Life and Writings of Maurice Maeterlinck

Théatre de l'?uvre on the 6th of November, 1894. The published play is preceded by some entertaining gossip concerning W

"; concerning also "Jhon Fletcher" and "Jonson, le pachydermique, l'entêté et puissant Ben Jonson, qui appartient à la famille de ces grands monstres littéraires où rayonnent Diderot, Jea

. In the most tragical moments, in those most charged with misery, they say two or three very simple words; a

his, with reference to the "great cyclone of poetry which

ur life; and I have forgotten what sage it was who said that if Plato or Swedenborg had not existed, the soul of this peasant who is passing along the road and who has never read anything would not be what it is to-day. Everything in the spiritual regions is connected more closely

oduction to Les Disciples à Sa?s et les Fragments de Novalis (The Di

side the unconscious wisdom of this child who is passing, and you will see that what Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Schopenhauer, and Pascal have revealed to us

ys here prepare the way

om love and a hundred thousand leagues away from pride. We possess an I which is deeper and more inexhaustible than the I of passions or of pure reason. It is not a matter of telling us what we feel when the woman we love abandons us. She goes away to-day; our eyes weep, but our soul does not weep

cannot unfold, one minute which passes without saying anything, may stir it up in terrible whirlpools at the bottom of its retreats and cause it to overflow on to my life. Our soul does not ju

rked several of the most subtle hours of the human soul." In the following passage he shows him to be a forerunner

ove all the amazed teacher of the mysterious relations there are among all things. He is for ever groping at the limits of this world, where the sun shines but rarely,

1894. This preface and the introductions to Ruysbroeck and Novalis are reprinted in abridged form in Le Trésor des Humbles (The Treasure of the Humble), which the Mercure de France issued in 1896. These essays are clearly modelled on Emerson's. He calls Emerson "

is incomprehensible and divine.... You must live because there are no hours without the deepest miracles and the most unspeakable meanings.... Emerson came to affirm the secret grandeur which is the same in every man's life. He

ith the theory of the tragic advanced in another essay o

t be an ancient error to think that it is at the moments when we are possessed by such a passion, or by others of equal violence, that we really live? I have come to think that an old man sitting in his arm-chair, simply waiting in the lamplight, listening without knowing it to all the eternal laws which reign around his house, interpreting, without understanding it, all that there is in the silence of the doors and the windows and in the low voice of the light, undergoing the presence of his soul and of his destiny, inclining his head a little, without suspecting that all the

ir heads. "Put a vivisectional rabbit in the arm-chai

." This chapter is perhaps the most famous of his essays; and it must be understood if much in Maeterlinck's other work is not to remai

an unexpected circumstance may awaken it of a sudden, and then its brother, the great active sil

y the philosopher's "doctrine of identity."[3] From a practical point of view, however, Maeterlinck might seem to be teaching that when we say "fine weather to-day," or "pass me the salt" (these are common words, but what "interior dialogue" may there not be behind them?) we are expressing our souls; but that when we speak in the full heat of passion, or with that eloquence which pours from us in the brighter moments of our brains, we are expressing nothing. When the old King in Princess Maleine asks whether there will be salad for breakfast, he expresses admirably the state of a foundered soul; when Golaud finds Pelleas playing with Melisanda's hair in the dark, and, instead of bursting into a torrent of speech, says simply:

es not shroud itself now in the same number of veils as it used to do. And "do you know-it is a disquieting and strange truth-do you know that if you are not good, it is more than probable that your presence proclaims it to-day a hundred times more clearly than it would have done two or three centuries ago." (If the essayist had added here t

the women of the Germans, something divinely prophetic. "It seems," he says, "that woman is more subject than we are to destinies. She undergoes them with a much greater simplicity. She never sincerely struggles against them. She is still n

uty seen by

the soul seen

quickened soul

e living sou

ry breathing o

u at the things

-------------------

the blinding,

e soul's spring

y gleam of li

arn a new soul

from the dramas already discussed, is identical with pessimism. "There is no destiny of joy," he says, "ther

been sharply criticised by Christians-Maeterlinck s

ld she blush for? What would she wish to hide? Would she, like a modest woman, cast the long mantle of her hair over the numberless sins of the flesh? She knew nothing of them, and these sins have never reached her. They were committed a thousand leagues away from her throne, and the soul

have forgotten the soul, or found it hard to think of it as independent of the body; and that it might have been better for them had they concentrated their worshi

which fills the play Aglavaine and Selysette, published in the same year. It is a competition between t

has asked himself whether they have lived near enough to each other. Now they are joined by Aglavaine, the widow of Selysette's brother, who has bee

but extremely penetrating recollection of the great primitive unity."[4]) They think of loving each other like brother and sister; but they know in their hearts that it will not be possible. (The senses are beginning to intrude into Maeterlinck's writings.) Nor can they run a

no other cares," says Aglavaine, "save to become as beautiful as possible, so that all the three of us may love one another the more.... We will put so much beauty into ourselves and our surroundings that there will be no room left for misfortune and sadness; and if these would enter in spite of all they must perforce become bea

Aglavaine more. "Is it not strange?" Aglavaine asks Selysette, "I love you, I love Méléandre, Méléandre loves me, he loves

she herself tells her she may. She talks mysteriously to Aglavaine of a plan she has conceived for putting things right; and it is the great weakness of the drama that the wise woman, who can

omised to catch a strange bird with green wings that has been seen flying round the tower.... She thinks it has built its nest in a hole in the wall just where she can lean over.... She leans over to seize it, and the top of the wall gives way.

ysette is a beautiful creation-the only one of Maeterlinck's women, perhaps, who is absolutely natural. She is "unconscious goodness," says a critic, whereas Aglavaine is "conscious goodness"; and no doubt she does represent an idea;[5] but she is nevertheless a real,

ed to be beautiful; and you will know some day that women are never tired of being m

as much individualism as fatalism in this play. It is true that love is fatal to Selysette, but that is because Aglavaine is a monstrosity, not because love is a dark power-in this

("Lonely Lives"). Hauptmann, like Maeterlinck, simplifies the complexity by the suicide of the most sensitive member of the group: both dramatists come to the conclusion that the time is not yet ripe for reorganising cohabita

sons (Fifteen Songs) at the end of Serres Chaudes, the poor human soul is still groping in surrounding dark, and only catching rare glimpses of the light. In one poem the soul has been wandering for thirty years, seeking her saviour; he was everywhere, but she could not co

te, a nightmare, set against The three blind sisters. You know the meaning of She had three diadems of gold when you have seen the picture to it: the love you bestow on a person is a net wherewith that person i

you like the wings of a bird, is to be borne into the atmosphere of the soul. And

days are

days are

days will

days shall

l die here

ad in your hands and sob like

note 3

the following fragment (p. 103 in Maeterlinck's translation): "One ought never to see a work of pl

is shared and divided, that which is joined and separated, there is perfect identity of all things, there is everywhere and always identical mystery, there God is. There it is, too, says Maeterlinck, that we first understand each other, for subtle, tender bonds are there between all souls.... When you now, with Maeterlinck, turn your back on the conscious in every form, it follows that even the best word will always be a more or less disturbing wrinkle, a wrinkle that darkens the unmoving silent waters of the

Invisible

, Aglavaine is a "Mannwei

he German Volkslied "H