of the fundamental goals of Zen. Although in this, our first encounter with Bérenger, he is ultimately overcome by his fear of death, it is here that he takes the necessary first steps towards transcending his fear.
Bérenger is intensely aware of death lurking around every corner and overwhelmed by his inability to find a rational answer for a logical question which obsesses him: why should man live, if not forever? When he happens upon the radiant city, it makes him feel as he did when he was a child in the countryside (like Ionesco) and time stood still, keeping death firmly at bay. But no sooner does Bérenger discover this light than he loses it. Ionesco’s use of light imagery throughout The Killer reveals an underlying preoccupation with recapturing moments of illumination and transcending a fear of death.
The city’s outward manifestation of peace reflects the growing sense of well-being in Bérenger. His accidental discovery lights him up and fills him with amazement; he sees the neighborhood as a setting that could potentially “answer some profound need inside” him by functioning as “the projection, the continuation of the universe within” that would mend the rift he feels between himself and the outside world. He realizes “it’s quite wrong to talk of a world within and a world without, separate worlds […] (Ionesco, 19). The longer he stays, the more he feels like his old self. He tells the Architect that he is beginning to feel the bliss he had occasionally known when he was very young. Bérenger associates that joy with an inner light that used to blaze inside him. In a passage that sounds very much like one of the playwright’s own journal entries, he tells the Architect:
The cold could do nothing against it, a youthfulness, a spring no autumn could touch; a source of light, glowing wells of joy that seemed inexhaustible…When I was in a gloomy mood, the memory of that dazzling radiance, that glowing feeling, gave fresh life to the force within me, to those reasonless reasons for living and loving…loving what? [. . .] Loving everything wholeheartedly. (20-1)
Into this world of pure light Ionesco introduces another image of light in the form of Dany. Like the radiant city from which she materializes, Dany is bright and shining. Bérenger feels that he has always known her, though they never met before he proposed. His pseudo-reunion and proposed union with Dany parallels the total agreement already established between Bérenger and the city itself. But just as he is on the verge of recovering his paradise lost, again comes a fall from grace. As in his youth, the light Bérenger discovers within and without is finite. A rift emerges between himself and his environment when he learns about the Killer; his new surroundings lose all potential. “Now all the brilliance they offer is dead, and they’re nothing more than an empty frame…I feel shut out!” (32). To escape the Killer, he retreats from the light. With the introduction of the Killer, a shadow falls on the radiant city. Here Ionesco utterly leaves off the images of happiness and light and transitions back to Bérenger’s everyday world.
If Ionesco’s images of light in this play
are associated with paradise lost, nirvana, illumination, oneness, and the
satori experience, his images of darkness are the expression of the fear of
dying and of separation, and the ego’s reluctance to unfasten the ties that bind
us to life. In the same chapter from which the journal entry referencing “Z” is
drawn, there is a passage in which Ionesco laments the infrequency of his
satori-like experiences. As he grows older he experiences anguish with far
greater frequency than amazement. He posits a wish to die in spite of his fear:
Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish. (56)
He agonizes over his fear of death and, like Bérenger, can’t bear the thought of his life being finite. Another of Ionesco’s entries speaks to his own terror and connects his fear of death to a fear of separation from others.
The dread, the panic that seizes me at nightfall; I long for solitude and yet I cannot stand it. A matter of habit, perhaps…Night falls, it falls on my back, or rather I sink into it. Boundless night pervades me. A black ocean, in which I’m drowning. I’m afraid of never seeing them again, I’m afraid of dying without ever seeing them again. (1967, 55)
Here we discover the lyrical connection between the playwright and his dark images. The darkness of these images is repeated in the play. Outside the gates of the radiant city, everything is dark. Bérenger describes the city as “dark and dismal” with “mournful, dusty, dirty districts” (11). His environment once again reflects closely his interior life, but not in a way that brings him joy and love. His agony at the news of Dany’s death comes as an ironic counterpoint to the illumination that earlier prompted him to propose to Dany. Dark images multiply in the second act. Whereas the radiant city was conjured from open space and bright warm light, Bérenger’s apartment is cramped and full of heavy armchairs. Everything is “very much constructed, heavy, realistic and ugly”; it is a low-ceilinged, ground-floor room, where darkness “reigns”, (43). Bérenger observes “Where I live, everything is damp; the coal, the bread, the wind, the wine, the walls, the air, and even the fire” (13). Here, on the heels of losing Dany, is where the embodiment of light, Édouard is immediately introduced. Like Dany, he functions as an objective corollary to Bérenger’s subjective emotional and spiritual state; but whereas Dany connects to images of extreme light, energy, warmth, and happiness, Édouard connects to images of extreme dark, torpor, cold, and depression. Near death from tuberculosis and with a crippled arm, Édouard is thin, nervous, and dressed in mourning for no apparent reason. Like the Killer, he also carries an enormous black briefcase—yet another dark image that is perpetuated throughout the act (7, 57-8).
