quotations about absurdism
Nothing, in fact, is as universal or as ancient as the iniquitous and absurd.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. It contains happenings, Pop art, camp, a theater of the absurd... Do we have the art because the absurd is the patina of waste...? Or are we face to face with a desperate or most rational effort from the deepest resources of the unconscious of us all to rescue civilization from the pit and plague of its bedding?
NORMAN MAILER
Cannibals and Christians
Absurdism is atheistic in nature because the idea that there is no meaning to human existence relies entirely on the rejection of an objective authority, none other than the Creator of everything -- a.k.a. God.
JAY WINTER
Behold the Frozen Sun
Absurdism is the name of the game when it comes to successful Kenny deaths. We've seen them so many times with often similar methods that when Parker and Stone branch out from the normal and wild with things it catches us off-guard with a good shock laugh. It rarely gets better than a flock of turkeys pecking at Kenny and then plucking out his eyeballs.
AUGUST KING
"'South Park' Moments For When You Miss Kenny's Weekly Deaths", Uproxx, December 21, 2015
Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
The line between truth and absurdism is thin. The latter, far from cloaking the former, can help reveal it.
ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY
"Not yet midnight for cult Chilean filmmaker, 87, who spawned late-night cinema", South China Morning Post, June 18, 2016
Many theists condemn the imperiousness of absurdity, but a critical analysis of not only the history and origin of the philosophy but of the general wellbeing of those who tend to side with it will posit the fact that absurdism actually grants a person more freedom to excel in this life without the weariness and guilt that often comes with the fear or preoccupation with the afterlife.
KELEIGH
"Blog 7: Camus' Absurdism", Introduction to English Studies, April 24, 2016
If I denounce the absurd, I transcend the absurd by the very fact of my denunciation. For by what right should I declare a thing to be absurd, unless I had before me the image--whether sharply or vaguely defined, no matter--of something that was not absurd?
EUGENE IONESCO
interview with George Lerminier, "Dialogue avec Ionesco", Ionesco
I am interested only in "nonsense"; only in that which makes no practical sense. I am interested in life only in its absurd manifestations.
DANIIL KHARMS
attributed, Theatre in Passing: A Moscow Photo-diary
Our innate, insatiable curiosity, our drive to seek out what we don't understand, and even to struggle with it, explains the appeal of the absurd, from puppet shows to the plays of Eugene Ionesco. How it balances against our desire for the understandable can also help to characterize who we are.
JIM DAVIES
"How Absurd Do You Like Your Art?", Nautilus, October 25, 2017
Derived from an encounter with the absurd, rebellion is a matter of saying "no" and "yes" simultaneously, of affirming and denying, of negating mere negation.
RAYMOND L. NICHOLS
"Rebels, Beginners, and Buffoons: Politics in Action", Political Theory and Praxis: New Perspectives
The Absurdist abandoned all hope of finding meaning in life and embraced a sort of nihilism. The Absurdist was convinced that everything was meaningless and absurd. The subjectivity of a Romantic was appealing to the Absurdist. However, even that implied that something was transcendent--a desire--and the Absurdist would have nothing to do with that.
JAMES STOBAUGH
World Literature
Insofar as meaning is of importance to the absurdists, but they cannot find it, they have an openness to meaning. Thus their absurdism is not total. It is only reality oriented, which makes their absurdism relative. Consequently, it may be suggested that meaning can be created. One can choose to declare something to be valuable and precious. Thus absurdity has been superseded and meaning has been found in one's projection of what one chooses to be meaningful.
WILLIAM P. FROST
What Is the New Age?
I never quite mastered the art of going with the flow of things, but reading a lot of absurdist fiction over the years helped me to stop taking every new crisis as a punch to the gut.
KRISTIAN WILSON
"How Absurdist Books Like 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' Help Me Make Sense of the World", Bustle, May 17, 2018
Logically, the denial of all meaning, of all belief, must ultimately turn on and transcend itself. To cry "Absurd!" is just that--to cry out, to protest. Only utter silence would be consistent with absurdism.
RAYMOND L. NICHOLS
"Rebels, Beginners, and Buffoons: Politics in Action", Political Theory and Praxis: New Perspectives
It seemed a ruse that fear of death should be the sole motivation for living and, yet, to quell this fear made the prospect of living itself seem all the more absurd; to extend this further, the notion of living one's life for the purposes of pondering the absurdity of living was an even greater absurdity in and of itself, which thus, by reductio ad absurdum, rendered the fear of death a necessary function of life and any lack thereof, a trifling matter rooted in self-inflicted incoherence.
ASHIM SHANKER
Only the Deplorable
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
Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful.
ALBERT CAMUS
"Three Interviews", Lyrical and Critical Essays
The bond between atheistic existentialism and absurdism is the denial of God, religion, immortality, and a natural moral law rooted in God, this bond of denial being so strong that those who conflate absurdism and existentialism have to be pardoned for blurring the distinction.
STEPHEN M. O'BRIEN
God and the Devil are Fighting: The Scandal of Evil in Dostoyevsky and Camus
The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. "Everything is permitted" does not mean that nothing is forbidden.
ALBERT CAMUS
"The Absurd Man", The Myth of Sisyphus