"Absurdity" was originally one of the universal characteristics of western modernist literature. However, the absurd drama is unique, which requires two completely different methods to understand the world and reconcile contradictions, and these two methods are fundamentally opposite. On the one hand, it thinks the world is absurd through a metaphysical rationalism, on the other hand, it wants to prove the result of this rationalism with the help of an absurd form; On the one hand, it has made a thorough and crazy attack on rationality, but its way of thinking is still rationalism; The victory of logical reasoning will prove that life is not completely meaningless, while the failure of reason will cancel the value and significance of absurd drama itself. In short, the absurd drama pursues a complete absurdity from content to form, but irrational symbols and expressions can never reach its clarity, clarity and credibility. It just tells us that not only everything in the world is absurd, but also absurdity cannot be expressed. This result may be unexpected by absurd playwrights, but is it still a higher sense of absurdity?
First, the absurd ontology
The word "absurd" evolved from Latin surdus (deafness) and refers to disharmony in music. Later, it was extended to mean "unreasonable and conventional, with disharmony, irrationality and illogicality". Of course, human absurd experiences and feelings have a long history. But for a long time, people have not realized this absurdity, so the reflection and expression of this experience and feeling in literature is only sporadic, partial and unconscious, and this absurdity is often eliminated by a powerful external force.
In ancient Greece, absurdity was explained by fate or Zeus; In the Middle Ages, it was played by God. After the Renaissance, it was quietly released under the brilliance of reason. In Ibsen's view, absurdity equals social "problem". Only in modern times, after Nietzsche declared that God was dead, people began to realize and appreciate this absurdity. Existentialism is called absurd philosophy. Sartre said that absurdity lies in chance. Camus said very specifically: "A world that can be explained by extremely indecent reasons is also a world that people are familiar with. However, once the world loses its fantasy and light, people will feel like strangers. He became a helpless exile because he was deprived of the memory of losing his hometown and lost hope for the future world. This kind of distance between people and life, the separation of actors and stage, really constitutes a sense of absurdity. " However, the significance of existentialism is not only to discover the absurdity of living conditions, but more importantly, because they try to deter absurdity with the last ray of rationality and surpass it. Relying on highly clear logical reasoning and colorful and lively language, they implicitly declared a recognized belief to people: logical words can provide correct answers, and the analysis of language can reveal basic concepts. After revealing the absurdity, existentialists sublate it to restore the authority of reason. Although the future may not be bright, existentialists never give up their efforts and pursuits. It's like slave labor in Sisyphus. Although the stone was destined to roll down the mountain, he pushed it up step by step. Since then, the absurd dramatists have taken another big step towards absurdity. At this time, the rational glimmer of existentialism was completely obscured by absurdity. Human beings are born in absurdity, and will always be in absurdity and doomed. Yunescu said: "What makes me feel ridiculous is not any social system, but people themselves." "No social system can save us from the pain of life and the fear of death. In this way, after pushing everything to absurdity, the absurd drama itself fell into the trap of its own painstaking design. Faced with this ubiquitous absurdity, people have to give up any form of effort and pursuit and wait for death. Therefore, absurdity has become a universal experience and has been endowed with ontological significance.
However, what really makes us feel ridiculous is this conclusion of the absurd drama, which is the result of long-term rational thinking by playwrights, although they think that rationality itself is absurd. Is this their failure or their success? It's like a poem recited by Yunescu's maid Mary in his famous play The Bald Singer:
fire
Dust is bright and colorful.
Twinkling in the jungle
A stone caught fire.
The castle is on fire.
The forest is on fire.
This man is on fire.
That woman is on fire.
The bird is on fire.
The fish caught fire, too.
The water is on fire.
On fire
Ash is on fire, too.
On fire
It's all on fire.
Fire and fire.
Poetry is absurd, just like its drama, but in this absurdity of "fire and fire", isn't there a vivid and true contrast to the living conditions of modern westerners?
The Theatre of the Absurd is a new drama school that appeared on the stage of Paris drama after the Second World War. After the Second World War, people's concepts have undergone fundamental changes: "It realized that the real things and unshakable basic concepts of past dynasties have been swept away; After investigation, they are regarded as nothingness; They are belittled and even regarded as childish fantasies. It was not until the end of World War II that the decline of religious belief was noticed, because it was secretly replaced by progressive, nationalist and countless totalitarian fallacies. All this was destroyed by the war. " Therefore, Yunescu said: "In such a world that now seems illusory and false, all the facts of historical existence surprise us. There, all human behaviors are absurd, all history is absolutely useless, and all reality and language seem to have lost contact with each other, disintegrated and collapsed. The world feels heavy, and the universe is squeezing me. A curtain, or a nonexistent wall, stands between me and the world; Matter fills all corners and all spaces, and the world becomes a suffocating dungeon. "
Second, the comedy of tragedy.
The themes and thoughts expressed by the absurd playwrights generally belong to the category of tragedy, but they never complete the harmony and unity of content and form in the form of tragedy, but always comedy all this with a playful and nihilistic attitude.