At the end of Act Two, the street scene with Mother Peep shifts the focus of the play by picking up another motif: the rejection of logic and ideology. The name Mother Peep is a take on Brecht’s iconic character Mother Courage. By setting her up as a ridiculous figure who contradicts herself and offers one ideology in place of another, Ionesco theatricalizes a criticism of Brecht and other “committed” writers (a criticism which he often repeated in print), which was his firm belief that theatre should be gratuitous and not made useful by putting itself in the service of any ideology. “The idiom of the theatre can never be anything but the idiom of the theatre” (1964 33). He strongly disliked didactic or boulevard theatre that illustrated social or scientific principles. He explains:
Art is the realm of passion, not of pedagogy; in this tragedy of tragedies we are concerned with the revelation of the most painful reality; I learn or reconsider something that has passed from my mind, I learn it in the only way possible with poetry, by an emotional participation that isn’t distorted by mystification and has bust through the paper dams of ideology and of a narrowly critical or “scientific” spirit. (1964, 32)
The parody of Mother Peep and her ideology, which in no way advances the action of the play, speaks to Ionesco’s view that science and ideology applied to the theatre are gratuitous appendages to an already gratuitous art form. “Any new artistic expression enriches us by answering some spiritual need and broadens the frontiers of known reality; it is an adventure, so it cannot be a repetition of some classified ideology” (1964, 102). To Ionesco, science and ideology are out of place in his theatre (unless he is making fun of them). This is so because they make the theatre experience subservient to the word and the idea, and also because science and ideology (based on logic,) are inadequate tools for communicating and apprehending the visceral and psychic experience of reality (1964, 35).
This play, however, isn’t about a theory of the idiom of the theatre, but about confronting death, and about the gratuity of—or rather the obstacle of—the ego or rational mind in that process. Bérenger’s goal is to make a permanent return to the light, but he cannot safely go back unless he conquers his fear of death. He thinks he needs the briefcase to help him do it, but unfortunately, in the same way that ideology is of no use in life or the theatre, so too is the briefcase of no use to Bérenger in defeating the Killer. As Ionesco will do again in Man With Bags and Journeys Among the Dead, the playwright uses the briefcase, a dark heavy container, as a symbol of the ego. Bérenger, operating under the idea that the briefcase and the evidence it contains will protect him from death and provide a key to the radiant city, wastes time searching for the briefcase. Far from being of any use to him, it only delays him. His attachment to the briefcase filled with evidence, which represents the ego and rational logic, is what ultimately will prevent him from conquering death.
When Bérenger finally ventures on his own into the empty street, he is like the monk who sets out into the desert to lead a solitary life. He leaves behind the relative security of the crowd, and confronts death incarnate, in the form of The Killer, alone in the empty street. Ionesco suggests in his stage directions that the Killer might be simply a voice, suggesting that “possibly there is no Killer at all. Bérenger could be talking to himself, alone in the half-light” (98). This solution for staging Bérenger’s encounter with the Killer is appealing because it implies that the Killer lurks within Bérenger; it is the illusions created in his own mind he must overcome: his attachment to his rational ego and to life, and his fear of death.
Bérenger’s failure to do so ultimately comes as a result of his inability to reconcile what are to him fundamental contradictions: that we should live moments filled with gratuitous beauty and joy, but that those moments should be finite. Looking into the void he is paralyzed. “Zen would tell him: Why not plunge right into the abyss and see what is there?” (Suzuki, 1956, 266). Having come this far, Bérenger stops short of seeing death and his consciousness for what they are in reality. He believes that he can find something the two of them have in common over which to bond, suggesting that if nothing else, they have the language of reason: “You’re a scientific man, aren’t you, a man of the modern era, I’ve guessed it now, haven’t I, a cerebral man?” (105). No rational efforts bring him any closer to understanding The Killer; his answer to everything Bérenger does is laughter.
Eventually Bérenger runs out of logical explanations for the Killer’s merciless and unmotivated behavior. He hits a wall. He can’t accept things as they really are; he cannot accept that the Killer has no reason for killing. He kills gratuitously, in the same way that flowers bloom and birds fly, because that’s simply what they came into this world to do. This fact strikes Bérenger as an evil he cannot comprehend. He goes to his death still looking for a rational solution to his problem. He gives in to the Killer because he represents an irreconcilable contradiction: that one should live, but not forever. Bérenger is defeated therefore, not by death, but by his inability to go beyond a perceived contradiction surrounding the nature of his own existence.
