Dreams, Myth, and Politics in Ionesco's L'Homme aux valises

Dreams, Myth, and Politics in Ionesco's L'Homme aux valises DEBORAH B. GAENSBAUER "All my plays have their origin in two fundamental states of consciousness. ... an awareness of evanescence and solidity, of emptiness and of too much presence, of the unreal transparency of the world and its opacity, of light and thick darkness.'" In this, and many other similar and oft quoted pronouncements by lonesco, he is describing an affective swing from euphoria to despair. However, such descriptions present just as aptly important thematic shifts that have characterized much of Ionesco's recent theatre. Since the late '950s, Ionesco's writing has been increasingly dominated by two often conflicting interests: a preoccupation with dreams and dream theatre, and an obsession with politics. Indeed, the initial Berenger cycle was an early indicator of the inextricable melange of dreams and ideology that was to become a hallmark of Ionesco's theatre. The odious indifference to suffering in the Radiant City of Tueur sails gages (The Killer), "rhinoceritis," and the violence encountered by Berenger in his flight to the "Antimonde" in Le Pieton de I'air (A Stroll ill the Air), for example, justify the equation of"light" and "thick darkness" to dreams and politics in Ionesco's plays. The table of contents of Ionesco's Antidotes, a collection of articles, pamphlets, and polemical essays written since '960, provides a representative sample of the ideological concerns that inspired the profusion of unbenevolent magistrates. policemen, and soldiers in his theatre ofthe sixties and seventies.2 Characteristic titles in Antidotes include: "Fascism is Not Dead," "Hunting Down Man," "The Mirage of the Revolution," "Culture is Not an Affair of State," and "I Do Not Like Brecht." Ionesco's social, political, and literary attitudes were indelibly marked by his experience with the Nazification of Rumania during his adolescence and student years there. The situation was exacerbated by an unhappy relationship with his father, a Rumanian lawyer who managed not only to survive but even to thrive during both the Nazi regime and the Communist one that followed it. "Everything that I have done was done more or less against him," Ionesco tells us in his memoirs. Iooesco's L'Homme aux valises He wanted me to become abourgeois, amagistrate, asoldier, achemical engineer. Iwas horrified by prosecuting attorneys; Icouldn't lay eyes 00 ajudge without wanting to kill him. Icouldn't set eyes on an officer, acaptain shod in boots, without giving way to fits ofanger and despair. Everything that represented authority seemed to me, and is, unjust. .. . Iknow that every sort ofjustice is unjust and that every sort of authority is arbitrary. 3 The didactic intrusions in such plays as La Soifet lafaim (Thirst and Hunger) , Jeux de massacre (The Killing Game), Ce formidable bordel (This Hell of a Mess), or even the more recent, extremely personal Voyage chez les morts, abundantly illustrate the compelling nature of lonesco's rage spilling over into his theatre. lonesco tends to express his political opinions in a style as transparently dogmatic as that of any of the adversaries he denounces. Although not always harmoniously blended, lonesco's experiments with dream theatre, and his political and social preoccupations, stem from a single concern. In his initial joyous response to the Radiant City in The Killer, Berenger could be speaking for his author when he says: Come to think of it, it's quite wrong to talk of a world within and a world without, separate worlds; there's an initial impulse, ofcourse, which starts from us, and when it can't project itself, when it can't fulfLIl itself objectively, when there's not total agreement between myself inside and myself outside, then it's a catastrophe. ... 4 For lonesco, 'this is a frequently occurring catastrophe. He is haunted by the fragile status of the independent individual who refuses ideologies, whether of the left or right, in contemporary society which tends to emphasize the importance of collective processes over the exploration and sustenance of the individual psyche. In Present Past, Past Preselll, lonesco laments that "all the sincerity, all the authenticity, all the truth, everything that I have lived and felt all by myself is already disappearing in cliches...