If you’ve been following the 
So, we’ve talked, in the past, about various plays that are considered ‘benchmark theater’, aka they are more or less a golden standard, they started a new trend and style in the theatrical world and are still being produced today. And last time, we talked a bit about Samuel Beckett’s immensely famous ‘Waiting for Godot’, which marked the beginning of the ‘theater of the absurd’. And I thought it would only make sense to continue with this subject, so today, we are going to have a look at Eugene Ionesco’s ‘The Lesson’.
For me, this play is particularly meaningful, as Ionesco was a fellow countryman of mine and it’s difficult to find a theater in Romania that isn’t producing one of his plays. Right now, I’m debating mentally if I should go and see the latest production of ‘The Lesson’. Well, we’ll see, but let’s get back to the play itself.
Like with ‘Waiting for Godot’, it is a tad difficult to explain ‘The Lesson’, mainly because it’s so simplistic (in a way). The action itself is so clear – you could easily stage it as per the author’s instructions and sure, it would make for a nice show, but would it say all there is to say about the play?
‘The Lesson’ is a three-character play (The Pupil, The Professor and the Servant/Maid). The Professor and the Maid are around 50 years old, while the Pupil is an eighteen year old girl. The play begins with her arrival for a lesson, obviously, and at first, everything goes rather smoothly. The Professor questions the Pupil on some basic arithmetic (two plus one, three plus one, that sort of thing), she answers correctly and the Professor is pleased. The Maid warns him against doing arithmetic with the girl, claiming it’s dangerous for him, but he tells her to go away.
Throughout the lesson, they come up with silly, absurd answers such as, what is seven plus one – eight, although sometimes, it can be nine.
But the Professor grows irritated with the Pupil when she fails to subtract correctly. Interestingly, she fails some basic subtraction, such as four minus three, but knows the answer to a very complicated multiplication of billions instantly. She explains that, not trusting her own judgment, she had learned every answer by heart.
They move on to language and linguistics, the Professor questioning her on various translations, while the girl complains of a toothache, which becomes increasingly more painful for her as the play progresses. The Professor ignores her complaints and even threatens to pull out all her teeth himself if she doesn’t concentrate.
An Irish production source
Again, the questions are obviously absurd (for example, he asks her how do you say ‘grand-mere’ in French, which is obviously ‘grand-mere’) and this serves to build an interesting contrast for the audience. On the one hand, there is the silliness of the questions, and on the other, there’s the Professor’s mounting anger at the girl, which quickly degenerates into violence. The spectator can’t help but feel baffled at this extreme behavior, unwarranted by the questions themselves.
The lesson culminates with the Professor bringing out a knife, so as to get the girl to say ‘knife’. She resists, at first, complaining that her whole body is hurting – he threatens to cut her apart and the girl struggles to say the word, over and over, amid groans. The Professor, changing his voice, warns her not to touch him, for the knife kills. The Pupil repeats these words and he begins stabbing her.
The Maid returns, chiding the professor and mocking him, but in the end, she claims to pity him, saying he is, after all, “a good boy” and that she’ll take care of everything. She says they will bury her at the same time with “the other thirty-nine”. The play ends with the arrival of the forty-first Pupil.
A visually compelling adaptation in Sibiu, Romania source
‘The Lesson’ is a play that revolves around two things, in my opinion, rhythm and emotion. Rhythm because it’s a very fast-paced play. If the characters stopped to breathe every now and again or to think about what was happening, the play wouldn’t really work, because that would also allow the audience to stop and think about what’s happening, whereas a big part of its ‘charm’ is that it takes you so unawares, manages so well to confuse you.
And then, there’s the complex palette of emotions present in the characters. Since the text itself is so ludicrous and makes so little sense, one has to focus on the emotions, so as to understand the story (or at least, part of it). The Pupil, who arrives happy, energetic and confident, gradually slinks into uncertainty and becomes a rather meek character, by the end of the play, a puppet. She loses all independence in the face of the Professor, as she allows him to dominate her.