RHINOCEROS
In Rhinoceros, Bérenger will begin to learn that, “Zen knows no contradictions; it is the logician who encounters them, forgetting that they are of his own making” (Suzuki, 1956, 269). In this next play, Bérenger is a changed man; his character and personality are in opposition to his former self. There are vestiges of the old Bérenger; however, this Bérenger has lost his faith in intellection. Although he isn’t yet fully aware of his mind’s illusions, there is a change in personality that would indicate a corresponding moral, spiritual, and social growth in him. In The Killer Bérenger acts as a logical man in an illogical world, in Rhinoceros he becomes the embodiment of the illogical in a world overrun with logic made material in the form of rampaging rhinoceroses. If in the former play Ionesco examined the inadequacy of logic in the pursuit of enlightenment, then here he goes a step further and destroys logic, portraying it not only as inadequate, but absurd and even violent. In so doing, Ionesco brings Bérenger, his witnessing-self, closer to Zen and the satori experience by slowly cutting him off from the rational mind that led him to his death in The Killer. Although Bérenger will end up alone and facing death once again at the end of Rhinoceros, this time his creator has better prepared him for the struggle.
In Notes and Counter Notes, Ionesco declares that “There are two ways of knowing: logical, and esthetic or intuitive” (129). From this point of view, Rhinoceros is an argument not just against Nazism or any other ideology but also against the destructive and illusory nature of supposedly rational Western logic. Beyond this negation, the play is also an affirmation of the other way of knowing Ionesco named: the intuitive. Intuition, a direct communication of knowledge, is the alternative Ionesco offers Bérenger. Ionesco confronts him with the absurd choice of becoming a rhinoceros, or living apart from society. He offers no explanation but instinct for Bérenger’s final choice. His action comes not out of an ideology, a system, a method, or any logic; it bypasses logic.
As Lamont notes, the sense of “stubborn endurance” in the face of transient ideologies that Ionesco displays in his writing (and especially in the character of Bérenger) is more characteristic of Buddhist thought than Western thought. “A Western education does not favor this state of passive resistance: One is taught to improve oneself by doing” (1993, 140). She goes on to argue that the character of Bérenger can be read in this play as a foil to Jean and the others in the same way that one might think of Eastern thought as the foil to Western thought. Lamont specifies that by Western thought she means “the cult of rationalism, Descartes’ legacy to Western culture” (145).
She does not offer a definition of how she understands the nature of Eastern or Buddhist thought; however, within the bounds of Lamont’s study, the unspecified character of Eastern thought functions in opposition to traditional Western logic. This is similar to Suzuki’s description of Zen and the Eastern mind, which is more mystical than logical.
…it is what makes the West frequently fail to fathom exactly the depths of the Oriental mind, for mysticism in its very nature defies the analysis of logic, and logic is the most characteristic feature of Western thought. The East is synthetic in its method of reasoning; it does not care so much for the celebration of particulars as for a comprehensive grasp of the whole, and this intuitively. Therefore the Eastern mind, if we assume its existence, is necessarily vague and indefinite. (1964, 35)
Although Zen moves in opposition to logic, it isn’t without a way of knowing. In Zen, knowing isn’t the product of the logic-bound ego, but rather of direct experience and intuition. Among the Buddhist schools, Zen most highly values prajñā, a type of intuitive apprehension, as a necessary functioning of the enlightened mind. If one is to know the truth of reality, one must apprehend it through prajñā intuition, by jumping right into the experience, not by reasoning. It is this type of knowing that Bérenger is moving towards throughout Rhinoceros, and which he finally experiences, if only fleetingly, in the very last moment of the play.
One of the chief ways in which Ionesco advances Bérenger on his path is by redefining his character in opposition to the earlier incarnation of Bérenger in The Killer. Ionesco accomplishes this by juxtaposing Bérenger with a crop of characters who might have been friends with the earlier Berenger, but now find him inadequate. Up through the last moment of the play, Berenger, a passive anti-hero, is best viewed in relief against the people or monsters that surround him. Like the Bérenger who once was, these characters are ruled by logic. Through them, logic takes various forms, appearing in the clothes of philosophies, syllogisms, social movements, and even religion. Ionesco, speaking of these other characters, assumed “It will surely be apparent that the speeches of Botard, of Jean and Dudard are nothing but the pet shibboleths and slogans of various dogmas, concealing under a mask of cold objectivity the most irrational and violent pressures” (1964, 199). These men are symbolic of logical ways of thinking, regardless of differences in their beliefs and practices. They are susceptible to the illusions of their logic and ideologies, which is why they so easily fall prey to the fantasy of rhinoceritis. By the end of the play, the list of those infected will include not only fascists of military status, but also scientists, teachers, logicians, lawyers, ministers, and literary gossips.
