_Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! comme je suis malade! Et je ne sais pas ce que
j'ai;--et personne ne sait ce que le médecin ne sait pas ce que j'ai;
ma nourrice ne sait pas ce que j'ai; Hjalmar ne sait pas ce que j'ai._
That these repetitions lend themselves to parody is obvious; that they
are sometimes ridiculous is certain; but the principle which underlies
them is at the root of much of the finest Eastern poetry--notably in the
Bible. The charm and the impressiveness of monotony is one of the
secrets of the East; we see it in their literature, in their dances, we
hear it in their music. The desire of the West is after variety, but as
variety is the most tiring of all excesses, we are in the mood for
welcoming an experiment in monotone. And therein lies the originality,
therein also the success of Maeterlinck.
In comparing the author of _La Princesse Maleine_ with Shakespeare,
Mirbeau probably accepted for a moment the traditional Shakespeare of
grotesque horror and violent buffoonery. There is in _Maleine_ something
which might be called Elizabethan--though it is Elizabethan of the
school of Webster and Tourneur rather than of Shakespeare. But in
_L'Intruse_ and _Les Aveugles_ the spiritual terror and physical
apprehension which are common to all Maeterlinck's work have changed,
have become more interior. The art of both pieces consists in the subtle
gradations of terror, the slow, creeping progress of the nightmare of
apprehension. Nothing quite like it has been done before--not even by
Poe, not even by Villiers. A brooding poet, a mystic, a contemplative
spectator of the comedy of death--that is how Maeterlinck presents
himself to us in his work, and the introduction which he has prefixed to
his translation of _L'Ornement des Noces Spirituelles_ of Ruysbroeck
l'Admirable shows how deeply he has studied the mystical writers of all
ages, and how much akin to theirs is his own temper. Plato and Plotinus,
Saint Bernard and Jacob Boehme, Coleridge and Novalis--he knows them
all, and it is with a sort of reverence that he sets himself to the task
of translating the astonishing Flemish mystic of the thirteenth century,
known till now only by the fragments translated into French by Ernest
Hello from a sixteenth-century Latin version. This translation and this
introduction help to explain the real character of Maeterlinck's
dramatic work--dramatic as to form, by a sort of accident, but
essentially mystical. As a dramatist Maeterlinck has but one note--that
of fear; he has but one method--that of repetition. This is no equipment
for a Shakespeare, and it will probably be some time before Maeterlinck
can recover from the literary damage of so incredible a misnomer.
In the preface to the first volume of the collected edition, which
should be read with attention by all who are interested in knowing
Maeterlinck's opinion of his own work, we are told:--
_Quant aux deux petites pièces... je voudrais qu'il n'y eut aucun
malentendu à leur endroit. Ce n'est pas parce qu'elles sont
postérieures qu'il y faudrait chercher une évolution ou un nouveau
désir. Ce sont, à proprement parler, de petits jeux de scène, de
courts poèmes du genre assez malheureusement appelé "opéra-comique"
destinés à fournir, aux musiciens qui les avaient demandés, un thème
convenable à des développements lyriques. Ils ne prétendent à rien
d'avantage, et l'on se méprendrait sur mes intentions si l'on y voulait
trouver par surcroit de grandes arrière-pensées morales ou
philosophiques._
Maeterlinck may be taken at his word, and, if we take him at his word,
we shall be the less disappointed. The two new plays are slight; they
have neither the subtlety of meaning nor the strangeness of atmosphere
which gives their quality of beauty and force to _Pelléas et
Mélisande_ and to _Les Aveugles. Soeur Béatrice_ is a dramatic version
of the legend which Davidson told effectively in the _Ballad of a Nun;
Ariane et Barbe-Bleue_ is a new reading of the legend of Blue-Beard.
Both are written in verse, although printed as prose. It may be
remembered that Maeterlinck once admitted that _La Princesse Maleine_
was meant to be a kind of _verse libre_, and that he had originally
intended to print it as verse. As it stands now it is certainly not
verse in any real sense, where--as _Soeur Béatrice_ is written
throughout on the basis of the Alexandrine, although without rhyme. The
mute _e_ is, as in most modern French verse, sometimes sounded and
sometimes not sounded; short lines are frequently interspersed among the
lines of twelve syllables. Here are a few lines, taken at random, and
printed as verse;--
_Tu ne me réponds pas? Je n'entends pas ton souffle...
Et tes genoux fléchissent.... Viens, viens,
n'attendons pas
Que l'aurore envieuse tende ses pièges d'or
Par les chemins d'azur qui mènent au bonheur._
That is perfectly regular twelve-syllable verse with the exception of
the second line, where the final _ent of fléchissent_ is slurred.
