YOUNG EUGEN IONESCU BETWEEN DADA EXISTENTIALISM AND THE BALKAN TRADITION OF THE ABSURD

• Authors: Paulll Cernat
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This study focuses on the relationship between the early writing of Romanian author Eugen Ionescu and his avant-garde plays, from the perspective of the relationship with the Romanian tradition of the absurd. On the one hand, the study discusses the playwright ś, the poet ś and the essayist ´s particular affinity with the Dada spirit of Tristan Tzara and Urmuz. However, on the other hand, through his constant admiration for Ion Luca Caragiale, whom he considered the greatest unknown playwright in the world, Ionescu regains a repressed, but authentic and productive Balkan tradition, located somewhere between traditionalism and modernism, which was an object of obsession for the intellectuals in interwar Romania. By assuming and exporting it to the Parisian stage, the author ś ambiguous Romanian and French identity tries to break free from the complex of belonging to a peripheral culture, lacking access to universality. The fusion between Dadaist playful anarchism and the Balkan tradition of the absurd implies, in Ionescu ś case, the discovery and recovery of an alternative modernity, with a considerable subversive potential. Its elements can be found in his essay – volume Nu, whose playful and nonconformist existentialism, with a metaphysical scent and a deconstructive vitality, contains the embryo of all the playwright ś later qualities, which can be traced to his La cantatrice chauve (The Bald Soprano) and La lecon (The lesson).

Keywords

EN

EUGEN IONESCU; DADA EXISTENTIALISM; BALKAN; ROMANIA; ABSURDISM; MODERNISM; CULTURAL IDENTITY

• Publisher: Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: World Literature Studies
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 7 (24)
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 36 – 48

Contributors

author

Paulll Cernat

• Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest, 4-12 Regina Elisabeta Blvd., 010017 Bucharest, Romania