Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie.
(Tr. 2)
the hour of deliverance will be past and only a few will have heard it
sound.
Nevertheless, what means of hope in these pages where Maeterlinck,
disciple of Ruysbroeck, Novalis, Emerson and Hello, only asking of
these superior spirits (whose two lesser had intuitions of genius) the
sign of the hand that stimulates mysterious voyages! The generality of
men, and the more conscious, who have so many hours of indifference,
would find here encouragement to enjoy the simplicity of days and
muffled murmurs of deep life. They would learn the meaning of very
humble gestures and very futile words, and that an infant's laugh or
a woman's prattle equals, by what it holds of soul and mystery, the
most resplendent words of sages. For Maeterlinck, with his air of being
a sage, and quite wise, confidently narrates unusual thoughts with a
frankness quite disrespectful of psychological tradition, and with a
boldness quite contemptuous of mental habits, assumes the courage only
to attribute to things the importance they will have in an ultimate
world. Thus, sensuality is altogether absent in his meditations. He
knows the importance, but also the insignificance of the stir of blood
and nerves, storms that precede or follow, but never accompany thought.
And if he speaks of women who are nothing but soul, it is to inquire
into "the mysterious salt which forever conserves the memory of the
touch of two lips".
Maeterlinck's literature, poems or philosophy, comes in an hour when
we have most need to be fortified and strengthened, in an hour when
it is not immaterial to learn that the supreme end of life is "to
keep open the highways that lead from the visible to the invisible."
Maeterlinck has not only kept open the highways frequented by so many
good-intentioned souls, and where great-minded men here and there
open their arms like oases. It rather seems that he has increased to
infinity the extent of these highways; he has said "such specious words
in low tones" that the brambles have made way of themselves, the trees
have pruned themselves spontaneously, a step beyond is possible, and
the gaze today travels farther than it did yesterday.
Others doubtless have or have had a richer language, a more fertile
imagination, a clearer gift of observation, more fancy, faculties
better fitted to trumpet the music of words. Granted; but with a timid
and poor language, childish dramatic combinations, an almost enervating
system of repetition in phraseology, with these awkwardnesses, with all
his awkwardnesses, Maurice Maeterlinck works at books and booklets that
have a certain originality, a novelty so truly new that it will long
disconcert the lamentable troop of people who pardon audacity if there
be a precedent--as in the protocol--but who hold in scorn genius, which
is the perpetual audacity.