Chapter I: The Mysticism of Maurice Maeterlinck (2)

The inner philosophic conflict was but of short duration. In 1898 _La Sagesse et La Destinée_ ("Wisdom and Destiny") saw the light. The metaphor might be taken in a meaning higher and more precise than the customary, for, coming to this book from those that preceded is indeed like emerging from some dark and dismal cave into the warm and cheering light of the sun. "Wisdom and Destiny" is a collection of essays and aphorisms which stands to this second phase of Maeterlinck's dramaturgy in a relation closely analogous to that existing between "The Treasure of the Humble" and the works heretofore surveyed. Without amounting to a wholesale recantation of the idea that is central in the earlier set of essays, the message of the newer set is of a very different kind. The author of "Wisdom and Destiny" has not changed his view touching the superiority of the intuitional function over the intellectual. The significant difference between the old belief and the new consists simply in this: the latent force of life is no longer imagined as an antagonistic agency; rather it is conceived as a benign energy that makes for a serene acceptance of the world that is. Of this turn in the outlook, the philosophic affirmation of life and the consent of the will to subserve the business of living are the salutary concomitants. Wisdom, in expanding, has burst the prison of fatalism and given freedom to vision. The world, beheld in the light of this emancipation, is not to be shunned by the wise man. Let Fortune bring what she will, he can strip his afflictions of their terrors by transmuting them into higher knowledge. Therefore, pain and suffering need not be feared and shirked; they may even be hailed with satisfaction, for, as is paradoxically suggested in _Aglavaine et Selysette_, they help man "_être heureux en devenant plus triste_,"--to be happy in becoming sadder. The poet, who till now had clung to the conviction that there can be no happy fate, that all our destinies are guided by unlucky stars, now on the contrary persuades us to consider how even calamity may be refined in the medium of wisdom in such fashion as to become an asset of life, and warns us against recoiling in spirit from any reverse of our fortunes. He holds that blows and sorrows cannot undo the sage. Fate has no weapons save those we supply, and "wise is he for whom even the evil must feed the pyre of love." In fine, Fate obeys him who dares to command it. After all, then, man has a right to appoint himself the captain of his soul, the master of his fate.

Yet, for all that, the author of "Wisdom and Destiny" should not be regarded as the partizan and apologist of sadness for the sake of wisdom. If sorrow be a rich mine of satisfaction, joy is by far the richer mine. This new outlook becomes more and more optimistic because of the increasing faculty of such a philosophy to extract from the mixed offerings of life a more near-at-hand happiness than sufferings can possibly afford; not perchance that perpetual grinning merriment over the comicality of the passing spectacle which with so many passes for a "sense of humor," but rather a calm and serious realization of what is lastingly beautiful, good, and true. A person's attainment of this beatitude imposes on him the clear duty of helping others to rise to a similar exalted level of existence. And this duty Maeterlinck seeks to discharge by proclaiming in jubilant accents the concrete reality of happiness. _L'Oiseau Bleu_ ("The Blue Bird"), above all other works, illustrates the fact that human lives suffer not so much for the lack of happiness as for the want of being clearly conscious of the happiness they possess. It is seen that the seed of optimism in "The Treasure of the Humble" has sprouted and spread out, and at last triumphantly shot forth through the overlaying fatalism. The newly converted, hence all the more thoroughgoing, optimist, believing that counsel and consolation can come only from those who trust in the regenerative power of hope, throws himself into a mental attitude akin to that of the Christian Scientist, and confidently proceeds to cure the ills of human kind by a categorical denial of their existence. Or perhaps it would be more just to say of Maeterlinck's latter-day outlook, the serenity of which even the frightful experience of the present time has failed to destroy, that instead of peremptorily negating evil, he merely denies its supremacy. All about him he perceives in the midst of the worst wrongs and evils many fertile germs of righteousness; vice itself seems to distil its own antitoxin.

Together with Maeterlinck's optimistic strain, his individualism gains an unexpected emphasis. "Before one exists for others, one must exist for one's self. The egoism of a strong and clear-sighted soul is of a more beneficent effect than all the devotion of a blind and feeble soul." Here we have a promulgation identical in gist with Emerson's unqualified declaration of moral independence when he says: "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature."(8)

(8) "Self-Reliance."

