[In the following excerpt, Chiari detects elements of the absurd in Anouilh's plays.]

Anouilh shares with Cocteau the incapacity to grapple with tragic themes but he has a much wider range and he has a dramatic skill unequalled on the contemporary stage. His blend of comedy and seriousness, whimsicality and wry pathos is typically his own, and his remarkably fluent style is a perfect medium for the swift changing moods which it is meant to convey. He moves from naturalism to fantasy with grace and ease, and only O'Casey can so stab comedy with poignancy. With Anouilh, as with Giraudoux and Tennessee Williams, time always degrades and soils. Growing old is a degenerating process, children soon pass from innocence to corruption and pure love cannot live. Happiness is not of this world, and Orpheus, whether born from Cocteau, Anouilh or Tennessee Williams, can only find bliss in death. This is anything but an original attitude; it is nothing else but romantic necrophilia, and Anouilh, who handles this theme with greater success than the other two, has criss-crossed the romantic longing for death with a bitter, social satire and cynicism completely alien to the seriousness of the devotees of Werther and René, although not so remote from Byron's Don Juan.

All Anouilh's heroes are obsessed with purity and with the uncompromising attitude which it entails. Thérèse, Antigone, Joan of Arc, Becket, search for purity and say no to life and to what they call in different ways, le sale bonheur. Becket who leads his King to despair through jealousy and unrequited love says no to the King's pleas for reasonableness in the same way as Antigone says no to Creon and Joan of Arc to her judges. It is obvious that in each case, these heroes and heroines of negation have been defeated by rational arguments and in fact, say no to reason and logic. "Be logical," says the King to Becket, who replies, "No, it's not necessary, one has only to do absurdly what one has been entrusted with doing to the very end." Absurdly obviously means without reflection and without reasoning. But the problem is that life not being a series of gratuitous acts, it is rather difficult to set about doing anything absurdly to the very end; although, of course; one may adopt an absurd attitude, which is the case with Anouilh's heroes. In that case the word absurd has a very clear meaning which has no connotations whatever with metaphysical absurdity. It simply means that life degrades and corrupts; therefore, if one wants to remain pure one can only do so by rejecting life. This rejection is absurd in the sense that it cannot be rationally justified; it is a defiance to reason, apparently based on the notion that, reason having failed, life is not worth living. In fact, such an attitude rests upon immaturity and the childish notion that since life cannot be understood, the only way to deal with it is to reject it. Becket does not quite say no because he has failed to understand life; he has not even tried, he is not interested. He was a libertine and a detached hedonist without any principles except that of doing well whatever he did, and when the King appoints him Archbishop, he decides to be the paragon of the function with which he has been entrusted; and so, forsaking the spirit for the letter, he equates the honour of man as well as the honour of God with an absolute no to any aspect of life. He becomes possessed by the game and the game is all. He is what he appears to be. He is a perfect phenomenalist and an example of Pascal's truth contained in the words: "Begin by kneeling down and praying, and faith will perhaps come." Doing whatever one does to the best of one's abilities is an act of faith which can carry with it a sense of truth which may redeem all appearances and inform all actions with true reality. Acting in such conditions ceases being a game and is the real thing, or rather is a means of reaching truth through one's own consciousness and dedication. This means that life itself is only a game or a set of appearances which can only be given reality by what one puts into them. Dramatic action reveals the place where hidden truths lie, and sometimes a character can only reveal his truth by identifying himself with a dramatis persona. Anouilh's plays abound in plays within the play and in masks, impersonations and acting. Playing the game with earnestness is a way of reaching truth and of keeping boredom at bay. The shades of Pirandello are at times hovering very close to Anouilh's theatre.