Literature has always offered a platform for the human mind to run wild – an outlet to express its best thoughts, its worst concerns and even its most nonsensical perspectives. The concept of the ‘absurd’ is one such perspective that a group of philosophers and writers (especially dramatists) began to embrace in the 20th century.
In short, one who holds an absurdist perspective believes that human existence is essentially absurd, unreasonable and is permanently characterised by isolation. This world in which human beings thrive is inherently alien to them. Therefore the search for any meaning in our existence is itself meaningless and futile.
As a Philosophical Viewpoint
Though its origins can be traced back to the 19th century Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, it was the widespread chaos in the aftermath of the Second World War that triggered the spread of this idea in the realms of fiction and drama since 1940s. The concept is very closely related to and partly develops from the philosophies of existentialism and nihilism as well. Albert Camus’s essay The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) is one of its defining texts. For Camus, who was one of the key existentialist philosophers, there is nothing more realistic than to accept the fact that the true state of life is absurd. This conflict between man’s search for meaning and the universe devoid of any inherent meaning is inevitable. Hence, absurdity should not be negatively equated with ‘being ridiculous’. Camus lists down three ways in which an individual comes to terms with the realisation that absurdity is inevitable in human existence: (i) suicide, when one admits that life is either too much or not worth living, (ii) a leap of faith, when one believes in an aesthetic or ethical life beyond a rational life, and finally, (iii) acceptance, when one decides to embrace his/her absurd condition. According to Camus, man’s true freedom comes with the choosing of the third option.
Here is an excerpt from Camus’ The Outsider (1942):
“Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says: Your mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Deep sympathy. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could’ve been yesterday.”
On the Stage
It was Martin Julius Essin, a British dramatist who coined the term ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ in his 1962 book, a theoretical work of the same title. In the work, he defines the term as follows:
“The Theatre of the Absurd strives to express its sense of the senselessness of the human condition and the inadequacy of the rational approach by the open abandonment of rational devices and discursive thought.”
Some of the major playwrights belonging to the Absurdist school of drama include Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot), Harold Pinter (The Homecoming), Eugene Ionesco (The Bald Soprano), Arthur Adamov (The Invasion), Jean Genet (The Balcony), Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead) and Fernando Arrabal (The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria). The chaos on the stage is as intense as the chaos outside, of the real world: a series of meaningless conversations, nonsensical and purposeless behaviour, unrealistic comic/horrifying settings, a mockery of the spoken word with absolute neglect towards character development and stage directions. It pays no heed to commonsensical notions of time and place.
Surprisingly (or maybe not), these plays drew large audiences who were often unable to make head or tail of what was happening on the stage but were all set to experience utter nonsense and infinite bewilderment all through the length of the play. One might witness surreal creatures as in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis or women with three noses as in Ionesco’s Jack, or the Submission or abrupt role reversals as in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, a landmark in the absurdist school of theatre or even bizarre conversations between people well-familiar to each other as if they have never known each other, as in Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano.
Absurdism cannot, however, be mistaken for an idea or a concept in itself. As Ionesco succinctly puts it, it is an ‘anti-idea’, ‘anti-play’ or ‘anti-theatre’, since the genre does not meet any conventional expectations from a theatrical performance.
References
https://nptel.ac.in/courses/109106054/Chapter%205%20theatre%20of%20the%20absurd.pdf
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil360/16.%20Myth%20of%20Sisyphus.pdf
http://web.iitd.ac.in/~angelie/courses_files/TOA/esslin%20essay%20tdr.pdf
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Absurdism
Article by Aswathy Venugopal
Poster by Namrata Nirmal
Article 19 