He was condemned for life to ceaselessly roll a rock to the
top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight and he
would start back to reach the bottom of the mountain to set on his task again
Three humans reached hell and were conducted into a room.
They sat for long awaiting the torturer, but to their bewilderment the room was
finally locked from outside and they realized that with just the three of them
in the room they were to torture each other.
Two men meet on a park bench
in New York City's Central Park. Jerry is desperate to have a meaningful
conversation with another human being. He intrudes on Peter's peaceful state by
interrogating him and forcing him to listen to stories from his life. The final
connection is established when Jerry impales himself on the knife held in
Peter’s hand.
Stories with psychological
and philosophical inflections written and performed on stage perplexed
audiences with their absurd content and intent. Theatre of the absurd was born
after World War 2 but the writings and the philosophy existed much before the
time and came to be known as existential ism. The main proponents of the
philosophy being Kierkegaard, Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre and Friedrich
Nietzsche.
What is absurdity? It exists
in a juxtaposition. Man wants unity, closure and definitive answers to his role
in the universe. The mute and silent universe goes about its work without
providing him any concrete solutions. As such, the absurd does
not exist either in man or in the universe, but in the confrontation between
the two. If we try to reconcile the conflict between our need for answers and
the world's silence we will be evading the absurd rather than confronting it.
Camus characterizes our confrontation with the absurd with an absence of hope,
continual rejection, and conscious dissatisfaction. Living with this conflict
is neither pleasant nor easy, but trying to overcome the conflict does not
answer so much as it negates the problem of the absurd.
I watched the life and times of Claude Achille Debussy to
mark his Sesquicentennial , last weekend at Fundasco Oriente hosted by none other than
Dr Luis Diaz. Debussy lived when impressionism was at its peak and his musical
scores are inspired equally by poets, writers and artists. No doubt when man
became aware of his absurdity, he gave it expression through various mediums of
arts, writing and philosophy.
Kierkegaard’s work ‘Fear and Trembling’ and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s ‘Crime and
Punishment’ and many others reconcile the tension making the
"leap of faith" into God, where they identify the irrational with
faith and with God and redemption of man through acceptance and grace. But
Camus and Nietzsche are interested in whether we can live with the feeling of
absurdity, not whether we can overcome it. Milan Kundera’s ‘The Unbearable
Lightness of Being’ compares and contrasts light and heavy characters. The
former beings live a full life indulging their senses. Self-centeredness,
detachment and the present moment to be explored and lived to its hilt form
their guiding principle in life. They are not guided by regret, sin, guilt or
an afterlife. The latter are bound by duty, honor and truth and their karma.
The ultimate climax nonetheless, does not render any one character contented
and happy with their choices.
The Theatre of the Absurd is fallout of the above philosophy
and the repercussions of the The World Wars – an artistic expression akin to
Marcel Duchamp’s controversial works and T.S Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’. The
Theatre of the Absurd shows the failure of man without recommending a solution.
The plays vary in their execution and presentation but the common thread that
ties them together is parody, with tragic and abysmal scenes; characters caught
in hopeless situations performing repetitive meaningless actions. Playwrights
commonly associated with the Theatre of the Absurd include Samuel Beckett, Jean
Genet, Harold Pinter and Edward Albee to name a few.
Kafkaesque, a repertoire of the absurd touched its zenith
with the story ‘The Metamorphosis’. An extraordinary transformation of the
protagonist Gregor Samsa into a giant insect is relayed in a mundane banal tone
highlighting the absurd and chaotic in an everyday home with the kitsch of huge
debts and themes of alienation and isolation. The evolving feelings of love and
care juxtaposed with animal yearnings of food and shelter in Gregor, the insect
(whose very sight and habits disconnect him from the family he so much cared
for) deliver him in the end. Horrified by his appearance and transition from a
bread winner to a grotesque burden and a liability his family distances itself
from him and his death releases the family to better days. In a way the story
questions the consciousness of humans versus the animal world which is devoid
of it.
Nietzsche’s ‘Genealogy of Morality’ questions the birth of
the concepts of ‘Good and Evil’. Man’s search for meaning is an exercise in
futility because life is inherently meaningless and truth is only subjective.
He fosters the concept of self actualization; and terms it the phenomenon of
the OVERMAN. When man reined in his animal instincts and harnessed his energy
into civilizations, discoveries and science; that was his first step towards
self overcoming. Nihilism which gripped mankind with advancing science can be
neutralized if man turns inwards and fights the greatest of battles with his
will power and questions his own assumptions, prejudices and beliefs. The
overman loves life warts and all; indulging in life affirming activities.
Lets talk something more about the aforementioned artist
Marcel Duchamp and the Dadaist movement in modern art history. The submission
of an exhibit titled "Fountain", a so called readymade inverted
urinal to the Society of Independent Artists, caused waves in the artistic
world. Dadaism appeared to reject logic and embrace chaos and irrationality. It
countered everything that art had stood for all these years. It was not art but
anti art ; It ignored aesthetics and offended and shocked the viewer rather
than please the sensibilities. A strong and revolutionary statement of the
perception of the times(world war 1).
The Dadaists parleyed into surrealism with continuing political
instability and the burgeoning second global war, indicative of a total
collapse of human civilization. Surrealists like Salvador Dali and Max Ernst
attempted to mirror the subconscious mind the bedrock of anxieties, complexes,
dreams and fantasies to address the unease they felt about the world's
uncertainties. They were interested in exposing the complex and repressed inner
worlds of sexuality, desire, and violence.
The treatise on absurdity negates all human effort to find
rationality and order in their lives. However, because we have difficulty
accepting this notion, we constantly attempt to identify or create rational
structure and meaning in our lives. One irrevocable truth stares us in the face
constantly; that which takes birth has to die; but we spend our entire lives
resisting it. It is so easy to say LET GO; but so difficult to bring it into
practice. Live the ambiguity wherein lies the truth and ephemeral beauty of
life!
True to an absurd play which is cyclic at most times, I take
you back to the three stories at the beginning from where we started the
narrative. The reader if intrigued by the situational paradox that the stories
open up, can set on a trail to discover their sources wherein your journey to
the ABSURD will begin afresh. Welcome to the whirlpool; The Phenomenon of the
Absurd!
Jugneeta.susan@gmail.com
– an academician, who conducts book reading workshops on classics, fiction and
non-fiction books
