Life and Writings of Maurice Maeterlinck Part 7

In the chapter on "La Morale Mystique"--one which has been sharply criticised by Christians--Maeterlinck sunders the soul from the conscious acts of the body.

"What would happen," he asks, "if our soul suddenly became visible and had to advance in the midst of her a.s.sembled sisters, despoiled of her veils, but charged with her most secret thoughts, and trailing behind her the most mysterious acts of her life that nothing could express? What would 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 of the Sodomite even would pa.s.s through the midst of the crowd without suspecting anything, and bearing in its eyes the transparent smile of a child. It had taken no part in the sin, it was pursuing its life on the side where light reigns, and it is this life alone that it will remember."

This might comfort a criminal; but it is nothing more than a pure worship of the spirit. Maeterlinck might reply to his Christian traducers that they in their creed 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 worship on the Holy Ghost (as he does, on the Holy _Spirit_), for their worship of Christ is a species of idolatry, the worship of a graven image, an image graven in flesh.

It is especially the "interior beauty," of which Maeterlinck treats in the last essay in the collection, which fills the play _Aglavaine and Selysette_, published in the same year. It is a compet.i.tion between two women for the greater beauty of soul, a compet.i.tion in which simplicity gains the victory over wisdom.

In a castle by the sea live Meleandre and his wife Selysette. They have been married four years. They have been happy, though sometimes the husband 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 been unhappy in her marriage. Before she has been eight days in the castle, Meleandre cannot imagine that they were not "born in the same cradle" [_sic_].

Aglavaine on her part does not know whether he is her radiance or whether she is becoming his light. Everything is so joined in their beings that it is no longer possible to say where the one begins and where the other ends. (Pure love, according to the essays, is "a furtive 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 away from each other, or, at least, they make out they cannot: "A thing so beautiful," says Meleandre, "was not born to die; and we have duties towards ourselves." They kiss; a cry of pain is heard among the trees, and Selysette is seen fleeing, disheveled, towards the castle.

This wounded wife has less control over her natural feelings than Astolaine had in similar circ.u.mstances; but Aglavaine, in several pages of parchment speech, shows herself so wise and strong a woman that Selysette's jealousy of her is turned into love. Now all three dream of a triangular love of equal magnitudes. "We will have 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 beautiful too before they dare knock at our door." They dream of a _unio mystica_ of souls: "It seems to me,"

says Meleandre to Aglavaine, "as though my soul and my whole being and all they possess had changed their abode, as though I were embracing, with tears, that part of myself which is not of this world, when I am embracing you."

But Meleandre, though he loves Selysette's awakened soul more than in old days he loved her girlish body, cannot help loving Aglavaine more.

"Is it not strange?" Aglavaine asks Selysette, "I love you, I love Meleandre, Meleandre loves me, he loves you too, you love us both, and yet we cannot be happy, because the hour has not yet come when human beings can be united so."

It is clear that one of the two women must go. In spite of her duty to herself Aglavaine, in a fit of generosity, decides to sacrifice herself; but Selysette makes her promise not to go till 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 read souls so easily, cannot guess the truth in this one instance. A fool would have known that Selysette was contemplating suicide; but Aglavaine could not be allowed to wreck the tragedy....

There is an old abandoned lighthouse tower that the seagulls scream round. It is crumbling away at the top. Meleandre had only climbed it once, and then he was dizzy.... Here comes Selysette with her little sister, Yssaline, for whom she has promised 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.

She is precipitated on to the sands below. She would be killed if it were not for the fifth act; but she lives long enough to make out that it was a pure accident, so that the two surviving lovers may be happy ever after with a clear conscience.

In spite of great beauties, the play as a whole is disappointing. The fourth act, indeed, is perfect. In the first four acts we have the doctrine of silence, as well as various other doctrines, dinned into our ears. Meleandre is a milksop; Aglavaine is a bore; but Selysette 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, created woman.

Meligrane, the spiteful old grandmother, is in the main the same idea (wisdom is in babes and the very old) as the greybeards of other plays; but there is not very much of her, and she must be remembered for saying this (to her granddaughter, Selysette):

"And so it is thanks to you that I was a mother for the second time, when I had ceased to be beautiful; and you will know some day that women are never tired of being mothers, and that they would rock death itself, if death came to sleep on their knees."

_Aglavaine and Selysette_ is at all events important as being a turning-point in Maeterlinck's development. We have seen that he had applauded Emerson's st.u.r.dy individualism. There is 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 play it is distinctly painted as a _bright_ power.

Death is only called in as a saviour from an intolerable situation: Selysette dies, but she dies with a clear mind, and with a smile.

_Aglavaine and Selysette_ is legendary in its setting only; and it is not vague, but a clear handling of a problem which is a favourite with contemporary dramatists--another notable example is Gerhart Hauptmann's _Einsame Menschen_ ("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 cohabitation on a plural basis, and that (to quote Dryden) one to one must still be cursedly confined. What Maeterlinck has contributed to the problem is that he makes the two women love each other as well as the man they sandwich....

