But, if his truth is to rebel against fate, his error lies in negating what binds him to mankind. One cannot destroy everything without destroying oneself. This is why Caligula depopulates the world around him and, faithful to his logic, does what is necessary to arm against him those who will eventually kill him. Caligula is the story of a superior suicide. It is the story of the most human and most tragic of errors. Unfaithful to mankind through fidelity to himself, Caligula accepts death because he has understood that no one can save himself all alone and that one cannot be free at the expense of others.

Consequently it is a tragedy of the intelligence. Whence the natural conclusion that the drama was intellectual. Personally, I think I am well aware of this work's shortcomings. But I look in vain for philosophy in these four acts. Or, if it exists, it stands on the level of this assertion by the hero: "Men die; and they are not happy." A very modest ideology, as you see, which I have the impression of sharing with Everyman. No, my ambition lay elsewhere. For the dramatist the passion for the impossible is just as valid a subject for study as avarice or adultery. Showing it in all its frenzy, illustrating the havoc it wreaks, bringing out its failure -- such was my intention. And the work must be judged thereon.