<P> Many of the Absurdists were contemporaries with Jean - Paul Sartre, the philosophical spokesman for existentialism in Paris, but few Absurdists actually committed to Sartre's own existentialist philosophy, as expressed in Being and Nothingness, and many of the Absurdists had a complicated relationship with him . Sartre praised Genet's plays, stating that for Genet, "Good is only an illusion . Evil is a Nothingness which arises upon the ruins of Good". </P> <P> Ionesco, however, hated Sartre bitterly . Ionesco accused Sartre of supporting Communism but ignoring the atrocities committed by Communists; he wrote Rhinoceros as a criticism of blind conformity, whether it be to Nazism or Communism; at the end of the play, one man remains on Earth resisting transformation into a rhinoceros Sartre criticized Rhinoceros by questioning: "Why is there one man who resists? At least we could learn why, but no, we learn not even that . He resists because he is there". Sartre's criticism highlights a primary difference between the Theatre of the Absurd and existentialism: the Theatre of the Absurd shows the failure of man without recommending a solution . In a 1966 interview, Claude Bonnefoy, comparing the Absurdists to Sartre and Camus, said to Ionesco, "It seems to me that Beckett, Adamov and yourself started out less from philosophical reflections or a return to classical sources, than from first - hand experience and a desire to find a new theatrical expression that would enable you to render this experience in all its acuteness and also its immediacy . If Sartre and Camus thought out these themes, you expressed them in a far more vital contemporary fashion". Ionesco replied, "I have the feeling that these writers--who are serious and important--were talking about absurdity and death, but that they never really lived these themes, that they did not feel them within themselves in an almost irrational, visceral way, that all this was not deeply inscribed in their language . With them it was still rhetoric, eloquence . With Adamov and Beckett it really is a very naked reality that is conveyed through the apparent dislocation of language". </P> <P> In comparison to Sartre's concepts of the function of literature, Samuel Beckett's primary focus was on the failure of man to overcome "absurdity" - or the repetition of life even though the end result will be the same no matter what and everything is essentially pointless - as James Knowlson says in Damned to Fame, Beckett's work focuses, "on poverty, failure, exile and loss--as he put it, on man as a' non-knower' and as a' non-can - er' ." Beckett's own relationship with Sartre was complicated by a mistake made in the publication of one of his stories in Sartre's journal Les Temps Modernes . Beckett said, though he liked Nausea, he generally found the writing style of Sartre and Heidegger to be "too philosophical" and he considered himself "not a philosopher". </P> <P> The "Absurd" or "New Theater" movement was originally a Paris - based (and a Rive Gauche) avant - garde phenomenon tied to extremely small theaters in the Quartier Latin . Some of the Absurdists, such as Jean Genet, Jean Tardieu, and Boris Vian., were born in France . Many other Absurdists were born elsewhere but lived in France, writing often in French: Samuel Beckett from Ireland; Eugène Ionesco from Romania; Arthur Adamov from Russia; Alejandro Jodorowsky from Chile and Fernando Arrabal from Spain . As the influence of the Absurdists grew, the style spread to other countries--with playwrights either directly influenced by Absurdists in Paris or playwrights labelled Absurdist by critics . In England some of those whom Esslin considered practitioners of the Theatre of the Absurd include Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, N.F. Simpson, James Saunders, and David Campton; in the United States, Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, Jack Gelber, and John Guare; in Poland, Tadeusz Różewicz, Sławomir Mrożek, and Tadeusz Kantor; in Italy, Dino Buzzati; and in Germany, Peter Weiss, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, and Günter Grass . In India, both Mohit Chattopadhyay and Mahesh Elkunchwar have also been labeled Absurdists . Other international Absurdist playwrights include Tawfiq el - Hakim from Egypt; Hanoch Levin from Israel; Miguel Mihura from Spain; José de Almada Negreiros from Portugal; Mikhail Volokhov from Russia; Yordan Radichkov from Bulgaria; and playwright and former Czech President Václav Havel, and others from the Czech Republic and Slovakia . </P>

Who belongs to the absurd school of drama