L’empreinte du Rhinocéros

This article is based on a Ionesco’s testimony during a conference he delivered near Florence in 1986. Rhinocéros is a fable, an allegory which historically refers to the subversive power of the Iron Guard, whose ultranationalist and xenophobic language converted most of Eugen Ionescu’s friends to Nazism, gradually turning them into rhinos. The rhinos speak a foreign and incomprehensible language, full of violent slogans where human values are completely degraded. Everything becomes threatening. Totalitarian ideology and collectivism propagate barbarism. The risk is the definitive destruction of thought.