The Phenomenon of the Absurd

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