absurdist playwright (1908-1970)
From whatever point he starts, whatever path he follows, modern man comes to the same conclusion: behind its visible appearances, life hides a meaning that is eternally inaccessible to penetration by the spirit that seeks for its discovery, caught in the dilemma of being aware that it is impossible to find it, and yet also impossible to renounce the hopeless quest.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
"Le refus", L'Heure Nouvelle
A stage play ought to be the point of intersection between the visible and invisible worlds, or, in other words, the display, the manifestation of the hidden.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
La Parodie, L'Invasion
The reason why most absurdist plays take place in a no man's land with only two characters is mainly financial.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
attributed, Woorden
Passive pleasure is no pleasure at all.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
Ping Pong
We are accused of pessimism, as though pessimism were but one among a number of possible attitudes, as if man were capable of choosing between two alternatives.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
"Une fin et un commencement", L'Heure Nouvelle
The only courageous act is to speak in the first person.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
attributed, Woorden
Misery's fine -- as long as you know you can get out of it when you want to.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
Ping Pong
The name of God should no longer come from the mouth of man. This word that has so long been degraded by usage no longer means anything.... To use the word God is more than sloth, it is a refusal to think, a king of short cut, a hideous shorthand.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
The Confession
Perhaps the sad and empty language that today's flabby humanity pours forth, will, in all its horror, in all its boundless absurdity, re-echo in the heart of a solitary man who is awake, and then perhaps that man, suddenly realizing that he does not understand, will begin to understand.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
The Confession
It remains open to question whether anything that confines itself to the human sphere could ever attain anything but the subhuman.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
attributed, The Theatre of the Absurd
It was Strindberg, or more exactly, A Dream Play, that incited me to write for the theater.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
attributed, European Writers: The Romantic Century
I know I earn less at my primary school than you do, but I don't have to work as hard at my primary school.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
Ping Pong
This peculiar method of work, paradoxically enough, saved me. Once I was sure that, as usual, I should be able to show the identity of all human destiny ... I found myself free to make the characters act, to create situations.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
attributed, The Theatre of the Absurd
Things always happen in series.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
Professor Taranne
The only thing to know is how to use your neurosis.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
attributed, The Celestial Fortune Cookie
The crisis of our time is essentially a religious crisis. It is a matter of life or death.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
"Assignation", L'Heure Nouvelle
Uneven! Easy to say! As if you could always go straight to the point!
ARTHUR ADAMOV
Professor Taranne
Theatre as I conceive it is wholly and absolutely tied to performance. I think that performance is only the projection to the senses of situations and images.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
attributed, Roger Blin and Twentieth Century Playwrights
What is there? I know first of all that I am. But who am I? All I know of myself is that I suffer. And if I suffer it is because at the origin of myself there is mutilation, separation. I am separated. What I am separated from -- I cannot name it. But I am separated.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
The Confession
Everything happens as though I were only one of the particular existences of some great incomprehensible and central being.... Sometimes this great totality of life appears to me so dramatically beautiful that it plunges me into ecstasy. But more often it seems like a monstrous beast that penetrates and surpasses me and which is everywhere, within me and outside me.... And terror grips and envelops me more powerfully from moment to moment.... My only way out is to write, to make others aware of it, so as not to have to feel all of it alone, to get rid of however small a portion of it.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
The Confession