Faced with the incongruence of life and its unresolved enigmas, Ionesco’s characters experience the laughter similar to that of the Zen master. After realizing that full knowledge of life’s meaning is inaccessible, the Zen master begins laughing out loud as a response to the anguish before the unknown that existence entails. Such is the case with the Personnage from Ce formidable bordel (a dramatization of Ionesco’s only novel, Le Solitaire), a nameless character who inherits a fortune from his uncle in the United States, quits his job and visits one last time the business where he worked for fifteen years. Everyone gives their opinion about how he should spend his money, while trying to ingratiate themselves to him by showing their affection and backstabbing one another. The satirical criticism is pungent, as Ionesco, like a seventeenth-century moralist, exposes the hypocrisy and flattery of people avid for material gains. The accumulated dialogues
revolving around the Personnage who rarely intervenes and who, when he does, poses unrelated questions, reflect a world in a state of vertiginous disintegration. In his long monologue, the Monsieur describes this infernal world, ruled by the evil demiurge:
LE MONSIEUR. . . . Le monde est mal fait. Celui qui l’a fait n’a pas réussi . . . Ne croyez-vous pas que nous vivons en enfer ? Que l’enfer est ici ? Nous sommes tous des assoiffés, des affamés, des désireux et quand nous aurions comblé notre faim, comblé notre soif, satisfait nos désirs, il y aura d’autres désirs, il y aura d’autres faims, il y aura d’autres soifs. . . . Nous vivons dans une sorte de prison qui est une boîte. Cette boîte est emboîtée dans une autre boîte, qui est emboîtée dans une autre boîte, qui est emboîtée dans une autre boîte, emboîtée dans une autre boîte, et ainsi de suite, à l’infini. Et l’infini, je vous le disais, on ne peut pas le concevoir. (Théâtre complet 1146-1147)
GENTLEMAN. . . . Whoever made the world got it wrong. It is a mess. . . . Don’t you agree that we’re living in hell? That this is hell! We’re all hungry, thirsty and unsatisfied but when we’ve appeased our hunger, quenched our thirst and satisfied our desires, desire hunger and thirst will still be with us. . . . We inhabit a kind of prison, like a box. A box that goes into a box that fits another box that goes into a box that’s in a box that’s in a box, and so on ad infinitum. And infinity, as I said, is beyond our comprehension. (Oh What a Bloody Circus 41-43)
Despite Monsieur’s warning that the infinite cannot be conceived, the Personnage
experiences an episode of hierophany. During the tenth scene, after a parade of characters holding discourses about the world’s inconsistencies, while the Personnage is in a
restaurant, a spotlight shines on the tablecloth (Théâtre complet 1157). Everything turns as in a frenetic dance on the rhythm of the street noises, which slowly develop into a harmonious melodic sound. The acceleration in the conversations between the Révolté and the other characters who are advocating for a merciless revolution is contrasted with the self-centeredness of the Personnage. In the middle of the uproar, the Personnage, after being punched in the face by another character, maintains his usual calm. Agnès, the waitress, proposes to him that they start a new life together in the midst of the frenzy:
« Ils s’entretuent, ils se déchirent les uns les autres, ils s’exploitent les uns les autres. Nous pouvons être un exemple pour tous » (1174). ( “ Other people, they kill one another, tear each other apart, they’re jealous and they exploit each other. We can be an example to them allˮ [Oh What a Bloody Circus 69]). The episode is short-lived, although continued by Agnès’ reverie of idyllic places with silver ladders, limpid lakes, vividly colored flowers, people the color of light (Théâtre complet 1183). The
Personnage lives in the expectation of an ouverture, an escape from the nonsensical life, but in the last scene of the play, the Concierge relates the disappearance of the other characters, killed in the battle and advises the Personnage to remain cheerful «Il faut prendre ça avec joie, avec bonne humeur!» [Théâtre complet 1191]). Although the revolution in the street has ended, the disputes continue in the domestic sphere, where a husband kills his wife and children, a French man who married a Japanese woman commits hara-kiri when she leaves him for a German, and so on. (1193-1194). The void installs itself onstage as the scenery slowly disappears. At the very end, ghosts from the past appear: Lucienne, the Personnage’s ex-wife who passed away forty years before, the son of the Révolté. This parade of ghosts brings the Personnage to the brink of
exasperation and he yells to be left alone (1200). The stage is invaded by light from all sides, while the Personnage stands alone. This accumulation of events not organized in a plotline, are preparing the stage for the Personnage’s last culminating experience, his hysterical laughter, baffled by the incomprehensible existence. His last lines are addressed to the audience:
LE PERSONNAGE. Quelle bonne blague, mes enfants! Quelle blague messieurs-dames. A-t-on pu imaginer une blague pareille ! Une blague pareille ! Quel bordel ! Ah là là, quel formidable bordel ! (1201)
CHARACTER. We’ve been taken for a ride, boys and girls! Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been had! Was there ever anything like it! Who could have imagined such a trick! What a circus! . . . What a bloody circus! (95) A tree, whose leaves and flowers start to fade and fall appears on the empty stage and alluding to Beckett’s tree from En attendant Godot. The reversal of axis mundi symbolism takes place in this context as well. The tree does not bear fruit; it is rather lifeless, without any promise of hope. The stage directions describe the final scene where the Personnage laughs uncontrollably at the lack of meaning, at the nothingness of existence, represented in the metaphor of the lifeless tree.
