MARGUERITE, se dirigeant vers le Roi : Sire, je dois vous mettre au courant. MARIE : Non, taisez-vous. MARGUERITE, 脿 Marie : Taisez-vous. MARIE, au Roi : Ce n'est pas vrai ce qu'elle dit. LE ROI : Au courant de quoi ? Qu'est-ce qui n'est pas vrai ? Marie, pourquoi cet air d茅sol茅 ? Que vous arrive-t-il ? MARGUERITE, au Roi : Sire, on doit vous annoncer que vous allez mourir. LE MEDECIN : H茅las, oui, Majest茅.
Eug猫ne Ionesco, born Eugen Ionescu, was a Romanian playwright and dramatist; one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd. Beyond ridiculing the most banal situations, Ionesco's plays depict in a tangible way the solitude and insignificance of human existence.
A once mighty king is dying. He has always been "engrossed in ruling his kingdom," but now he is all but dead. Worse, the kingdom, which allegedly flourished in the recent past, mirrors the condition of its ruler. Disasters of various kinds are coming thick and fast. Its population is rapidly shrinking, its borders are violated. Nothing is working as it should.
The king is perfectly aware that he has only around one hour left to live. His time is running out. The king's entourage knows this as well. Everyone present - his two wives, his doctor, and servants - waits for their sovereign to cease to be.
This play features absurdity that borders on reality. Ionesco, the archbishop of the paradox, skillfully combines the reign of absurdity with a sharp satire on autocratic dictatorships and their cult of personality. One person, no matter how talented he or she is or was or may have been, is a fallible human being. He or she should not be the linchpin on which everything in a state depends.
The king's ordeal also suggests that hardly anyone can be prepared to leave this world. The king must let go of all his desires or, as his queen puts it, stop "clinging to pictures of the outside world."
The dialogues are at once funny and rueful. They combine tragedy with comedy and are relatable despite their seeming lack of sense. Several layers hidden behind often ironic phrases can be unearthed without much difficulty.
Let's have a look at a few examples.
Now it's so normal to be abnormal, there's no such thing as abnormality. So that's straightened that out.
KING: It hurts to move my arms, too. Does that mean it's starting? No. Why was I born if it wasn't forever? Damn my parents! What a joke, what a farce! I came into the world five minutes ago. I got married three minutes ago. MARGUERITE: Two hundred and eighty-three years. KING: I came to the throne two and a half minutes ago. MARGUERITE: Two hundred and seventy-seven years and three months. KING: Never had time to say knife! Never had time to get to know life. MARGUERITE: He never even tried. MARIE: It was like a brisk walk through a flowery lane, a promise that's broken, a smile that fades. MARGUERITE (to the DOCTOR, continuing): Yet he had the greatest experts to tell him all about it. Theologians, people of experience, and books he never read. KING: I never had the time. MARGUERITE: You used to say you had all the time in the world. KING: I never had the time, I never had the time, I never had the time!
Absurd? Or just another great way of demonstration how life is painful and unmerciful, in the same way as Kafka and Beckett did? I read this book when I finishing my French course in 1989 (I was 18) and maybe not as mature to see that this talks about how unprepared we are for certain aspects of life. It is not about the death of a king. This death only illustrates absurdly what we should read between the lines. This is so much more about how we let ourselves be conducted peaceful and unquestioned all our lives to understand life itself and then when faced with death, we see that we have never understood nothing of it and we are still unprepared for the pain or bereavement. Or it could be seen as how difficult is to part from a loved one, not only by death, but by a divorce or when our children go to live their own lives. How should we deal with it? How should we proceed when everything seems to be falling apart, but yet it's just life taking its inevitable course of disintegration and reshaping itself. An obligatory for classic lovers.
Il sera une page dans un livre de dix mille pages que l'on mettra dans une biblioth猫que qui aura un million de livres, une biblioth猫que parmi un million de biblioth猫ques.
