Perhaps I abandoned criticism because I am full of contradictions, and when you write an essay, you are not supposed to contradict yourself. But in the theater, by inventing various characters, you can. My characters are contradictory not only in their language but in their behavior as well.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the idea that while essays call for coherence, theater allows for the expression of complex, contradictory characters.
Eugene Ionesco highlights the creative freedom inherent in theater, where characters can embody contradictions in thought and behavior, unlike the rigid structure expected in essay writing. He suggests that this complexity is essential in capturing the multifaceted nature of human experience and character development, allowing audiences to engage with the unpredictability of life.
In practice
This quote can be used in a theater class to discuss character development.
Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.
Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.
No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.
Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality.
Language should almost break up or explode in its fruitless effort to contain so many meanings.
The brightest light, the light of Italy, the purest sky of Scandinavia in the month of June is only a half-light when one compares it to the light of childhood. Even the nights were blue.
The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas.
Self-portraiture is something one should never get involved in, since it is wrong to lie even though one endeavours to tell the truth.
It seems to me it's a painter's duty to try to put an idea into his work.
Growing up, I never gave a thought to being a writer. All I ever wanted to be was a traveler and explorer. Science-fiction allowed me to go places that were otherwise inaccessible, which is why I started reading it.
Art is the most beautiful deception of all! And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory.
The dissolution of the pictorial into sheer texture, into apparently sheer sensation, into an accumulation of repetitions, seems to speak for and answer something profound in contemporary sensibility.
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