The Return of the Rhinoceros
Eugène Ionesco’s 1959 absurdist play “Rhinoceros” begins in a sleepy, unnamed provincial village where nothing of note ever happens. But after the inexplicable appearance of a rhinoceros raging through its streets, the unassuming villagers begin to metamorphose, one by one, into the very same brutish and unthinking beast.
The mass conversion of humans to rhinoceroses functions as a metaphor for the contagious rise of European fascism throughout the interbellum decades. Specifically, the play borrows from Ionesco’s own youth in Romania. There, the late 1920s and ’30s saw the emergence of the Iron Guard (also known as the Legion of the Archangel Michael), one of the most violent and virulently anti-Semitic organizations in that part of Europe.… Seguir leyendo »