SOURCE: A review of La quête intermittente, in World Literature Today, Vol. 62, No. 3, Summer, 1988, pp. 435-36.

[A French-born American educator and critic, Lamont is the author of Ionesco (1973) and The Two Faces of Ionesco (1977). Below, she favorably assesses La quête intermittente.]

Dedicated to his wife and daughter Rodica and Marie-France, Ionesco's latest intimate journal [La quete intermittente], possibly the ultimate volume of his pensées, is a moving love letter to the guardians of his life, the two women without whose watchful love he feels he would not remain alive. Again and again, Ionesco speaks of his hope that he will not outlive his frail, tiny wife, who took upon her narrow shoulders the full weight of a sacred trust:

Elle vit dans le dévouement. Elle va m'accompagner jusqu'au bout…. Elle ne mourra pas avant moi … elle a reçu de façon mystique cette...