Eugene Ionesco (1909-1994) manuscript of L’Impromtu pour la Duchesse de Windsor (1957)
An autograph manuscript in French, signed “Eugene Ionesco.” Thirty-three lined pages, 6.75 x 8.5. A printed slip laid into the book reads, “With the compliments of the private secretary of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.”
In May of 1957, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor attended an elite gathering at the Paris home of an Argentinian couple, Marcelo and Hortensia Anchorena (53, Avenue Foch, 16th Arrondisement). Only ten other guests were present; one was Salvador Dali. Eugene Ionesco had written a short scene for the occasion, with music composed by Pierre Boulez.
The humorous postmodern piece is essentially a dialogue about what type of play the characters—including Ionesco himself—should perform for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The theater historian Martin Esslin describes the scene as “a very slight, but witty and utterly harmless party joke.” In one instance, the “lady of the house” asks Ionesco not to present “a sad play, one of those modern drama like those by Beckett or Sophocles, which might make people cry.” Ionesco replies, “Sometimes, madame, comedies make people cry even more than dramas…the comedies that I write. When I want to write a tragedy I make them laugh, when I write a comedy, I make them cry.”
Esslin also notes “a very amusing nonsense version of English history as seen by a Frenchman, and an equally characteristic sequence of semantic misunderstandings about spirits.” Tragedy, England, and alcohol: quite a piquant trio of topics to choose for the exiled Duke and Duchess. Dali remarked that “it was most moving.” Ionesco claimed that the Duke and Duchess appeared amused, although some newspapers reported that they had been offended.
Dr. Molly G. Yarn