On the other hand, the Professor first appears as a very mild-tempered old man, very polite and “with his voice almost suffocated by shyness”, but as the play progresses, he becomes increasingly more dominant, a veritable tyrant towards the Pupil.
That seems to be a key word in the play – tyrant, because many have interpreted it as a satirical take on totalitarianism, with the Pupil as the opressed victim, the Professor the despot and the Maid serving as some sort of group conscience. She sees the Professor’s vicious acts, chides him for them, yet forgives him every time, accepting them as a necessary truth of his being. And we have to remember that ‘The Lesson’ premiered in 1951, at very little time after the events of World War II. With that in mind, it’s easy to assume that ‘The Lesson’ is a comment on the rise of dictators and totalitarian regimes across the world. In the end, the Maid also gives an armband to the Professor, which might well be a reference to the swastika armbands worn by Nazis.
One must also remember that Ionesco spent a large majority of his life in France, with brief returns to his birthplace, Romania. He returned in 1939, but decided to leave again, as WWII progressed, and eventually arrived in Marseilles in 1942, which I suppose was very lucky for him, given the fact that after WWII, Romania became a communist country. So obviously, these events would have had a profound impact on Ionesco.
'The Lesson' in 2009 at the National Theater in Bucharest, Romania source
“Ionesco’s Lesson is a tragic farce which denounces the absurdity of standardized and exclusive testing, of language as a tool for power and of the lethal relationship between sexuality and dictatorship. On the other hand, the contemplative stupidity, a maneuvering field for anointed butchers. Since the world has learned nothing from the mistakes of history, the lesson of this show does not propose to be a boring and moralizing ruler, but more aptly a clear mirror” Horațiu Mălăele (The Professor in the above picture)
But perhaps it’s not a comment on totalitarian regimes. I hate it when people try to define a literary work as ‘oh, it’s about this and this alone’. Because more often than not, that’s not true and ‘The Lesson’, in particular is such a rich text, it’s a shame to narrow it down as being about one thing.
I’ve also heard many interpretations claim it’s about the futility of language or perhaps the feeling of a ‘useless’ society, in the wake of the Second World War. Yet again, perhaps it’s a satire about the slowly-dying bourgeoisie, with the Professor methodically crushing the young Pupil, who represents (presumably) the best in human nature, the happy, crushed by a strict class society.
A lesson in ‘The Lesson’ that I find particularly interesting is the ease with which the characters distort the truth. In the words of the Professor,
“We can’t be sure of anything, young lady, in this world.”
Basically, the play is telling us, the audience, that reality isn’t reality, but anything the Professor makes out as ‘reality’. A particularly important message, both in the fifties, as well as in our society today.
A current production in Bucharest, Romania source
But again, this is a hugely versatile text and I feel that, like with many important plays, it’s really up to each spectator what they understand and ideally learn from it. It also depends a lot on how the play is presented, because there are so many ways in which this play can be done. And it seems like a waste to do it in the regular fashion, as per the author’s instructions.
It can be a political regime taken to the extreme. It can be a farce, even a comedy, depending on how it’s acted. It can be a sexual domination game. (The text itself is very sexually charged, so I feel any production of the play has to touch upon that, at least on some level.)
It can be many things and anything.
And whatever it is, I highly encourage you to go see it, preferably in a theater, since the story feels very different when it’s happening right in front of you.
I thought it natural to follow-up our post about Beckett and Godot with Ionesco and 'The Lesson' because the two have been long-running contenders for the title of ‘father of the absurd’. And for that, I could have also chosen Ionesco’s first big play, ‘La Cantatrice Chauve’ (The Bald Soprano) and it will probably be featured in a later article. However, to me, ‘The Lesson’ is a far richer text and it demonstrates Ionesco’s talent and depth as a writer. A depth (and density) that truly rivals that of Beckett’s Godot.
I hope with this post, I have awakened your curiosity and interest in the works of the literary master that was Eugene Ionesco.
Have you seen/read ‘The Lesson’? What did you think?
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