SOURCE: "Ionesco, or a Pregnant Death," in The Dream and the Play: Ionesco's Theatrical Quest, edited by Moshe Lazar, Undena Publications, 1982, pp. 121-32.

In the following essay, Kott observes the tragic-farcical impression of death in Eugène Ionesco's plays.

We all know that we shall die. But Ionesco knows it even as he eagerly reaches for a menu in a restaurant. Even while he eats, he knows he is dying. Each of Ionesco's doubles, the Bérengers in his comedies, knows it too. Not only is death constantly present in everything Ionesco writes, but it is present as dying—one's own and other people's, universal and incessant.

"When the bells toll for a funeral I am overcome with a mysterious anguish, a sort of fascination. We know all the people who die."¹ This is one of the earliest entries in "Scattered Images of Childhood" from Ionesco's Fragments of...