Un homme en question
In *Un homme en question*, published in 1979, Eugène Ionesco brought together recent articles, chronicles and interviews to form a highly personal and polemical self-portrait. The great innovator of post-war theatre appears here not only as a dramatist but as an essayist continually questioning his age, his convictions and his own anxieties. Politics, ideology and the cultural crisis of the West alternate with childhood memories, dreams, fantasies and his recurring fear of death. The result is considerably more intimate than a conventional collection of essays. At the same time, the continuity with Ionesco’s theatre is unmistakable: the same distrust of collective certainties, fossilised language and conformity shapes these reflections. Gallimard’s first edition also exists in an exceptionally restricted bibliophile form. Only 25 numbered copies were printed on Arches Arjomari-Prioux wove paper, the sole large-paper issue. This very good to near-fine copy therefore represents one of the scarcest forms of Ionesco’s later prose.
Quantity
Eugène Ionesco
Un homme en question
1979 | Paris | Gallimard
A late but essential act of self-questioning by Ionesco, bringing together the polemicist, autobiographer and historic avant-gardist. As one of only 25 copies on the sole large paper, this copy also possesses exceptionally clear bibliophile distinction.
In *Un homme en question*, published in 1979, Eugène Ionesco brought together recent articles, chronicles and interviews to form a highly personal and polemical self-portrait. The great innovator of post-war theatre appears here not only as a dramatist but as an essayist continually questioning his age, his convictions and his own anxieties. Politics, ideology and the cultural crisis of the West alternate with childhood memories, dreams, fantasies and his recurring fear of death. The result is considerably more intimate than a conventional collection of essays. At the same time, the continuity with Ionesco’s theatre is unmistakable: the same distrust of collective certainties, fossilised language and conformity shapes these reflections. Gallimard’s first edition also exists in an exceptionally restricted bibliophile form. Only 25 numbered copies were printed on Arches Arjomari-Prioux wove paper, the sole large-paper issue. This very good to near-fine copy therefore represents one of the scarcest forms of Ionesco’s later prose.
€370
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-8 (Octavo) approx. 20 × 26 cm
Edition Particulars
One of 25 numbered copies on Arches Arjomari-Prioux wove paper, the sole large-paper issue; a very good to near-fine copy.
Print Run
25
Copy Number
No. 11
Paper
vélin d’Arches Arjomari-Prioux
Inscription
No inscription
Product DETAIL
*Un homme en question* gathers recent writings by Ionesco, the earliest dating from the autumn of 1977. The volume consists of articles, chronicles and interviews in which he responds to political, cultural and personal questions. He considers the confusion of the contemporary world, the attraction and danger of ideologies and what he sees as the decline of the West. Yet these public concerns repeatedly give way to more intimate questions: who he is, why he exists and how human beings can confront the inevitability of death. Childhood memories, dreams, anxieties and fantasies consequently run throughout the polemical material. Ionesco offers no coherent philosophical system, preferring a deliberately fragmented process of self-questioning in which doubt matters more than certainty. The book is therefore both a document of its period and the spiritual self-portrait of a writer attempting to define himself against political orthodoxies and existential emptiness.
Eugène Ionesco
Antidotes
*Antidotes* brings together Eugène Ionesco’s polemical, autobiographical and literary reflections spanning more than fifteen years and provides an important key to the thought underlying his theatre. Most of the texts had first appeared in periodicals between 1961 and 1976 before being collected here in book form. Ionesco attacks ideological rigidity, political orthodoxies and collective conformity, while equally resisting attempts to reduce the human condition to purely social explanations. Art, culture, freedom and the metaphysical uncertainty of existence recur throughout the volume. His characteristic distrust of slogans and fossilised language assumes an explicitly polemical form in these essays. Gallimard’s collective first edition also includes an exceptionally restricted deluxe issue of only 25 copies on Arches Arjomari-Prioux wove paper, the sole large-paper issue. This copy is number 8 and is preserved in very good condition, making it a particularly desirable example of the edition.
Book
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