SOURCE: “Ionescoland ” in Ionesco’s Imperatives: The Politics of Culture, University of Michigan Press, 1993, pp. 13-20.

In the following essay, an earlier version of which appeared in her volume, Ionesco: A Collection of Critical Essays published by Prentice Hall in 1973, Lamont explores the bizarre world of Ionesco’s dramas, where the protagonists are in search of perfection as they live in dreariness; where objects seem to be endowed with independent existence; where a feeling of heaviness hangs over people; where relief from drudgery is usually fleeting; where the absurdities of existence are expressed in a dislocated language of clichés; and which looks familiar but is disturbingly other and leaves visitors feeling stimulated and estranged.

Marcel Proust once stated that every artist is the citizen of a foreign country whose topography, moral landscape, climate, and customs he or she interprets in his or her works. This land...