His attitude of countenancing the positive joys of living causes Maeterlinck in his later career to reverse his former judgment, and to inveigh, much in the manner of Nietzsche, against the "parasitical virtues." "Certain notions about resignation and self-sacrifice sap the finest moral forces of mankind more thoroughly than do great vices and even crimes. The alleged triumphs over the flesh are in most cases only complete defeats of life." When to such rebellious sentiments is joined an explicit warning against the seductions and intimidations held out by the official religions--their sugar plums and dog whips, as Maeterlinck puts it--one can only wonder how his writings escaped as long as they did the attention of the authorities that swing the power of imprimatur and anathema.

Maeterlinck may not be classed unreservedly as a radical individualist. For whereas a philosophy like that of Nietzsche takes no account of the "much-too-many," who according to that great fantasist do not interest anybody except the statistician and the devil, Maeterlinck realizes the supreme importance of the great mass as the ordained transmitters of civilization. The gulf between aristocratic subjectivism, devoted single-mindedly to the ruthless enforcement of self-interest, and, on the other hand, a self-forgetful social enthusiasm, is bridged in Maeterlinck by an extremely strong instinct for justice and, moreover, by his firm belief--at least for the time being--that the same strong instinct exists universally as a specific trait of human nature. By such a philosophy Justice, then, is discerned not as a supra-natural function, but as a function of human nature as distinguished from nature at large. The restriction is made necessary by our knowledge of the observable operations of nature. In particular would the principle of heredity seem to argue against the reign of justice in the administration of human destinies, inasmuch as we find ourselves quite unable to recognize in the apportionment of pleasure and pain anything like a due ratio of merit. And yet Maeterlinck realizes that perhaps nature measures life with a larger standard than the individual's short span of existence, and warns us in his essay on "Justice" not to indulge our self-conceit in a specious emulation of ways that are utterly beyond our comprehension. After all, then, our poet-philosopher succeeds _foro conscientiæ_ in reconciling his cult of self with devotion to the common interest. Morality, in that essay, is defined as the co-ordination of personal desire to the task assigned by nature to the race. And is it not true that a contrary, that is, ascetic concept of morality reduces itself to absurdity through its antagonism to that primal human instinct that makes for the continuity of life?

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From the compromise effected between two fairly opposite ethical principles, there emerges in the works of this period something akin to a socialistic tendency. It is organically related to the mystical prepossession of the author's manner of thinking. Maeterlinck gratefully acknowledges that by the search-light of science the uppermost layers of darkness have been dispelled; but realizes also that the deep-seated central enigma still remains in darkness: as much as ever are the primordial causes sealed against a glimpse of finite knowledge. We have changed the names, not the problems. Instead of God, Providence, or Fate, we say Nature, Selection, and Heredity. But in reality do we know more concerning Life than did our ancestors?

What, then, questions the persevering pursuer of the final verities, shall we do in order that we may press nearer to Truth? May we not perchance steep our souls in light that flows from another source than science? And what purer light is there to illumine us than the halo surrounding a contented worker performing his task, not under coercion, but from a voluntary, or it may be instinctive, submission to the law of life? If such subordination of self constitutes the basis of rational living, we shall do well to study its workings on a lowlier and less complicated plane than the human; for instance, in the behavior of the creature that is proverbial for its unflagging industry. For this industry is not motivated by immediate or selfish wants; it springs from instinctive self-dedication to the common cause. Some people expected from _La Vie des Abeilles_ ("The Life of the Bee"), (1901), much brand-new information about matters of apiculture. But in spite of his twenty-five years' experience, Maeterlinck had no startling discoveries to convey to his fellow-hivers. His book on bees is not primarily the result of a specialist's investigations but a poetical record of the observations made by a mind at once romantic and philosophical and strongly attracted to the study of this particular form of community life, because by its organization on a miniature scale it spreads before the student of society a synoptic view of human affairs.

Of the great change that had by now taken place in his conception of life, Maeterlinck was fully cognizant, and made no concealment of it. In the essay on "Justice" he says, with reference to his earlier dramas: "The motive of these little plays was the fear of the Unknown by which we are constantly surrounded," and passes on to describe his religious temper as a sort of compound of the Christian idea of God with the antique idea of Fate, immersed in the profound gloom of hopeless mystery. "The Unknown took chiefly the aspect of a power, itself but blindly groping in the dark, yet disposing with inexorable unfeelingness of the fates of men."