Twelve-syllable unrhymed verse is almost as disconcerting and unknown in
English as in French, but it has been used, with splendid effect, by
Blake, and it is a metre of infinite possibilities. The metre of _Ariane
et Barbe-Bleue_ (as Maeterlinck has finally decided to call it) is
vaguer and more capricious; some of it is in twelve-syllable verse, some
in irregular verse, and some in what can not be called verse at all.
Take, for instance:--
_Il parait qu'on pleurait dans les rues.--Pourquoi est-elle venue? On
m'a dit qu'elle avait son idée. Il n'aura pas celle-ci._
The form in French is not, to our ears, successfully achieved; it seems
to take a hesitating step upon the road which Paul Fort, in his
_Ballades Françaises_ has tramped along so vigorously, but in so
doubtful a direction. Fort has published several volumes, which have
been much praised by many of the younger critics, in which verse is
printed as verse--verse which is sometimes rhymed and sometimes
unrhymed, sometimes regular and sometimes irregular; and along with this
verse there is a great deal of merely rhythmical prose, which is not
more like verse than any page of _Salammbo_, or _À Rebours_, or
_L'Étui de Nacre._ Now it seems to us that this indiscriminate mingling
of prose and verse is for the good neither of prose nor of verse. It is
a breaking down of limits without any conquest of new country. The mere
printing of verse as prose, which Maeterlinck has favored, seems to us a
travesty unworthy of a writer of beautiful prose or of beautiful verse.
_Le Temple Enseveli_ is by no means equal, as literature or as
philosophy, to _Le Trésor des Humbles_, or even to _La Sagesse et la
Destinée_, but it is, like everything which Maeterlinck writes, full of
brooding honesty of thought and of a grave moral beauty of feeling. It
is the work of a thinker who "waits patiently," like a Christian upon
divine grace, upon the secret voices which come to us out of the deepest
places in our nature. He is absolutely open-minded, his trust and his
skepticism are alike an homage to truth. If what he has to say to us is
not always "_la sagesse même_," it is at least the speech of one who
has sought after wisdom more heedfully than any other writer of our
time.
_Le Double Jardin_ is a collection of essays which form a kind of
postscript to _Le Temple Enseveli._ They are somewhat less abstract,
perhaps a little more casual, than the essays in that book, and are
concerned with subjects as varied as _The Wrath of the Bee, The
Motor-Car_, and _Old-fashioned Flowers._ Maeterlinck has never written
anything in prose more graceful, more homely, and more human than some
of these pages, particularly those on flowers. In _The Leaf of Olive_
and in _Death and the Crown_ he carries speculation beyond the limits of
our knowledge, and "thinks nobly," not of the soul alone, but also of
the intelligence of man in its conflict with the deadly, unintelligent
oppositions of the natural forces of the world. Such pages are
fortifying, and we can not but be grateful for what is plausible in
their encouragement. But the larger part of the book is made up of notes
by the way, which have all the more charm because they are not too
systematically arranged.
All, it is true, have some link of mutual relation, and proceed from a
common center. It is curious to see this harmonizing instinct at work in
the present arrangement of the essay now called _Éloge de l'Épée._
The main part of this essay was published in the _Figaro_ in 1902 under
the title _La Défense de l'Épée._ In the _Figaro_ it began with a
merely topical reference:--
_L'autre jour, dans un article charmant, Alfred Capus prévoyait la fin
de l'honneur, du moins de "l'honneur salle d'armes" et des instruments
qui le protègent._
Then followed two paragraphs questioning, a little vaguely,
_si nous vivions dans une société qui nous protège suffisamment pour
nous enlever, en toutes circonstances, le droit le plus doux et le plus
cher à l'instinct de l'homme--celui de se faire justice à soi-même._
In the essay as we now read it the topical reference has disappeared,
and more than three pages are occupied by a discussion of abstract
right, of essential justice, which seems to set, strangely and
unexpectedly, a solid foundation under a structure not visibly resting
on any foundation sufficient for its support. As the essay now stands it
has its place in a system of which it becomes one more illustration.
Few of the essays in this book will be read with more interest than that
on _The Modern Drama._ It is a development of the ideas already
suggested by Maeterlinck in two prefaces. In asking where, under the
conditions of modern life, and in the expression of modern ideas, we can
find that background of beauty and of mystery which was like a natural
atmosphere to Sophocles and to Shakespeare, he is asking, not indeed
answering, a question which is being asked just now by all serious
thinkers who are concerned with the present and the future of the drama.
This suggestive essay should be contrasted and compared with a not less
suggestive, but more audaciously affirmative essay, _De l'Évolution du
Théâtre_, given as a lecture by André Gide, and reprinted at the
beginning of the volume containing his two latest plays _Saul_ and _Le
Roi Candaule._ Everything that Gide writes is full of honest, subtle and
unusual thought, and this consideration of the modern drama, though it
asks more questions, not answering them, seems also to answer a few of
the questions asked by Maeterlinck.