Adamov, Arthur

Adamov, Arthur

(born Aug. 23, 1908, Kislovodsk, Russia—died March 16, 1970, Paris, France) Russian-born French playwright. He settled in Paris in 1924, and his first major work, written after suffering a nervous breakdown, was his autobiography, The Confession (1938–43). Influenced by August Strindberg and Franz Kafka, he began writing plays in 1947. Professor Taranne (1953) and Ping-Pong (1955) expressed a view of life's meaninglessness that was characteristic of the Theatre of the Absurd. In Paolo Paoli (1957) and later plays, he abandoned Absurdism for radical political theatre influenced by Bertolt Brecht. He died from a drug overdose, an apparent suicide.

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Adamov, Arthur 

Born Aug. 23, 1908, in Kislovodsk. French dramatist. Left Russia with his family in 1914; settled in Paris in 1924. Wrote surrealist verses in his youth.

When Adamov opposed the pro-Hitler Vichy government in 1942, he was put in a concentration camp. His novella Recognition (1946) is permeated with a sense of futility. His dramas Parody (published 1950) and Incursion (1950), which were written for the avant-garde theater, were extremely pessimistic, as were his plays A Major and Minor Maneuver (1953) and Everyone Against Everyone (1953). Social criticism can be detected in his comedy Ping Pong (1955); the bourgeois way of life is ridiculed in the farce Paolo Paoli (1957) and the sketch Intimacy (1958). His optimistic tragedy The Spring of’71 (1961, Russian translation 1968) re-created the heroic characters of the Paris Communards. Contemporary racism is the object of criticism in his grotesque play The Politics of the Outcast (1962). Through his treatment of medieval obscurantism in the tragicomedy Holy Europe (1966), he satirizes imperialism. Bitter humor characterizes the burlesque piece The Moderate (1968), whereas in the drama Off Limits, which Adamov wrote the same year, his humor acquires menacing overtones, reflecting the tragic atmosphere of the American way of life. The movement of Adamov’s aesthetic thought toward realism and his reactions to the innovations of A. P. Chekhov, B. Brecht, and S. O’Casey are reflected in the anthology Here and Now (1964). His life and spiritual development are treated in a volume of reminiscences entitled Man and Child (1968). Adamov is a member of the National Committee of French Writers.

WORKS

Théâtre, vols. 1–4. Paris, 1953–68.
Lesâmes mortes: D’après le poème de N. Gogol. Paris, [I960]. In Russian translation:
“Paolo Paoli.” In P’esy sovremennoi Frantsii. Moscow, 1960.

REFERENCES

Balashov, V. “Pobeda Artiura Adamova.” Inostrannaia literatura, 1962, no. 7.
Proskurnikova, T. Frantsuzskaia antidrama (50–60–e gg.). Moscow, 1968.

V. P. BALASHOV