Evidently those same plays are passed once more in self-critical review in _Ardiane et Barbe-Bleue_ ("Ardiane and Blue-Beard"), (1899), notwithstanding the fact that the author disclaims any philosophic purpose and presents his work as a mere libretto. We cannot regard it as purely accidental that of Blue-Beard's terror-stricken wives, four,--Selysette, Mélisande, Ygraine, Alladine,--bear the names of earlier heroines, and, besides, that each of these retains with the name also the character of her namesake. The symbolism is too transparent. The child-wives of the cruel knight, forever in a state of trembling fear, are too passive to extricate themselves from their fate, whereas Ardiane succeeds instantly in breaking her captivity, because she has the spirit and strength to shatter the window and let in the light and air. The contrast between her resolute personality and those five inert bundles of misery undoubtedly connotes the difference between the author's paralyzing fatalism in the past and his present dynamic optimism.

A like contrast between dejection and resilience would be brought to light by a comparison of the twelve lyric poems, _Douze Chansons_, (1897), with the _Serres Chaudes_. The mood is still greatly subdued; the new poetry is by no means free from sadness and a strain of resignation. But the half-stifled despair that cries out from the older book returns no dissonant echo in the new.

Even his dramatic technique comes under the sway of Maeterlinck's altered view of the world. The far freer use of exciting and eventful action testifies to increased elasticity and force. This is a marked feature of _Soeur Beatrice_ ("Sister Beatrice"), (1900), a miracle play founded on the old story about the recreant nun who, broken from sin and misery, returns to the cloister and finds that during the many years of her absence her part and person have been carried out by the Holy Virgin herself.

Equally, the three other dramas of this epoch--_Aglavaine et Selysette_, _Monna Vanna_, and _Joyzelle_--are highly available for scenic enactment. Of the three, _Monna Vanna_, (1902), in particular is conspicuous for a wholly unexpected aptitude of characterization, and for the unsurpassed intensity of its situations, which in this isolated case are not cast in a single mood as in the other plays, but are individually distinct and full of dramatic progress, whereas everywhere else the action moves rather sluggishly.

"Monna Vanna" is one of the most brilliantly actable plays of modern times, despite its improbability. A certain incongruity between the realistic and the romantic aspects in the behavior of the principals is saved from offensiveness by a disposition on the part of the spectator to refer it, unhistorically, to the provenience of the story. But as a matter of fact the actors are not fifteenth century Renaissance men and women at all, but mystics, modern mystics at that, both in their reasoning and their morality. It is under a cryptical soul-compulsion that Giovanna goes forth to the unknown condottiere prepared to lay down her honor for the salvation of her people, and that her husband at last conquers his repugnance to her going. Prinzivalle, Guido, Marco, are mystics even to a higher degree than Vanna.

The poignant actualism of "Monna Vanna" lies, however, in the author's frank sympathy with a distinctively modern zest for freedom. The situation between husband and wife is reminiscent of "A Doll's House" in the greedily possessive quality of Guido's affection, with which quality his tyrannous unbelief in Prinzivalle's magnanimity fully accords. But Maeterlinck here goes a step beyond Ibsen. In her married life with Guido, Vanna was meekly contented, "at least as happy as one can be when one has renounced the vague and extravagant dreams which seem beyond human life." When the crisis arrives she realizes that "it is never too late for one who has found a love that can fill a life." Her final rebellion is sanctioned by the author, who unmistakably endorses the venerable Marco's profession of faith that life is always in the right.

"Joyzelle," (1903), inferior to "Monna Vanna" dramaturgically, and in form the most distinctly fantastic of all Maeterlinck's productions, is still farther removed from the fatalistic atmosphere. This play sounds, as the author himself has stated, "the triumph of will and love over destiny or fatality," as against the converse lesson of _Monna Vanna_. The idea is symbolically expressed in the temptations of Lanceor and in the liberation of Joyzelle and her lover from the power of Merlin and his familiar, Arielle, who impersonates the secret forces of the heart.

_Aglavaine et Selysette_, _Monna Vanna_, and _Joyzelle_ mark by still another sign the advent of a new phase in Maeterlinck's evolution; namely, by the characterization of the heroines. Previously, the women in his plays were hardly individualized and none of them can be said to possess a physiognomy strictly her own. Maeterlinck had returned with great partiality again and again to the same type of woman: languid and listless, without stamina and strength, yet at the same time full of deep feeling, and capable of unending devotion--pathetic incorporeal figures feeling their way along without the light of self-consciousness, like some pre-raphaelite species of somnambulists. In the new plays, on the contrary, women of a courageous and venturesome spirit and with a self-possessive assurance are portrayed by preference and with unmistakable approval.

