The Parapraxis in The Bald Soprano: a Successful Speech

Abstract

This paper is about Parapraxis in the Cantatrice chauve, which Ionesco associates with politics. The unconscious knowledge of the Cantatrice chauve (The Bald Soprano) is the knowledge of comedy and tragedy; it is a form of knowledge which leads man towards an empty word which can no longer be articulated in meaningful speech. The nagging antinomies of common life emerge in the background. There is an endless dialectic that crosses time and history, life and death, joy and pain. There is an unsolved conflict that the Cantatrice chauve holds together, thus repeating the trauma of separation and the breakdown of community ties. The tragedy of language is that you can only live in a subjective way. It is a communication which affirms the absence of communication, opening up the tragicomic horizon of language and disintegrating the power which underlies the language of communication.