Absurd drama is not realistic drama. Its philosophical basis is existentialism and irrationalism, and its cultural tradition is anti-traditional. Therefore, we can't simply use the aesthetic principles of realism and traditional drama theory to measure the absurd drama. Absurd playwrights pay attention to the serious problems of human existence, and they try to "turn the drowsiness of modern people into excitement", and the depths of their works are often filled with a strong fog of sadness. But on the stage, it is a form of comedy and sometimes even a form of farce. One of Beckett's characters said, "Nothing is more ridiculous than misfortune." After experiencing human tragedy, the absurd playwright finally understood Nietzsche's wonderful meditation: "I'm afraid I understand why human beings are the only animals that can laugh." Because only when he is in great pain will he invent laughter helplessly. "This is the main feature of the theater of the absurd, which can not be summarized by the integration of tragicomedy and comedy in the general sense.
In Yunescu's view, "comedy is tragedy, and human tragedy is ridicule." For modern critical thinking, nothing can be completely taken seriously, and nothing can be completely relaxed. "Here, tragedy and comedy are integrated. Tragedy is comedy, and we look at everything from a comedy perspective. He "tried to deal with the absurd and painful drama of life with comedy". Compared with the comedy of tragedy, this is a big step towards absurdity. His famous play The Bald Singer is named after an actor who mispronounced his lines. The script is mainly about a couple who have lived together for many years and have never met before. A pair of lovers know each other for a long time before they know who they are. The characters in the play "told the basic and clear truth over and over again and turned it into nonsense." "However, the script shows such a serious theme: the world is an endless nightmare; Life is full of triviality, boredom, mediocrity and emptiness. There is no life, no understanding and no hope. But people get used to it and turn a blind eye. This is the real tragedy! However, this tragedy is expressed in the following lines:
Mrs Martin: I can buy a knife for my brother, but you can't buy Ireland for your grandfather.
Mr. Smith: People can walk with their feet, but they can use electricity and coal to keep warm.
Mr Martin: If you sell a cow today, you will have an egg tomorrow.
Mrs Smith: I just look at the street when I'm bored.
This kind of dialogue really makes the audience puzzled and at a loss. The screenwriter of the script takes away the meaning of the language, which makes the characters repeat constantly, that is, some inverted, fragmented, irrelevant, contradictory and nonsense dreams and nonsense. After the audience laughed, they realized the emptiness and absurdity behind the language and had to think deeply. This is the tragic content contained in the comedy effect.
Third, the symbolization of the stage
There is no plot, no characters, no theme or even normal language on the stage of the absurd drama. It completely subverts the stage of traditional drama, so what is left of it? This is mainly a symbolic stage. As we know, the lighting, scenery, effects, costumes, props and so on of traditional realistic drama are all subject to the general principles of realistic art, aiming at creating a real and typical environment and atmosphere. It is this real and typical environment and atmosphere that the absurd drama opposes. They think that the noumenon of the world is absurd, so it is also absurd as a stage of drama. The artist's task is to grasp the world through metaphor. Yunescu said: "I tried to externalize the clumsiness of the characters through objects, let the stage props speak and turn the actions into visual images ... that's how I tried to expand the drama language." In this way, the absurd playwrights attach great importance to the intuitive symbolic role of scenes, lights, sounds, props and costumes. They bring lifeless props to life, so that the audience can hear the thunder outside the actor's lines.
What the audience sees on the stage of the absurd drama is just a symbol. The rhinoceros in Taiwan Province symbolizes the terrible infectious disease of fascism; Eggs are everywhere-a symbol of the oppression of people by the continuous production of materials; A person locked in a garbage can, a half-buried person, and a huge mouth separated from his body-a symbol that modern people can neither know the world nor act, and can only repeat empty words and lies indefinitely with one mouth; Infinitely increasing furniture-a symbol of people being materialized; The ever-expanding corpse symbolizes that there is no life in this world, only death is expanding and devouring everything ... Absurd drama does not reflect specific events, people's specific experiences and destiny, and aims to reveal the living state of human beings. As a result, the concrete and real scenery was lost on the stage and replaced by a metaphorical picture parallel to reality. This symbolic stage extends the dramatic language, enlarges the dramatic effect, and gives the audience a very strong shock and deep impression.
The main features of the above-mentioned absurd drama, the first point is the core, not the content; The second point is the key, which is the intermediary; The third point is complementarity and form. Of course, they are an inseparable whole. Absurd ontology not only does not completely deny the absurd drama, but also constitutes the significance and value of the absurd drama, which is its absurd rationality; It is absurd to claim that all understanding and expression are impossible, which has aroused widespread concern and condemnation in the world, so that Beckett won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969 and Eunescu entered the French Academy in 1970, which is incomprehensible; Absurd drama has developed from anti-tradition to becoming a part of tradition, and its "nothing is meaningful" has caused extensive and lasting influence and function, which is meaningless. Absurd drama subverts the stage of traditional drama, but on this upside-down stage, absurd dramatists still have a vast world to gallop freely and display their talents.