Life and Writings
of
Maurice Maeterlinck
BY
JETHRO BITHELL
London and Felling-on-Tyne:
THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD
NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE
TO
ALBERT MOCKEL,
THE PENETRATING CRITIC, THE SUBTLE POET
"Maurice Maeterlinck.--Il débuta ... dans _La Pléiade_
par un chef-d'œuvre: _Le Massacre des Innocents_. Albert
Mockel devint plus tard son patient et infatigable apôtre
à Paris. C'est lui qui nous fit connaître _Les Serres Chaudes_
et surtout cette _Princesse Maleine_ qui formula définitivement
l'idéal des Symbolistes au théâtre."
STUART MERRILL,
_Le Masque_, Série ii, No. 9 and 10.
PREFACE
It is not an easy task to write the life of a man who is still living.
If the biographer is hostile to his subject, the slaughtering may be an
exciting spectacle; if he wishes, not to lay a victim out, but to pay a
tribute of admiration tempered by criticism, he has to run the risk of
offending the man he admires, and all those whose admiration is in the
nature of blind hero-worship. If he is conscientious, the only thing he
can do is to give an honest expression of his own views, or a mosaic of
the views of others which seem to him correct, knowing that he may be
wrong, and that his authorities may be wrong, but challenging
contradiction, and caring only for the truth as it appears to him.
So much for the tone of the book; there are difficulties, too, when the
lion is alive, in setting up a true record of his movements. If the lion
is a raging lion, how easy it is to write a tale of adventure; but if
the lion is a tame specimen of his kind, you have either to _imagine_
exploits, making mountains out of molehills, or you have to give a page
or so of facts, and for the rest occupy yourself with what is really
essential.
When the lion is as tame as Maeterlinck is (or rather as Maeterlinck
chooses to appear), the case is peculiarly difficult. The events in
Maeterlinck's life are his books; and these are not, like Strindberg's
books, for instance, so inspired by personality that they in themselves
form a fascinating biography. They reveal little of the sound man of
business Maeterlinck is; they do not show us what faults or passions he
may have; they tell us little of his personal relations--in short,
Maeterlinck's books are practically impersonal.
The biographer cannot take handfuls of life out of Maeterlinck's own
books; and it is not much he can get out of what has been written about
him, very little of which is based on personal knowledge. Maeterlinck
has always been hostile to collectors of "copy," those great purveyors
of the stuff that books are made of. Huret made him talk, or says he
did, when Maeterlinck took him into the beer-shop; and a few words of
that interview will pass into every biography. That was at a time when
he hated interviews. He wrote to a friend on the 4th of October, 1890:
"I beg you _in all sincerity, in all sincerity_, if you can stop
the interviews you tell me of, for the love of God stop them. I am
beginning to get frightfully tired of all this. Yesterday, while I
was at dinner, two reporters from ... fell into my soup. I am going
to leave for London, I am sick of all that is happening to me. So
if you can't stop the interviews they will interview my
servant."[1]
This is not a man who would chatter himself away,[2] not even to Mr
Frank Harris, who found him aggressive (and no wonder either if the
Englishman said by word of mouth what he says in print, namely that _The
Treasure of the Humble_ was written "at length" after _The Life of the
Bee_, _Monna Vanna_, and the translation of _Macbeth_![3]). The fact is,
there is very little printed matter easily available on the biography
proper of Maeterlinck. It is true we have several accounts of him by his
wife in a style singularly like his own; we have gossip; we have
delightful portraits of the houses he lives in--but we have no bricks
for building with.
A future biographer may have at his hands what the present lacks; but I
for my part have no other ambition for this book than that it should be
a running account of Maeterlinck's works, with some suggestions as to
their interpretation and value.
JETHRO BITHELL.
Hammerfield,
Nr. Hemel Hempstead,
31st January, 1913.
[1] Gérard Harry, _Maeterlinck_, p. 18.
[2] "Monsieur Maeterlinck being as all the world knows, hermetically
mute."--(Grégoire Le Roy), _Le Masque_ (Brussels), Série ii, No. 5
(1912).
[3] "_La Vie des Abeilles_ brought us from the tiptoe of expectance to a
more reasonable attitude, and _Monna Vanna_ and the translation of
_Macbeth_ keyed our hopes still lower; but at length in _Le Trésor des
Humbles_ Maeterlinck returned to his early inspiration."--_Academy_,
15th June, 1912.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
Maeterlinck born, August 29th, 1862; his family; meaning of his name;
his father; residence at Oostacker; atmosphere of Ghent; educated at the
Collège de Sainte-Barbe; his hatred of the Jesuits; his schoolfellows;
subscribes to "La Jeune Belgique"; his first poem printed; his religious
nature; his wish to study medicine; studies law at the University of
Ghent; practises for a time as _avocat_; stay in Paris; influence of
Villiers de L'Isle-Adam and Barbey d'Aurevilly; introduced by Grégoire
Le Roy to the founders of "La Pléiade"; contributes "Le Massacre des
Innocents"; influence on him of Flemish painting; other early efforts;
influence of Charles van Lerberghe; meets Mallarmé; the symbolists; the
birth of the _vers libre_; influence of Walt Whitman