Only Bérenger is immune. Portrayed as gentle, nervous, ineffectual at work, infinitely kind, and undiscriminating; Bérenger is everything that the others aren’t. Like Bérenger in The Killer, he suffers from a malaise that comes from a fundamental sense that life isn’t what it should be. He confesses, “I just can’t get used to it. I just can’t get used to life” and explains that he is afraid, but doesn’t know exactly why or of what he fears. “It’s sort of an anguish difficult to describe. I feel out of place in life, among people…I can’t seem to get used to myself. I don’t even know if I am me…I sometimes wonder if I exist” (7, 17-19). Whereas the old logical Bérenger would at least have had a little faith in Descartes’ dictum, “I think, therefore I am,” this Bérenger is at odds with the logical world that surrounds him.
Unfortunately for Berenger, he isn’t totally divorced from logic’s corrupting power; it surrounds him in the form of everyone he meets, even his friends. Ionesco paints Bérenger’s best friend, Jean, as the dominating symbol of logic in this story. It is he who unkindly tells Bérenger “You don’t exist, my dear Berenger, because you don’t think. Start thinking, then you will” (19). These two men are wildly different creatures. Where Bérenger is disheveled, Jean is immaculate. Where Bérenger is passive, Jean is dominating. Where Bérenger is humble, Jean is boastful; and where Bérenger is loving and tolerant, Jean is an uncontrollable racist. Significantly, it is Jean who is the first to see a rhinoceros.
Ionesco continues to develop Bérenger’s character in Act Two by contrasting him against the other characters who are in many ways like Jean. Bérenger’s co-workers all arrive early, but he is late. Bérenger feels oppressed by his repetitive work, yet his co-workers are practically addicted to work. Botard even boasts: “I work on Sundays as well. I’ve no time for priests who do their utmost to get you to church, just to prevent you from working [. . .]” (41). Bérenger’s co-workers either argue with him, ignore him, or dismiss him out of hand.
Ionesco takes the comparison between Bérenger and those around him to a new level when contrasts Bérenger against his universe by having Jean literally turn into a rhinoceros. The imagery continues when Bérenger, alone in his apartment, becomes the last man among monsters. Surrounded by rhinoceroses, Bérenger might as well be stranded in the desert, and it is there Ionesco leaves his protagonist and his audience. After three acts of vaudeville bits and pachyderm jokes, Ionesco delivers an un-comical ending. In his essay “Rain and the Rhinoceros”, Father Thomas Merton likens Bérenger’s absurd isolation to a desert (18-21). It is tempting to describe Bérenger as slipping into a desert or void. The word “void” appears often in analyses of the plays of Absurdist playwrights, this is due in part to the influence of the writings of philosophers such as Sartre, and Camus; however, the term also appears frequently in English-language texts on Buddhism. “Void or emptiness” is a phrase commonly used to translate the term śūnyatā. Unfortunately, this translation of the idea of śūnyatā is unsatisfying, and has led to the misconception in Western culture that Zen’s goal is to annihilate the self, or to commit “mind-murder”.
In Zen, the image of the void is used as an analogy for a desired state of conscious emptiness. The void, the abyss, the empty vase, the desert, and the ocean are all images used to convey this idea of pure consciousness, empty of concepts. There is, however, an important difference between the nihilist void of Western existentialism and the emptiness of the Eastern śūnyatā; this difference has implications for the way that each term affects an understanding of the self and human nature. Sartre argued that existence precedes and rules essence, meaning that the self is constructed through experience and that there is no essential human nature. Whatever sense of self an individual might have is the result of his experience in society and the choices he makes based on those interactions; man makes himself from nothing or dies in the void. For existentialists, there can be no satori experience, no insight into the nature of self, because according to existentialism, there is no original face which consciousness may recognize. To Zen, the self that is known through the ego is a fraction of the original nature, a paring down of the real self, which is in reality no self at all. The satori experience frees the mind from this illusion, the common confusion of the ego with the self.
For an individual to gain awareness of the original nature of the self is to empty the mind of all illusions in śūnyatā, especially the concept of the ego as constituting the self, and even the very concepts of nothingness or emptiness. The emptiness which śūnyatā refers to is the absence of illusions, which are the product of vikalpa, the erroneous thinking that uses concepts, views, and judgments to occupy the conscious mind and misdirect it with the dualism of subject and object, blinding it to the truth of self and reality. As Suzuki explains “Bifurcation of reality into subject and object is the work of intellection. When there is no such working, life is a complete whole with no cleavage in it…” (1964, 124). It is therefore intellection that stands between man and himself.