On voit un grand arbre surgir dans la lumière du fond, dans le décor vide. Des cintres tombent des feuilles et des fleurs de l’arbre. Le Personnage se penche, les ramasse, les regarde, se relève, laisse tomber les fleurs et les feuilles, regarde vers le haut, regarde vers le fond, vers la droite, vers la gauche. . . . Il va d’un bout à l’autre du plateau se tenant le ventre, se tordant de rire, riant aux éclats. Il regarde encore une fois vers le haut, toujours en riant, fait un signe du bout de la main et du doigt vers le haut (1201).
A huge tree springs out of the light at the back on the empty stage. Leaves and blossoms from the tree fall softly from the flies. The Character bends down, picks them up and looks at them; then stands up again, drops the flowers and the leaves, looks up above him, looks to the Rear, to the Right and to the Left. . . . Then he starts laughing, quietly at first, then louder and louder. He stands up. He walks from one end of the stage to the other bursting with laughter, holding his sides, crumpled with laughter. Once again he looks upwards, still laughing, and makes a sign with his hand, pointing upwards. (95)
For Ionesco the reference to the theme of waiting from Beckett has a different role: laughter as the antidote to the unbearable wait, the ineffable meaning of life, a conscious state of rebellion which, in Zen tradition, is not an end in itself but an opening towards another reality. In his article «Quand le terrible éclate de rire» Jean Onimus presents the steps that the Zen monks follow. The ultimate step of laughter, the Koan, which is a
meditation on a paradox that forces the Buddhist monk to abandon reason, is followed by a revelation of another dimension of existence:
On oblige le novice à méditer indéfiniment sur un problème radicalement insoluble, sur une absurdité, jusqu’au moment où le sérieux éclate en mille morceaux, jusqu’à ce qu’explose le rire, le rire libérateur que le sérieux portait obscurément en lui. C’est l’épreuve du Koan. Quand le novice accède au rire, une révélation se produit, celle d’un ordre supérieur ou le sérieux n’a plus cours. . . . (Onimus 154)
The novice is forced to meditate indefinitely on a problem that is radically unsolvable, on an absurdity, until seriousness breaks in thousands of pieces, until laughter bursts, the liberating laughter that seriousness carried mysteriously within itself. It is the test of Koan. When the novice accesses laughter, a revelation of a superior order occurs, where seriousness does not have access. . . . (my translation)
Ionesco writes in Antidotes that he has been influenced by the story of the Zen monk who spent his life searching for meaning, and, as the old age arrived, he had a sudden flash of illumination: «Regardant autour de lui avec un regard neuf, il s’écrie: “quelle leurre!” et rit aux éclats» (Antidotes 324). (“Looking around with newly-opened eyes, he exclaims: ‘It is a snare and a delusion!’ and rocks with laughter.” [“Why Do I Write?” 127]). The demystification of the world is freeing as one becomes less focused on the absurdity of life and accepts it as it is. In his chapter “Laughing Monks”, Peter L. Berger notes the components of a comic philosophy that exists in both Taoism and Zen in which laughter emerges from a stance of rebellion and derision which, in the end, bring freedom : “The diagnosis of the world as a mass of incongruence. The radical debunking of all
pretensions of grandeur and wisdom. A spirit of mocking irreverence. And, in the result, a profound discovery of freedom” (43). Laughter emerges and liberates the human being; it is cathartic as it purges the human of his or her anxiety. It is an antidote to desperation
and comes as liberation, even if temporary. Ionesco stresses the importance of laughter as cathartic in his interview with Edith Mora:
Rire…rire…, certainement, je ne peux pas dire que je ne cherche pas à faire rire, toutefois, ce n’est pas là mon propos le plus important ! Le rire n’est que l’aboutissement d’un drame, qu’on voit, sur la scène, ou qu’on ne voit pas quand il s’agit d’une pièce comique, mais alors il est sous- entendu, et le rire vient comme une libération : on rit pour ne pas pleurer. . . . (Notes 173)
Laughter…laughter… certainly I cannot say I do not try to arouse laughter; however, that is not my most important object! Laughter is merely the by-product of a dramatic conflict that one sees on the stage- or that one does not see if the play is a comedy, but then it is still implied- and laughter becomes as a reprieve: we laugh so as not to cry. . . . (Notes 117-118)
Laughter is set off by the awareness of the dreadfulness of existence and its continuous menace of nothingness. Humor brings humans together and laughter helps them transcend their sorrows; it solidifies the community. In this sense, laughter is metaphysical. Bergson notes: « On ne goûterait pas le comique si l’on se sentait isolé» (Le rire 4) (“You would hardly appreciate the comic if you felt yourself isolated from others” [Laughter 5]). Through laughter, Ionesco establishes a new connection with his audience and reader. It is through laughter that the absurd is transcended, or, in a sense, appropriated without being explained, and a community is created. In Giovanni Lista’s view, it is the humor that assures that Ionesco’s theatre, despite its sometimes obscure imagery, communicates.84 Laughter, and especially laughing about one-self, which is Ionesco’s approach, is the space that connects the author and his or her reader. In his interview with Edith Mora, Ionesco notes that he has always made fun of himself in his writings.85 For him, just as for Pirandello, an author cannot create a perfect character, since he or she is not perfect: “. . . he is a fool, like the rest of mankind” (Notes 123)