[Le Grand Théâtre] falls neither into the category of literary criticism, nor into that of prose fiction. Although it purports ostensibly to be a 'conversation' between the boy Jean Giono and his father …, its first section is largely the latter's monologue…. Le Grand Théâtre is both theology and that branch of philosophy termed eschatology [doctrines concerned with finality of the world, life, or matter]…. [The second section] serves primarily to illustrate apocalypse in our century. Giono here, then, has not only re-written the most famous of all apocalyptic texts [from the Bible], but has furthermore modified and re-stated it. (pp. 116-17)

As we approach this complicated work—and when has Jean Giono regaled us with simplicity?—it will be less crucial to list the author's recollections of his best-known predecessor than to discuss his variations and his additions to the text attributed to John of Patmos. They are modern additions, which stem largely from two specialized areas: mathematics and astronomy. Giono's artistic method, always distinctive and unpredictable, consists here of a sliding from well-known apocalyptic to his own illustration thereof. It may also be of some interest to note in passing how Giono's approach here differs from that of D. H. Lawrence, for example, since he is a novelist to whom Jean Giono is often compared…. (p. 117)

Like Revelation, the father, or the author in his stead, to be sure, conjures deftly with numbers, and like the authors of the Bible, he proffers what he terms "grandiose commonplaces," in what we may all agree is unlike Giono's own colorful and highly metaphorical style. Like John of Patmos, Giono's father looks as a matter of course towards cosmic cataclysms, universal catastrophes, all announcing the approaching end of the world….

Once having anchored an unsuspecting reader to familiar imagery, Giono proceeds to re-interpret suavely and calmly to refute several major points of apocalyptic. Soon after having added his own prophecies, he rejects the future prophetic, declaring that the present tense must be rigorously employed since apocalypse is upon us all…. The predictions are thus modified to corroborate the end of the world in the sense that the end of our personal worlds is close, is here, is now, ergo that apocalypse is present. The human history which here interests Giono "becomes not merely a series of happenings but the disclosure and consummation of … human destiny …" Even were the world to end, however, "the end-situation within history" need not be "construed as the ultimately valid end," since the father-prophet does not confuse apocalypse with death. (p. 119)

In short, as evidenced in many illustrations, which it doubtless amused Giono to detail, as it amuses the reader to recognize, we would thoroughly enjoy apocalypse. There is a dearth of pure joy in the universe…. We would therefore stay to the last curtain, for apocalypse as previously defined does not necessarily destroy our lives….

What is Apocalypse? To Giono's father, who loved the sweet shadows under the centaurs, the golden locusts with lion's teeth, and all such splendors, it is also literature in the line from Vergil to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. What else? With its patent allusions to Rome, it is political writing, its author pouncing upon and utilizing events like foundlings. But most of all, it constitutes a timely warning to beware of super-civilizations which would forbid to man the sovereign remedy for all holocausts: death itself,—that final triumph, as Giono would characteristically believe.

In addition to these refutations of Revelation, Giono's modern apocalyptic contains two blocks of material … relating to astronomy [and] … mathematical thinking. (p. 120)

Giono introduces new material, which marks his apocalypse as being of the twentieth century, while by its use he repudiates science, as he did in Le Hussard sur le toit, preferring poetry or art on whose grounds he himself is probably to be preferred.

His own terrain, where he commands our instant respect … is human nature, which he can reliably observe and from whose case he can posit conclusions later generalized to apply to all humanity, then to our planet, and finally to the universe. Very wisely the novelist finds apocalypse verifiable in one person whom he takes … for his illustration. (pp. 121-22)

The reader is introduced to him via the father's discursions upon apocalyptic, but the method used, or the author's technique in this parallel material, which serves as concrete illustration of apocalypse, contains the chief interest of the piece…. The reader is introduced to Oncle Eugène … who is becoming blind [and deaf in his old age]…. This feeble and unintelligent septuagenarian is himself a world, a universe even, in whom apocalypse unfolds; he typifies the only verifiable illustration within our grasp of man succumbing to a series of awful calamities…. There is much apocalypse in this old man's frail body.

Apocalypse is apprehended, not intellectually, but by our senses…. (p. 122)

The abyss of ten thousand years is the past into which all present plunges, then, faster than the speed of light. In this abyss of space Uncle Eugène floats with thousands of years to go, perhaps, before touching bottom, on his way towards a new universe, of which there are thousands. When we contemplate the heavens, we also gaze into this abyss in the description of which all our numbers are inadequate. Uncle Eugène arrives at the end of a world, which has perhaps also ended. (p. 123)

The Giono text is itself a work of art and an apocalypse, rather than a criticism thereof, as in the case of D. H. Lawrence. Giono proceeds throughout more subtly even where he may agree with Lawrence; while the latter had demonstrated by argument that apocalyptic thinking represents a popular or mass reaction, Giono allows his father, a man of the poor, to speak the text. While Lawrence brilliantly analyzes the symbolism of the text, Giono-the-apocalypticist points out a philosophical error inconsistent with his knowledge of man: that apocalypse excludes death. Where Lawrence feels a grudging admiration mixed with contempt and scorn for John's Apocalypse, and while he concentrates upon the mythological interpretations of the text, Giono goes behind the text to put himself in the author's place and thus, allying himself with John of Patmos…. [While] Lawrence treats various aspects of Revelation in chapters, Giono re-constructs the whole, making it apply to our own times. Lawrence is interested in Revelation as a past fact; Giono is interested in it as a present, living entity, a power still in the world.

Jean Giono's apocalypse text, Le Grand Théâtre, is, like all his writings, anthropocentric. Man, he says, is here on earth like a spectator in a vast theatre, a privileged viewer before whom and to whom revelations occur…. Dangers to man … threaten him only because of his past, asserts Jean Giono, diverted from diurnal fiction for the nonce to become an apophatic theologian as he re-composed a Book of the Bible. (pp. 124-25)