If Zen were to stop at the clearing away of the rational mind, this might be nihilistic; however, as the concept of tathatā reveals, Zen functions as a via negativa, reaching affirmation through negation. Emptying the conscious mind of the illusions of ratiocinations brings illumination. “Nothing must be present except what is actually there [. . .]. The answer which appears to come from a void, the light which flares up from the blackest darkness, these have always been experiences of wonderful and blessed illumination” (Jung, 1964, 21). Paradoxically, the satori experience, which is Zen’s reason for being, requires śūnyatā, but this results not in emptiness, but in wholeness: an awakening to the full radiance of the nature of the original mind and all of reality in its suchness (tathatā).
Bérenger’s void is a condition of his conscious mind that is a necessary stage in his pursuit of enlightenment. In this respect, Bérenger is less of a tragic character in Rhinoceros than he was in The Killer. Even though he is once again alone and confronting his mortality at the end of this play, this Bérenger doesn’t hit the wall in the face of the illogical, as did his earlier incarnation. In Notes and Counter Notes Ionesco defends his choice to leave the audience in a void with Bérenger. “That is exactly what I wanted to do. A free man should pull himself out of vacuity on his own, by his own efforts and not by the efforts of other people!” (211). As in Zen, it is neither through the power of other people or their ideologies that the path to enlightenment shall be found. The potential is already inside each individual waiting to be realized.
Through awakening his prajñā intuition, but not through intellectual effort, Bérenger can emerge from the void of śūnyatā. Alone, Bérenger goes forward. This brings him closer to Zen, and closer to satori. Bérenger is on the verge of an awakening at the end of Rhinoceros. He has changed enormously from the protagonist who was so easily defeated in The Killer. He has finally laid aside his weapons of logic and stands ready to confront death and take on immense suffering. With this act he is ten thousand steps closer to a satori experience now, staring into the face of death, than he was when he submitted to it in terror and confusion. Merton, another solitary man, saw a parallel between Bérenger’s condition, descending into the void at the end of Rhinoceros, and the nature of Christian and Zen hermitage. In “Rain and the Rhinoceros”, Merton explores the connection the solitary develops to his humankind:
It is in the desert of loneliness and emptiness that the fear of death and the need for self-affirmation are seen to be illusory. When this is faced, then anguish isn’t necessarily overcome, but it can be accepted and understood. Thus, in the heart of anguish are found the gifts of peace and understanding: not simply in personal illumination and liberation, but by commitment and empathy, for the contemplative must assume the universal anguish and the inescapable condition of mortal man. (18)
Merton goes on to say that within loneliness and emptiness is found truth. Truth is the gift given to those who take on the woes of all mankind in their alienation. Although the seat of Merton’s wisdom is Christian eremitism, these statements resonate with Zen, which teaches that before one can find enlightenment, he or she must experience and understand the nature of all the suffering in the universe.
Sixty years after the end of World War II, Rhinoceros still functions as powerful anti-Nazi propaganda; and as the atrocities of the early and mid-twentieth century recede farther into history, it grows increasingly difficult not to reduce the play to this one theme. Having often been interpreted in production and through criticism as a political allegory, Rhinoceros might at first seem a puzzling choice for inclusion in a study focusing on the spirit of Zen in his work; however, it is this very preoccupation with (or rather criticism of) political and social ideologies, and the illusions that they breed under the cloak of logic that echoes Zen.
Although Rhinoceros is more obviously political and social than any of Ionesco’s other plays, it manages in the end to remain anti-ideological by claiming no ideology. This is consistent with the playwright’s theory as he often espoused it.
It seems to me absurd to think for a whole world and give it some automatic philosophy: a playwright poses problems. People should think about them, when they are quiet and alone, and try and resolve them for themselves, without constraint; an unworkable solution one has found for oneself is infinitely more valuable than a ready-made ideology that stops men from thinking. (1964, 210).
Ionesco doesn’t install a new system and a new ideology, rather he unmasks ideology in an attempt to destroy it forever. “Rhinoceritis isn’t an illness of the Right or the Left; it cannot be contained within geo-political borders. Nor is it characteristic of a social class. It [. . .] knows no bounds, no boundaries” (1993, 139).