脠 la morte dell'umanit脿, di un'esistenza "finita" in tutte le sue forme. L'umana condizione della precariet脿, la paura dell'oblio e dello scorrere inesorabile del tempo. Ionesco riesce ad essere visionario ma essenziale; attraverso un linguaggio disarticolato, nonsense e paradossi ti avviluppa in un dibattito esistenziale fino a scuotere i pensieri del lettore, che inevitabilmente si trova a fare i conti con la verit脿. La stessa verit脿 che il Re rifiuta di vedere.Con un ritmo sempre pi霉 incalzante, questo testo teatrale rievoca immagini metafisiche senza tregua: sconvolge, destruttura, impietosisce,lacera l'animo di ognuno di noi, che catarticamente si abbandona all'inevitabile esito dell'opera.
"l'unica grandezza pu貌 consistere soltanto nell'accettazione del non essere"
I read this one or two sentences a day, four of four or five years. It was pretty easy to follow. The king dies -- not to give away the whole plot. When I started it, the play seemed absolutely an attack on George W. Bush. By the end, Bush had been banished by history, and it now seemed a meditation on mortality. It has that near-mysticism that is "modernism," and perhaps the story never quite resolves itself. But it's great in French. Though perhaps everything is great in French. Everything I read, anyway.
I read this book for so long, that it was actually produced, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Of course, I didn't see it. Because I was still reading it.
Ionesco is very helpful on the question: "Everything is falling apart. But how do we proceed?" I think he's right, you just deny everything, and solve the immediate little problems.
It's a meditation on divorce, and how ultimately divorce is impossible.
Comment dire beaucoup de n'importe quoi tout en disant des choses tr猫s profondes. C'est tr猫s fort de parler de la peur de mourir (notamment) de cette fa莽on. Que la vie est absurde, et que les humains sont absurdes ! J'ai trouv茅 cette pi猫ce d'autant plus int茅ressante 脿 lire de par mes croyances personnelles (celle que nous sommes pi茅g茅s sur Terre et que la r茅incarnation se fait souvent contre notre gr茅 et nous emp锚che de retourner l脿 o霉 l'on vient vraiment).
The once mighty king has only one hour to live. The signs where there to see: The once prospering kingdom lies in ruins, the people fled the realm and the monarch himself has seen better days, too. But know that his end is near, he doesn't want to go, denying the undeniable, fighting the invincible and finally accepting the inevitable.
It is a tale of decay that works on two levels. It is a satire on authritarian political regimes and how they struggle to keep control even over a reality beyond their reach. On a more existential level, it is a tale about how humanity and death. We might feel like the crown of creation, but we're surely not (except in the sense of the dental crown as German comedian Jochen Malmsheimer once pointed out: a laborious copying of nature to compensate for erosive surface damage). Life can be painful and death inevitable and without graspable sense to us. It is the way it is. We will all perish.
Compared to other Ionesco plays I read, it is less funny and less obviously absurd. It is a rather straightforward play with a absurd detail here and there. To me, it lacked a bit the drive of his other works, but I liked the genuinly sad moments that were sprinkled throughout the text. It gives you something to think about, but perhaps there is enough crisis all around at the moment so I would have prefered something a bit more lighthearted? Well, there will has to be a reread at some point in the future to decide that.
Il re sta morendo. Il suo regno si sta sbriciolando insieme a lui. Contava nove miliardi di abitanti, ora sono appena un migliaio, e sembra pieno di buchi, 猫 diventato piccolissimo, tra poco praticamente non esister脿 pi霉. Probabilmente morir脿 insieme al re.
Il re per貌 non vuole morire, si rifiuta, non accetta minimamente la sua sorte. Ha vissuto centinaia di anni e ha sempre rimandato il momento di pensare alla morte, perch茅 ci sarebbe stato tempo. Al re avevano promesso che sarebbe morto quando fosse stato lui stesso a deciderlo. Ma invece lo faranno morire prima, alla fine dello spettacolo (con conto alla rovescia della regina Margherita, prima moglie del re, nel ruolo di Parca), perch茅 lui non si 猫 deciso e si 猫 芦impantanato nel fango tiepido dei vivi禄. La regina Maria, seconda moglie del re e prima nel suo cuore, cerca di farlo vivere attraverso il suo amore, ma in ultima analisi si rivela solo come un'egoista incapace di vivere senza l'amore del re, vorrebbe che anche negli ultimi istanti della sua vita il re pensasse a lei.
Una metafora della vita di ogni uomo, che 猫 destinata per forza a finire, e non certo dopo trecento anni.
