Rhinocéros (1959)

Uma peça sobre o absurdo da condição humana. Não só pela rinocerontite: Bérenger não conseguia se acostumar com a vida mesmo antes que as pessoas se rendessem a serem transformadas em rinocerontes.
E é ele Bérenger o único que não cede: « Je suis le dernier homme, je le resterai jusqu'au bout ! Je ne capitule pas ! ».
Imagem encontrada na wikipédia francesa:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Rhinoceros_1997_2004.jpg ( )

Tous les chats sont mortels. Socrate est mortel. Donc Socrate est un chat.' Tout langage stéréotypé devient aberrant. C'est ce que Ionesco démontre dans Rhinocéros, pièce qui a tout d'abord vu le jour sous la forme d'une nouvelle. Partisan d'un théâtre total, il porte l'absurde à son paroxysme en l'incarnant matériellement. Allégorie des idéologies de masse, le rhinocéros, cruel et dévastateur, ne se déplace qu'en groupe et gagne du terrain à une vitesse vertigineuse. Seul et sans trop savoir pourquoi, Bérenger résiste à la mutation. Il résiste pour notre plus grande délectation, car sa lutte désespérée donne lieu à des caricatures savoureuses, à des variations de tons et de genres audacieuses et anticonformistes. La sclérose intellectuelle, l'incommunicabilité et la perversion du langage engendrent des situations tellement tragiques qu'elles en deviennent comiques, tellement grotesques qu'elles ne peuvent être que dramatiques. On a dit du théâtre de Ionesco qu'il était engagé ; il l'est, en faveur de l'individu, menacé de marginalisation quand, malgré ses faiblesses, il parvient à résister aux tentations avilissantes qu'il a lui-même fait naître. --Sana Tang-Léopold Wauters

I have seen a copy of this play on my dad´s bookshelf for most of my life, and I always wondered what it was about, and why it was called Rhinoceros. I saw a copy in French at the bookstore and decided that it was high time that I buy and read it. I find myself not really wanting to give away too much so that anyone who reads this and wants to read the play (my girlfriend, mainly) can experience it in the same way that I did, without knowing too much beforehand about what´s going to happen in the small French town where it takes place. So I will ignore the proverbial rhinoceros in the room, and just say that this is a really neat play about the way that people react to societal pressure and conform or don´t conform to what people around them are doing and believing. I understand that this play was written in a Europe threatened by the USSR, and that he is examining the implications of communism and/or fascism on individual liberty and free will, but I think that the story is universal and representative of the pressures that individuals feel in any society. In Rhinocéros, the characters slowly succumb to the pressures of fitting in and conforming to a fad, and I think that the reasons that they use to justify their decision to conform to societal pressure are extremely accurate, as well as ingeniously represented in the pages of this play. My favorite scene involves the protagonist, Bérenger, and his friend, Jean, who has decided to follow the fad that is sweeping through their town. It is hilarious and reminds me of when I was a kid, and people would do a lot of silly things because other people were doing them. Jean´s justification of his decision to follow and the change in his character as he accepts the new fad are really fun to read in dialogue. The whole play is very humorous and treats a very serious theme (conformity versus individuality) in a funny and absurd way.

I found myself thinking that this would be a great book for a classroom of high schoolers to read. I can imagine some really passionate and interesting discussions, and I think it would be a lot of fun to guide students through some of the dilemmas that the characters, and especially the central character, Bérenger, face as a peculiar and strangely magnetic fad sweeps through their town. I remember when I was in high school, I used to try so hard to not worry about what others thought of me, and it was often really hard if that meant not conforming, or not being cool enough (in my mind) to even think about conforming. I think I would have related really well to Bérenger, and I would have immediately recognized the connections between what he is seeing and what people see when they walk into high school.

I really liked this play. I did a little research on Wikipedia and Ionesco seems like a cool guy. The absurdity of a play like Rhinocéros made me think of existentialist books (Camus, Sartre) that I´ve read this year. He seems similar to Camus in his depiction of the absurdity of human existence, but I understand that he was not connected with the existentialists in his philosophical perspecitve. He seems more like a bit of a loner on the fringes, not really a part of any “movement,” and I feel strongly drawn to such writers. ( )

My first Ionesco book. I am not into the "Theater of the Absurd," but it did help greatly to understand some of the context this play was addressing - namely the rise of communism and the assimilation among society to those standards. With that in mind, it may be worth reading again sometime. ( )

Who is better: Ionesco or N.F.Simpson?