Just as suspicious of the Left as he was of the Right, Ionesco’s criticism extends beyond dictatorships of state to those of the mind. Rhinoceros functions broadly as a case against conformity to systems of all kinds: systems of thought, government, organization; all these serve to restrict freedom and keep the mind engaged in illusion. Anywhere the totalitarianism of logic shows its face, rhinoceritis does too, and thereby does the whole world grow horns. Only Bérenger escapes the illusion of rhinoceritis. Although he fears being alone, Bérenger finally parts ways with logic irrevocably when he declares “I’m not capitulating!” He chooses the separation he fears. Ionesco says that Bérenger is lost at then end of Rhinoceros. (1964, 208). Zen would say that Bérenger is just where he should be, for it is in the deepest recesses of the void, or the farthest reaches of the desert, that one will find oneself.
EXIT THE KING
Ionesco takes Bérenger inside the void in Exit the King, where he has his final showdown with death. In attempts to explain the play, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, an 8th century Tibetan Buddhist (Lamaist) text has repeatedly been invoked. Scholars such as Lamont, Coe (129), Chafee (77), and Eliade cite the fact that Ionesco was especially fond of this text and argue that it was a source of inspiration for Exit the King (Lamont, 1995, 22). Eliade adds The Brhadāranyaka-Upanishad, a nearly 3000-year-old Hindu text to the aforementioned book as a likely source (22).
The Tibetan Book of the Dead is the English title for the Bardo Thotrol. It is one text that outlines the beliefs and rituals of Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan monks study the texts, and they read the Bardo Thotrol to the dead and dying as a way of helping those individuals achieve liberation through nirvana. In this respect, The Tibetan Book of the Dead shares a common purpose with many mystical texts. And despite the speculated connection between Exit the King and The Tibetan Book of the Dead, to date, little criticism elaborates on this hypothesis. Lamont offers the most detailed reference to the connection, positing that Queen Marguerite goes through a metamorphosis at the end of the play, “when she reveals herself as the divinity of the Ultimate Passage, one of the guides of Ionesco’s favorite book” (1997, 151-2). She adds Bérenger is “in that state of suspension called the bardo (the gap) in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. He must learn to travel from the space of life to the space of death” (156).
The argument for the connection between this speech and Tibetan Buddhism could be strengthened by noting that Marguerite tells Bérenger to “Try and follow that wheel that’s spinning around in front of you!” (93). The spinning wheel could be interpreted as a reference to the Tibetan Wheel of Life, or Bhavacakra, which represents the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth called samsāra in Buddhist discourse. That connection is further strengthened when Marguerite later directs him to “Gaze into my unreflecting mirror” (94). In combination with her earlier reference to the wheel, this connects her to Yama, the Buddhist Lord of Death who holds up the wheel in the form of a mirror where the dying individual’s karma is reflected (Lingpa and Rinpoche, 77). Beyond these few references that occur at the end of the play, there is little in the rest of Exit the King that bares resemblance to any thought or image exclusive to The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
From these observations, one connection between the two is observed via the simple fact that both affect a rite of passage that takes an individual from life into death. This, however, isn’t a theme that is peculiar to Tibetan Buddhism, and certainly did not originate in Tibet or even in either the Buddhist or the Hindu traditions. From this perspective, it wouldn’t be difficult to justify a reading of Exit the King that embraces almost any religion. Going beyond the analysis of Exit the King as a rite of passage, a Zen reading of this play can be explicated without discounting the above observations. Thanks to The Lankavatara Sūtra, one of the common sources for Tibetan and Zen Buddhism, it is possible to offer a reading that embraces a multiplicity of Buddhist sects under the Mahāyāna wing of Buddhism.
The author and date of composition of The Lankavatara Sūtra is unknown; however, it is estimated to have been written before the fifth century, when Bodhidarma, the first patriarch of Zen, arrived with a copy in China. One subject addressed in the Lankavatara is the doctrine of śūnyatā. Suzuki offers the translation of “empty, emptiness, void” for śūnyatā and explains its connection to Mahāyāna, a source of both Zen and Lamaism:
The Lankavatara is always careful to balance Śūnyatā with Tathatā, or to insist that when the world is viewed as śūnya, empty, it is grasped in its suchness. Naturally, such a doctrine as this goes beyond the logical survey based on our discursive understanding as it belongs to the realm of intuition, which is, to use the Lanka terminology, the realization of supreme wisdom in the inmost consciousness. (1930. 446).
In Exit the King, Ionesco illustrates some of the most fundamental teaching of Buddha. The action of the play follows Bérenger’s final steps towards death and nirvana, or perhaps another rebirth. At the end of Rhinoceros Bérenger was left staring into the void of śūnyatā. Now Bérenger returns as a king, but he has not yet emerged from the void. Although Bérenger is now the ruler of his own kingdom and the husband of two wives, he is even more alone than he was before. In what Esslin would call a monodrama, the action of the play takes place inside Bérenger’s mind. Whereas Bérenger was previously defined through opposition to other characters, in Exit the King he is the other characters.