芦Egli sar脿 una pagina in un libro di diecimila pagine collocato in una biblioteca di un milione di libri, una biblioteca tra un milione di biblioteche.禄
2007. I have made the mistake of going to a matinee performance and my heart sinks before an absurd word has been spoken. I find myself sitting in front of a group of maybe 20 kids with Down Syndrome. I don't even know any theatre going adults who admit to liking Theatre of the Absurd and who on earth could possibly have thought these kids would be an exception.
Oh. But oh. Geoffrey Rush is something special. He had the entire audience eating from the palm of his hand and the kids behind me were riveted throughout. I've never seen anybody enjoy theatre as much as they did this day.
The play, translated by Geoffrey Rush and Neil Armfield, had never been produced in Australia before. Hard to understand why as it is easy going stuff as Theatre of the Absurd goes. The audience was there to see Geoffrey - I imagine plenty of them had never been in a theatre. They were not to be disappointed. Exit the King is a one person show where the rest of the case is no more than accoutrements. Sorry, Susan Sarandon, you're gorgeous and you get some good lines, but still.
I wonder if he did this when it was on Broadway: at some point he spluttered a drink of water all over a lady in the front row. By way of apology he waggled his finger at her and said 'That's what you get for being overexcited and booking your seat too early.' Audience goes wild. How clever, I think to myself. Ah, I find out from Felicity, who is wealthy enough to see it twice. He does that every night.
Nous vivons notre vie paisiblement, sans trop nous poser de question et un jour, face 脿 la mort, nous r茅alisons l'茅tendue de notre fragilit茅 et de notre ignorance. Comment faire lorsque notre monde s'effondre lentement et que d'autres continuent de vivre et d'锚tre heureux sans nous ? "Pourquoi suis-je n茅 si ce n'茅tais pas pour toujours ? [...] Je suis venu au monde il y a cinq minutes, je me suis mari茅 il y a trois minutes. Je suis mont茅 au tr么ne il y a deux minutes et demie. Pas eu le temps de dire ouf ! Je n'ai pas eu le temps de conna卯tre la vie."
Comment le monde ose-t-il continuer son chemin sans nous ? Au final nous sommes et serons tous ce roi qui se meurt, ce n'est qu'une question de minutes.
The second and possibly last entry in my ill fated "Read A Play Every Friday" series. Geoffrey Rush won a Tony for his role as the king in the recent New York revival of this so I thought it would be a fitting choice. I love pretty much anything Ionesco does so it was no surprise that I loved it. Very minimal (of course) but detailed account of the literal disintegration of every aspect of the king: his kingdom, attendants, lovers, and self. Existential futility to the extreme and naturally not for all tastes but if that's your cup of tea (oh baby, and it's mine) then this will find a well deserved place on your bookshelf.
It's about death. Yet it's not a tragedy. I'd never read a play, but this one, from theater of the Absurd was genuinely phenomenal.
It's a play that makes you think and return on a lot of points of your existence. It shows how we're never ready to death, how death takes us by surprise and catches us off guard...
I enjoyed this play soo much and I do truly recommend it. Plus it's a one-day reading !
Une pi猫ce tr猫s psychologique, tr猫s intime, sur l'agonie du roi B茅renger et ses r茅criminations.
On peut le rapprocher de La mort d'Ivan Ilitch de L茅on Tolsto茂 pour le d茅bat int茅rieur contradictoire autour de la mort, de L'茅cume des jours de Boris Vian pour la d茅cr茅pitude physique du roi que redouble la d茅cr茅pitude de son environnement.
I was very impressed that Ionesco was able to write a whole play on the last hour of a narcissistic tyrant! Like his other work, the text tends to be farcical but the farce masks the tragedy of authoritarian rulers, the effect they have on their kingdoms and the banal absurdity of death. If you enjoy the absurd, there is a good chance that you will enjoy this play. I certainly did.
If you forget me, if you abandon me, I no longer exist, I am nothing.
