One of the principal, and most persistent, sources of error that tends to bedevil a considerable proportion of contemporary literary analysis is the implicit assumption that the writer's creative process is a wholly conscious and purposive type of activity. Few critics stop to inquire into the psychological basis and the mechanism of the creative process itself; hence their tendency to approach a work of art in terms of the author's intentions. The excellence of a work can then be deduced from an examination of the intentions in the mind of the writer (whether they are relevant and important) and of the degree to which these intentions have been realized. And even if the complexity of the creative process is realized by a critic, once he has started to analyze, say, the imagery of a poem or play the effect on the reader will tend to be an impression that the given author deliberately chose the metaphors or images concerned rather than following a semiconscious urge to express his intuition in these, and no other, terms.

If we consider only the theatrical movement which felt Artaud's influence during the period between the wars, or the “poetic” theatre of the post-war period which is merely its continuation, the problem of the language of the avant-garde seems to have only a very limited interest. In the works which these movements have produced, the originality of the language is more spectacular than profound. Or more precisely, we might say that it lies more in its nature than in its function.

The traditional dramatist, whose only end was to interest the spectator by the analysis of passions and characters, used a language which was never disquieting or bewildering because it represented more or less—decorated only with certain literary attributes— the language of the public for whom it was written. In the avant-garde we have just spoken of, theatrical language changes to the same degree that the dramatist's attitude towards his audience changes.

Ionesco is the closest thing we have to an abstract expressionist in the theatre. His plays are plainly autobiographical and confessional. “I try to project on stage an inner drama (incomprehensible even to myself) telling myself, nevertheless, that since the microcosm is the image of the macrocosm, it may happen that this torn up, disarticulated inner world is in some way the mirror or the symbol of universal contradictions.” He discovers the astonishing in the banal, the unreal in the real, the new in the old, the fresh in the stale, and the archetype in the stereotype. His work is romantic and subjective, mirroring his own anguish and inner struggles, translating them into symbols and patterns that have been empathetically embraced by audiences throughout the world. But this empathy should not confuse us.