The characters of the play aren’t separate entities; they constitute the whole of Bérenger’s embodied existence. Although there are six characters on stage, they comprise only one personality. The other characters are the five psychophysical aggregates, or skandhas, that make up Bérenger in the material world. As he loses his connection to these characters during the play, the five elements (skandhas) that comprise his self gradually disperse into the void. As he lets go of them, Bérenger fades out of material existence until the material world around him is gone, and he disappears into a gray light of nonexistence.
The skandhas are the source of material existence and inevitably the cause of all suffering (duhkha). Buddha names them: form (rūpa), sensation (vedanā), perception (samjjña), predispositions (samskāra), and finally consciousness or discrimination (vijñana) (Lankavatara 441, 453-4). They are causally interdependent; they feed off each other in the same way as the characters on stage. They are the elements that organize Bérenger’s positive existence, and the source of all his suffering. In Fragments of a Journal, which Ionesco wrote partially while he composed this play: “I am so very true that I cannot escape from myself. I organize myself. I am the self that organizes myself thus, arranging the same materials in a unique pattern” (150).
Within the skandha hierarchy, the Guard functions as rūpa for Bérenger. Rūpa, or form, is the first component of existence. Francesca Fremantle explains that rūpa is “the beginning of individuality and separate existence, and the division of experience into subject and object”, it is the physical body that leads to the wrong perception of duality and the self as separate from others (xvii). Exit the King begins with the Guard alone on stage in Bérenger’s throne room; like rūpa, he is the first to appear. He carries a halberd but is more than a military man; he performs the duties of a handyman and holds the title of “Chief Firelighter” (8-9). The Guard also acts as a master of ceremonies, making announcements to the court onstage, and beyond the throne room to the audience members. “Now there is a primitive ‘self’ aware of an external world” (Fremantle and Trungpa, xvii). As rūpa, he is responsible for maintaining the castle; he is Bérenger’s connection to the physical world.
With the emergence of rūpa, the next component comes into being: vedanā, or sensation. Vedanā is connected to the substance of feeling; it is the ātman reacting to its surroundings (Fremantle and Trungpa xvii). Queen Marie is the embodiment of Bérenger’s vedanā. She is vain, over-emotional, and given to over-indulging in physical pleasures. As Marguerite observes, “Laugh or cry, that’s all she can do” (9). She loves everyone but thinks only of herself (67). Most of the time Marie is the life of the party; she revels in being a queen, but today Bérenger’s impending death brings her nothing but tears in her eyes and hope on her lips. Towards the end of the play as Bérenger is coming to see the facts, she still won’t let go. As Bérenger’s vedanā, Marie is teeming with emotion, but barren of logic.
Where Marie leaves off logic, the Doctor “who is also Surgeon, Executioner, Bacteriologist & Astrologist” picks it up (5). The Doctor’s place within the skandhas is as thought, or samjjña. “It is the third stage, perception (samjjña), in its fullest sense, when the self is aware of stimulus and automatically responds to it” (Fremantle and Trungpa xvii). Samjña recognizes the characteristics of objects of the five senses as well as ideas and concepts. It exists in opposition to the intuition of prajñā. Samjña leads the self to perceive differences in phenomena, which leads to the wrong perception of duality. It is fitting that the Doctor should represent samjña since he is the only one of the five characters in Bérenger’s court to hold a vocation that requires traditional Western education.
Always rushing in and out, the Doctor is self-important and preoccupied with science and logic; like samjna, he has intellect but none of the higher perception of prajñā. In this respect he isn’t unlike the rhinoceroses of Rhinoceros. If Marie can do nothing but focus on her feelings, the Doctor is over-fond of stating facts and seems to know every detail about what is going on within Bérenger’s kingdom, and within Bérenger himself. The Doctor is well intentioned but wastes his efforts offering superfluous elaborations that don’t help the situation, showing that despite Bérenger’s rejection of logical ways of knowing in Rhinoceros, he still has not completely let it go.
Juliette, Bérenger’s maid, represents the fourth skandha: predispositions or samskāra; this element refers to preferences of a morally good, bad, or neutral nature; and the way that these influences an individual’s behavior. “It is what puts things together, and builds up the patterns of personality and karma” (Fremantle and Trungpa xvii). Juliette serves such a function for Bérenger. As samskāra, she is trapped in an endless pattern of cleaning and other chores, that she executes in order to allow Bérenger to carry on in the fashion in which he is accustomed. Juliette is responsible for the king’s habits, is well informed on others’ habits, and knows what others have done or are doing, and what they are likely to do (23). In a further similarity to samskāra, Juliette knows what Bérenger wants and what he is experiencing. As he loses his ability to communicate, she tells them that he wants to leave and open himself to illumination and that what he really wants is to exist forever (51). After Bérenger completely loses his ability to speak normally, she observes a change inside him and observes that now, “He knows what not knowing means” (84).
