Life and Writings of Maurice Maeterlinck

her threatening the world with hell. Gerhart Hauptmann (who, by the way, was born in the same year as Maeterlinck) never got over his Moravian upbringing. Maeterlinck came to hate the Jesuits; but

"doctor ecstaticus" was born in 1274 at the little village of Ruysbroeck, near Brussels. He was a curate in the Church of Sainte Gudule in Brussels; but in his old days he with several friends founded the Monastery of Groenendal (Green Dale) in the Forêt de Soignes, two mil

anslation for the benefit of a few Platonists. But, apart from the translation itself, the preface is of value as showing how deeply read in the mystics Maeterlinck already was at this time, and the importance he attached to their teaching. "All certainty is in them alone," he says, paradoxically. Their ecstasies are only the beginning of the complete di

is clear water is Holy Writ, the life of the Saints, and the mercy of God. We will look upon our image therein whenever we are tempted; and in this way none shall have power to harm us. These doves have an ardent dis

he Brisson. "The piece is something seen, purely pictorial," says Anselma Heine, "a transposition of paintings by Burne-Jones." "Can only claim the rank of an intermezzo," says Monty Jacobs, "an unfinished sketch." "We must not seek a literal signification," says Beaunier, "its signification is in its very strangeness." "Perhaps the wea

his level waste of fens, over these green ponds black with the shadows of forests of oaks and pines, over this willow-hung canal that runs to the rounded grey of the horizon. It is home-sickness that has sunk them in sleep. They sleep forlorn. Everything around them is so very old. Their life is so dreary with their long, long waiting; they are aweary, aweary.... They are waiting for the comrade of their youth; always they are looking for his ship on the canal between the willows; but, 'He cometh not,' they say. Now at last he is come while they are sleeping, and they have bolted the door from the inside. They cannot be wakened. With sick longing the Prince gazes at the seven through the thick window-panes. His eyes rest longest on t

an Dijk. "My curriculum would then be as follows: The first month he should learn by heart, in Greek and French, Plato's myth concerning The Chariot of the Soul, with the obligation of course to ponder on it. The following month he should learn by heart, in Greek and French, Plato's myth of The Cave, with the obligation of course to ponder on it. Then he should impress the well-known fable of Amor and Psyche on his mind, so as to accustom him

h critic, G. Hulsman, in his Karakters en Idee?n. He quo

le palais des l

incesse en r

calme!... On di

son vis

e rêve et soup

oulé lentemen

rante en barque

n, qui gro

t pas, le beau

parmi les pla

veiller sa bell

meil de ce

cont

s, and waits for the coming of the ideal hero, who shall awaken it out of its slumber and cherish it w

, according to which the human soul consists of: the breath of God, the

t, the essential in our being. This real self is unconscious and unknowab

ifference between this play and those which preceded it-here for the first time we have characters almost of flesh and blood; "the asphodelic shadows and marionettes begin to colour themselves with blood-warm humanity."[2] We have personages who represent the same ideas as those of the previous plays-Melisanda is again the soul-but here the puppets are moved by Love, not Death. In Princess Maleine love is one of the means by which Fate moves the puppets to death; in Pelleas and Melisanda death is the bourne to which Love d

ul, remembering the fair sunny clime from which it came, pining in the cold air of the marshlands, groping about helplessly in the dark, always meeting closed doors, always gazing through glass at the unattainable, is an eternal searcher for the light; and if it meets a comrade who has the key to the closed door of its h

s. So long as you hold that love is a function of the soul, and not of the senses, you cannot call Francesca da Rimini or Melisanda faithless wives.

forest, comes upon a lovely being whose dress, though torn by brambles, is princely. She is weeping by the side of a spring, into which her crown (the symbol of her royal birth; all souls are royal) has fallen. Somebody has hurt her-who? All of them, all

hains him there. This is in the nature of an accident; and by the canons of dramaturgy accidents must not precipitate tragedy, but Maeterlinck's plays proudly ignore the canons of dramaturgy. (Maeterlinck would say the accident was arranged by Fate.) Pelleas and Melisanda meet on a high place overlooking the s

cend here. Will you

have my hands full of

you by the arm, the p

I am going away t

, why are yo

the King's castle in The Frog Prince[6] tosses a golden ball), and just as noon is striking it falls into the water. She had cast it too high towards the sunlight.... We hear soon that at the twelfth stroke of noon Golaud's horse, taking fright in the forest, had dashed against a tree, and seriously injured its rider. While Melisanda is at her husband's bedside, he notices that her ring is gone. She lies to him; she has lost it in a cave, she says. Does she lie? Her union with Golaud is an exte

your hair has fallen from the tower! I am holding it in my hands, I am touching it with my lips.... I am

up so that he may peep in at the window of the tower and tell him what they are doing in the room. Golaud in his anguish digs his nails into the child's flesh, but he finds nothing to justify his suspicions; nevertheless in a following scene he loses his self-control, and, in the presence of his grandfather, ill-treats Melisanda. In the meantime the father is declared to be out of danger (Fate needs the father's recovery now to precipitate the tragedy); Pelleas is free to go away, and he asks Melisanda for a last meeting, by night, in the forest. She leaves her husband asleep, and the lovers meet in the moonlight. "How great our shadows are this evening!" s

, the wise old man of the play, clo

h she were the big sister of her child.... Come away, come away.... My God! My God!... I shall not be able to understand anything any more.... Don

Jeunes

Schlaf's Maet

e for February to March, 1889; "Qu'est-ce donc que l'ame? Une possibilité idéale qui réside en nous comme la substance réelle de nous-mêmes, que les erreurs et les taches de la vie n

'Ame" (in Le Trésor

olo, the lover of Genoveva. The na

wrote his early dramas drew inspiration from Walter Crane's picture-books. The Frog Prince was one of them