As the technique in the more recent creations of Maeterlinck, so the diction, too, accommodates itself to altered tendencies. Whereas formerly the colloquy was abrupt and fragmentary, it is now couched in cadenced, flowing language, which, nevertheless, preserves the old-time simplicity. The poet himself has criticized his former dialogue. He said it made those figures seem like deaf people walking in their sleep, whom somebody is endeavoring to arouse from a heavy dream.

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For the limited purpose of this sketch it is not needful to enter into a detailed discussion of Maeterlinck's latest productions, since such lines as they add to his philosophical and artistic physiognomy have been traced beforehand. His literary output for the last dozen years or so is embodied in six or seven volumes: about two years to a book seems to be his normal ratio of achievement, the same as was so regularly observed by Henrik Ibsen, and one that seems rather suitable for an author whose reserve, dictated by a profound artistic and moral conscience, like his actual performance, calls for admiration and gratitude. During the war he has written, or at least published, very little. It is fairly safe to assume that the emotional experience of this harrowing period will control his future philosophy as its most potent factor; equally safe is it to predict, on the strength of his published utterances, that his comprehensive humanity, that has been put to such a severe test, will pass unscathed through the ordeal.

Of the last group of Maeterlinck's works only two are dramas, namely, "The Blue Bird," (1909), and "Mary Magdalene," (1910). The baffling symbolism of "The Blue Bird" has not stood in the way of a tremendous international stage success; the fact is due much less to the simple line of thought that runs through the puzzle than to the exuberant fancy that gave rise to it and its splendid scenical elaboration. Probably Mr. Henry Rose is right, in his helpful analysis of "The Blue Bird," in venturing the assertion that "by those who are familiar with Swedenborg's teaching 'The Blue Bird' must be recognized as to a very large extent written on lines which are in accordance with what is known as the Science of Correspondences--a very important part of Swedenborg's teachings." But the understanding of this symbolism in its fullness offers very great difficulties. That a definite and consistent meaning underlies all its features will be rather felt than comprehended by the great majority who surely cannot be expected to go to the trouble first of familiarizing themselves with Maeterlinck's alleged code of symbols and then of applying it meticulously to the interpretation of his plays.

"Mary Magdalene," judged from the dramatic point of view, is a quite impressive tragedy, yet a full and sufficient treatment of the very suggestive scriptural legend it is not. The converted courtezan is characterized too abstractly. Instead of presenting herself as a woman consumed with blazing sensuality but in whom the erotic fire is transmuted into religious passion, she affects us like an enacted commentary upon such a most extraordinary experience.

Finally, there are several volumes of essays, to some of which reference has already been made.(9) _Le Temple Enseveli_ ("The Buried Temple"), (1902), consists of six disquisitions, all dealing with metaphysical subjects: Justice, The Evolution of Mystery, The Reign of Matter, The Past, Chance, The Future. _Le Double Jardin_ ("The Double Garden"), (1904), is much more miscellaneous in its makeup. These are its heterogeneous subjects: The Death of a Little Dog, Monte Carlo, A Ride in a Motor Car, Dueling, The Angry Temper of the Bees, Universal Suffrage, The Modern Drama, The Sources of Spring, Death and the Crown (a discussion upon the fatal illness of Edward VII), a View of Rome, Field Flowers, Chrysanthemums, Old-fashioned Flowers, Sincerity, The Portrait of Woman, and Olive Branches (a survey of certain now, alas, obsolete ethical movements of that day). _L'Intelligence des Fleurs_ (in the translation it is named "Life and Flowers," in an enlarged issue "The Measure of the Hours," both 1907), takes up, besides the theme of the general caption, the manufacture of perfumes, the various instruments for measuring time, the psychology of accident, social duty, war, prize-fighting, and "King Lear." In 1912, three essays on Emerson, Novalis, and Ruysbroeck appeared collectively, in English, under the title "On Emerson and Other Essays." These originally prefaced certain works of those writers translated by Maeterlinck in his earlier years.

(9) Considerable liberty has been taken by Maeterlinck in the grouping
and naming of his essay upon their republication in the several
collections. The confusion caused thereby is greatly increased by the
deviation of some of the translated editions from the original volumes
as to the sequence of articles, the individual and collective titles,
and even the contents themselves.