The fifth skandha, Queen Marguerite represents consciousness, or vijñana. Roughly translated, vijñana means relative knowledge, cognition, and discrimination; though none of these terms adequately define the idea. If vijñana is associated with the duality of things, Marguerite is the most discriminating character. In the same way that Vijñana extends to the six senses, so too does Marguerite collect information from the other characters to get a sense of what is going on with Bérenger. She “combines all the sense-perceptions and the mind. The self has now become a complete universe of its own; instead of directly perceiving the world as it really is, it projects its own images all around it” (Fremantle and Trungpa xvii). As Vijñana, Marguerite is capable of projecting images. But Marguerite’s efforts don’t appear to help Bérenger as he grows increasingly weak, unfocused, and hysterical. She, along with the other aggregates, is ultimately powerless because they are illusory.
Before Bérenger can go forward he must let go of the shell that is his skandhas. A passage from Suzuki’s translation of the Prajñā-Paramita-Hridaya Sūtra (The Heart Sūtra) explains: “O Sariputra, form is here emptiness, emptiness is form, form is no other than emptiness, emptiness is no other than form; what is form that is emptiness, what is emptiness that is form. The same can be said of sensation, thought, confection, and consciousness” (1927, 192). When the first four skandhas have dispersed, Marguerite transforms from vijñana awareness into prajñā intuition. Now there is almost nothing of Bérenger left; as the personification of prajñā, Marguerite dissolves and goes beyond duality, thus allowing Bérenger to finally know reality in its true suchness (tathatā), which is in fact emptiness (śūnyatā) after all.
Over the course of the play Bérenger suffers a rapid descent into extreme old age, which is followed by the satori experience where he realizes the nothingness of his true nature through dying. This dissolving spiral of the self is echoed in the space that surrounds him. In the other plays the environment affects Bérenger’s psychophysical state, but in Exit the King, the action and environment is in his head; now he is the environment. From the start it is clear that the kingdom, like Bérenger himself, is falling apart and gathering dust and cobwebs. The Prajñāp-Pāramitā sutra, another shared Mahāyāna source for Lamaism and Zen, explains “As regards the whence and whither of the five Skandhas, the Bodhisattva knows [. . .] that they come from nowhere although they seem to disappear altogether out of sight, and yet that there in the Skandhas a happening known as their rise or their disappearance” (Suzuki, 1934, 241). With the inevitable disappearance of the five aggregates, so too must the self they compose disappear.
Fremantle notes in the introduction to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, “The fundamental teaching of this book is the recognition of one’s projection and the dissolution of the sense of self in the light of reality” (xix-xx). As here illustrated, the goal of The Tibetan Book of the Dead isn’t unique from that of other Buddhist schools of the Mahāyāna wing, such as Zen; the self as conceived in the Mahāyāna sūtras is a construct of the five aggregates, which is ultimately empty in nature, and is the source of suffering. The goal of any Buddhist school is to gain freedom from the suffering of manifest existence. It is possible therefore to argue for either a Lamaist or Zen interpretation of Exit the King. Despite the few aforementioned points made in favor of a Lamaist reading earlier in the chapter, a Zen reading is arguably still more in line with the humorous undertones of the play.
CONCLUSION
In Richard Coe’s study of Ionesco, he states his understanding of the Zen path as this: “to be free completely, the individual must be free of his own character, his own dimensions, his own Self, his own existence. He must, in fact, cease to exist completely, and allow himself to be absorbed into the totality of Not-Being, which is Nirvana” (105). He then rejects the idea that Ionesco could embrace Zen, saying:
And this, precisely, is what Ionesco cannot accept. For a writer whose philosophy, ultimately, is based on a faith in uniqueness and immortality, the absorption of the Self into any kind of Totality is inconceivable. At the last minute, therefore, Ionesco disentangles himself from the web of Zen [. . .]. (105)
But “the absorption of the Self” into the absolute is exactly what Ionesco accomplishes through Bérenger in the last leg of his spiritual journey. Whether or not Ionesco embraced Zen in his personal life, the spirit of Zen cannot be said to be wholly absent from his drama. As evidenced in Exit the King, Ionesco tapped into a fountainhead from which Zen springs.
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