Eugene IONESCO (1912-1994). Signed autograph... - Lot 112 - Ader

Eugene IONESCO (1912-1994). Signed autograph manuscript, Avant-garde and tradition, [1958 ?] ; 5 pages and a half in-4 with some erasures and corrections (typograph marks, title strikethrough). Very interesting text on the theatre and the avant-garde, and on Samuel Beckett. Probably intended for Les Lettres françaises of April 10, 1958, for the survey: "What is the avant-garde in 1958? " " When I write, I don't ask myself the problem of whether "I am avant-garde". I try to say how the world appears to me, what it seems to me to be, as sincerely as possible, without concern for propaganda, without intention of directing the consciences of contemporaries. I try to be an objective witness in my subjectivity. Since I write for the theatre, I am only concerned with personifying, embodying a comic and tragic sense of reality at the same time. ... To want to be in the avant-garde before writing, not to want to be in it, to refuse or choose an avant-garde is, for a creator, to take things in the wrong direction"... He evokes an incident from his childhood, the memory of which provokes the thought of death, and a feeling of vertigo and anguish: "This vision of the world and of death is realistic, ancient and contemporary (Solomon, Buddha, Shakespeare, Saint John of the Cross, Proust, Flaubert, Brecht, Chekov...). "The "avant-garde" is thus only the current, historical expression of an inactual actuality (if I may say so), of a trans-historical reality. The value of Beckett's Endgame, for example, lies in the fact that it is closer to the Book of Job than to boulevard plays or chansonniers. ...] What is called "avant-garde" is only interesting if it is a return to the sources; if it joins a living tradition, through a sclerotic traditionalism, through the academisms it denies. All that is needed is a presence, a blind sincerity, and by this very fact clairvoyant, to be of its time: one is (through language), or one is not, almost naturally. One has the impression, also, that the more one is of one's time, the more one is of all times (if one breaks the crust of superficial actuality). ...] The youngest, newest works of art are recognizable and speak to all eras. Yes, King Solomon is my leader; and Job, this contemporary of Beckett. »