3.5 - cool plot but didn't love how the final scene was staged or the repetitious dialogue. always humbling to find out theatre of the absurd is, indeed, absurd.
durant ma lecture, j'ai pris des notes dans mon carnet de notes (chose que je fais pour 茅viter l'exc猫s d'annotation dans mes livres) avec un point de vie pr茅cis puisque c'茅tait le th猫me que j'avais cru bien identifier. je crois que cette pi猫ce absurde allait 锚tre une critique sur l'in茅vitable destruction du capitalisme et les effets sur l'environement - un vrai parall猫le. apr猫s tout, j'ai toujours eu le talent de trouver une m茅taphore anti-capitaliste partout.
je suis all茅 voir sur l'internet. j'ai r茅alis茅 que j'ai regard茅 un peu trop loin. j'ai eu tort. c'est tout simple. en vrai, ionesco a peintur茅 l'humain face 脿 la mort et l'absurdit茅 de la mort. j'ai tr猫s honn锚tement peu 脿 dire puisque j'ai tout analyser de travers. j'ai tellement cru 脿 mon point de vue originel, je ne peux en bonne foi 茅crire une analyse sur la mort alors qu'elle n'a pas 茅t茅 mon focus. question d'int茅grit茅 intellectuelle. oh j'茅tais pr锚te 脿 茅crire une dissertation! j'ai au moins correctement identifier les bons id茅aux au bon personnage (marguerite - la raison, marie - la foi aveugle, le garde - l'arm茅e et puis aussi un peu la presse et juliette - l'芒me du peuple). puisque je n'ai pas vu les v茅ritables motifs de cette pi猫ce dans cette premi猫re lecture, je sens que je ne peux pas examiner proprement ce que je pensais, sachant que ce n'茅tait pas intentionnel du cot茅 de ionesco et qu'alors, c'est juste moi qui trouve 脿 nouveau une m茅taphore contre le capitalisme dans tout.
j'ai remarqu茅 que le nom b茅renger et son association 脿 l'humanit茅 est repris souvent par ionesco lui-m锚me (ex: rhinoc茅ros). en somme, si mon analyse originel 茅tait bon, j'aurais 茅t茅 tr猫s contente mais je suis tellement d茅莽ue d'avoir manqu茅 le th猫me en entier. je crois que celui-ci se trouve 脿 3.5 茅toiles pour la premi猫re fois. je ne fais jamais de .5 dans mes 茅toiles mais je fais l'exception. 脿 relire.
U ovoj Ionescovoj tragikomediji problematizira se 膷ovjekova(u ovom slu膷aju kraljeva) nespremnost da se suo膷i sa smr膰u, kroz cijelu igru kralj se koprca u blatu kojeg si je sam stvorio u svojoj "vi拧estoljetnoj" vladavini. Kraljeva oholost ne dopu拧ta mu da shvati da mu se nazire kraj, usprkos svim o膷itim znakovima i doktorovoj dijagnozi on nos uzdi啪e visoko i dr啪i za sebe da je besmrtan. Likovi dviju kraljica su suvi拧e naporni i nezanimljivi sem zadnje scene sa Margaretom, dok lije膷nik, a ponajvi拧e stra啪ar slu啪e za humoristi膷ki odu拧ak. Pripominjem da Ionesco, za moj ukus, previ拧e razvla膷i radnju bez potrebe i filozofira u suho.
"Kad kraljevi umiru, oni se hvataju za zidove, za drve膰e, za fontane, za Mjesec; oni se hvataju..."
Deuxi猫me pi猫ce de Ionesco que je lis et elle confirme mon appr茅ciation de ses 艙uvres. Tr猫s amusant tout en abordant un sujet compliqu茅 comme la mort. La mort d'un roi mais aussi de tout un royaume. Cela m'a fait penser 脿 Macbeth, o霉 la nature d茅p茅rit une fois le roi mort. Et bien s没r le fait que le roi ne pourra pas 茅chapper 脿 son destin de mourir "脿 la fin du spectacle" me rappelle n'importe quelle trag茅die: un destin in茅vitable.
DOCTOR: He will be a page in a book of ten thousand pages in one of a million l ibraries wh ich has a million books. JULIETTE: It won't be easy to find that page again. [DocToR : Oh yes, you ' l l find it catalogued by subject matter, in alphabetical order . . . until the day comes when the paper's turned to dust . . . unless it's destroyed by fire. Libraries often go up in smoke.]