Anouilh, Jean (Vol. 3) - Anouilh, Jean 1910–

Anouilh, Jean 1910–

Anouilh, an award-winning French playwright, employs traditional forms and techniques to examine man's condition in a universe devoid of reason. Although he is often harshly critical of contemporary society, he is nevertheless a popular Boulevard dramatist. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 17-18.)

I cannot say that Anouilh's sense of desolation precipitates a completely satisfactory drama. Nihilism stands between the author and a complete dramatic experience. In his plays—Waltz of the Toreadors only a little less than in his tragic Antigone—the parts are greater than the whole. They are often fascinating, but they don't fit together; this nay-saying writer is too busy thumbing his nose at life to give any genuine significance to its failures, just as he is often brilliant in lighting up elements of human behavior without creating human beings. We do not know Anouilh's principal characters, the...

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