Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco (1909–1994) co-founded the theater of the absurd with Beckett. His plays strip language of meaning while filling it with sound — conversation as noise, logic as nonsense.
Language as nonsense
The Bald Soprano (1950) is a play of middle-class couples whose conversation produces no communication. Phrases repeat, logic collapses, characters arrive at nothing. Ionesco saw conventional social speech as already absurd and simply pushed it further.
Rhinoceros
In Rhinoceros, townsfolk gradually transform into rhinoceroses. The lone holdout, Bérenger, is the only one left who hasn't conformed to the herd. The play reads as an allegory of conformity and fascism — but Ionesco delivers it as farce.
Repetition as meaning
Ionesco's use of repetition — phrases repeated until they dissolve into sound — anticipates the Archive's method. The word 'ew' repeated for 261 pages is an Ionescian gesture: language running past sense into pure sonic presence.
Related reading
Samuel Beckett · What is Absurdism · Why Repetition is Funny