Maeterlinck's most recent publications are _La Mort_ (published in English in a considerably extended collection under the title "Our Eternity"), (1913), "The Unknown Guest," (1914), and _Les Débris de la Guerre_ ("The Wrack of the Storm"), (1916).(10) The two first named, having for their central subject Death and the great concomitant problem of the life beyond, show that the author has become greatly interested in psychical research; he even goes so far as to affirm his belief in precognition. In these essays, Theosophy and Spiritism and kindred occult theories are carefully analyzed, yet ingenious as are the author's speculations, they leave anything like a solution of the perplexing riddles far afield. On the whole he inclines to a telepathic explanation of the psychical phenomena, yet thinks they may be due to the strivings of the cosmic intelligence after fresh outlets, and believes that a careful and persistent investigation of these phenomena may open up hitherto undreamt of realms of reality. In general, we find him on many points less assertive than he was in the beginning and inclined to a general retrenchment of the dogmatic element in his philosophic attitude. A significant passage in "The Buried Treasure" teaches us not to deplore the loss of fixed beliefs. "One should never look back with regret to those hours when a great belief abandons us. A faith that becomes extinct, a means that fails, a dominant idea that no longer dominates us because we think it is our turn to dominate it--these things prove that we are living, that we are progressing, that we are using up a great many things because we are not standing still." Of the gloomy fatalism of his literary beginnings hardly a trace is to be found in the Maeterlinck of to-day. His war-book, "The Wrack of the Storm," breathes a calm optimism in the face of untold disaster. The will of man is put above the power of fate. "Is it possible that fatality--by which I mean what perhaps for a moment was the unacknowledged desire of the planet--shall not regain the upper hand? At the stage which man has reached, I hope and believe so.... Everything seems to tell us that man is approaching the day whereon, seizing the most glorious opportunity that has ever presented itself since he acquired a consciousness, he will at last learn that he is able, when he pleases, to control his whole fate in this world."(11) His faith in humanity is built on the heroic virtues displayed in this war. "To-day, not only do we know that these virtues exist: we have taught the world that they are always triumphant, that nothing is lost while faith is left, while honor is intact, while love continues, while the soul does not surrender." ... Death itself is now threatened with extinction by our heroic race: "The more it exercises its ravages, the more it increases the intensity of that which it cannot touch; the more it pursues its phantom victories, the better does it prove to us that man will end by conquering death."

(10) "The Light Beyond" (1917) is not a new work at all, but merely a
combination of parts from "Our Eternity" and "The Wrack of the Storm."

(11) "The Wrack of the Storm," p. 144 f.

In the concluding chapter of "Our Eternity," the romantic modification of Maeterlinck's mysticism is made patent in his confession regarding the problem of Knowledge: "I have added nothing to what was already known. I have simply tried to separate what may be true from that which is assuredly not true.... Perhaps through our quest for that undiscoverable Truth we shall have accustomed our eyes to pierce the terror of the last hour by looking it full in the face.... We need have no hope that any one will utter on this earth the word that shall put an end to our uncertainties. It is very probable, on the contrary, that no one in this world, nor perhaps in the next, will discover the great secret of the universe. And ... it is most fortunate that it should be so. We have not only to resign ourselves to living in the incomprehensible, but to rejoice that we cannot get out of it. If there were no more insoluble questions ... infinity would not be infinite; and then we should have forever to curse the fate that placed us in a universe proportionate to our intelligence. The unknown and the unknowable are necessary and will perhaps always be necessary to our happiness. In any case, I would not wish my worst enemy, were his understanding a thousandfold loftier and a thousandfold mightier than mine, to be condemned eternally to inhabit a world of which he had surprised an essential secret...."(12)

(12) Quoted from the excellent translation by A. T. de Mattos.

So the final word of Maeterlinck's philosophy, after a lifetime of ardent search, clears up none of the tantalizing secrets of our existence. And yet somehow it bears a message that is full of consolation. The value of human life lies in the perpetual movement towards a receding goal. Whoever can identify himself with such a philosophy and accept its great practical lesson, that we shall never reach Knowledge but acquire wisdom in the pursuit, should be able to envisage the veiled countenance of Truth without despair, and even to face with some courage the eternal problem of our being, its reason and its destination.