There is nothing of this awakening courage to live in the collection of poems modelled on folksong (the symbolists generally learned much from folksong) which Maeterlinck published in this year of 1896. In _Douze Chansons_ (Twelve Songs) which are now included in _Quinze Chansons_ (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 come near him.

Now, in the evening of her days, she bids her sister souls of sixteen years take up her staff and seek him; they also, far away. Les _Filles aux Yeux bandes_ and _Les sept Filles d'Orlamonde_[6] are sketches of a motive which was worked out in _Ardiane and Bluebeard_.

The poems are so beautifully ill.u.s.trated by Charles Doudelet's woodcuts that it is hard to say whether the pictures illuminate the poem or the poems the pictures. Maeterlinck's Tower is there, hauntingly desolate, 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 imprisons you. The most desolating imprisonment of all is that in which a mother is plunged by her children (for there is no love so _deep_ as hers): Doudelet shows us a woman chained up in a hole whelmed with snow.

To dream over this rare volume for an after-noon, stretching out its leaves before you like the wings of a bird, is to be borne into the atmosphere of the soul. And when you come to the last picture and the last poem "_You have lighted the lamps_"--

"The other days are wearisome, The other days are also shy, The other days will never come, The other days shall also die, We too shall die here by and bye"--

you would like to bury your head in your hands and sob like a woman--without knowing why....

[1] See note, p. 88.

[2] One of the features which distinguish the poetry of the symbolists is the mixing of _genres_. Cf. the following fragment (p. 103 in Maeterlinck's translation): "One ought never to see a work of plastic art without music, nor listen to a work of music anywhere save in beautifully decorated halls."

[3] Cf. Dr van Dijk, _Maeterlinck_, pp. 26 ff.; "Now in order to find the life interior you must be at the other end of all your agitations, you must be behind your conscious thoughts, words, and deeds. Behind all that makes you finite, keeps you finite, lies the infinite; the ocean of the infinite flows round you there, and there lie the ice-fields of mystery, the great treasures of the unconscious, there are the deeps of the interior sea. _There_ is no longer that which has an end, a bound, a limit, that which is shared and divided, that which is joined and separated, _there_ is perfect ident.i.ty of all things, _there_ is everywhere and always identical mystery, _there_ G.o.d 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 unconscious. Think and put your thoughts into words, and you must move further and further in the direction of the conscious; that is, in the direction of that which is limited and the limiting." Cf. one of the opening sentences of the essay "La Morale mystique": "As soon as we express something, we diminish it strangely. We think we have dived to the depth of the abysses, and when we reach the surface again the drop of water glittering at the end of our pale fingers no longer resembles the sea it came from."

[4] In _The Invisible Goodness_.

[5] According to Mieszner, Aglavaine is a "Mannweib," Selysette a "Nurweib."

[6] Is the name from the German _Volkslied_ "Herzogin von Orlamunde"?

CHAPTER IX

Towards the end of 1896 Maeterlinck settled in Paris. His life here was no less retired than it had been in Ghent. A new light had come into his life. _The Treasure of the Humble_ had been dedicated to a Parisian lady, Georgette Leblanc. To her also he dedicates _Sagesse et Destinee_ (Wisdom and Destiny), in 1898, in these words:

"To you I dedicate this book, which is, so to speak, your work.

There is a higher and a more real collaboration than that of the pen--that of thought and example. I have not been constrained to imagine painfully the resolutions and the actions of an ideal sage, or to draw from my heart the moral of a beautiful dream perforce a little vague. It has sufficed me to listen to your words. It has sufficed me to let my eyes follow you attentively in your life; they were then following the movements, the gestures, the habits of wisdom itself."

The book was a great surprise for Maeterlinck's already world-wide community. "By the side of _The Treasure of the Humble_," wrote van Hamel, "it gives you the impression of a catechism by the side of a breviary." Not the unconscious, but the conscious, occupies the first place. The earlier philosophy is directly contradicted.[1] Whereas in _The Treasure of the Humble_ we read of "the august, everyday life of a Hamlet ... who has the time to live because he does not act," we now hear of "the miserable blindness of Hamlet," who, though he had more intelligence than all those around him, was no wise man, for he did not, by exercising will-power, prevent the horrible tragedy. In the first book of essays action hinders life; in the second, to act is to think more rapidly and more completely than thought can do. To act is to think with one's whole being, not with the brain alone.

"It is our death that guides our life, and our life has no other object than death," Maeterlinck had said. Now he can write: "When shall we give up the idea that death is more important than life, and that misfortune is greater than happiness?... Who has told us that we ought to measure life by the standard of death, and not death by the standard of life?"[2]

That a great change had taken place in Maeterlinck's conception of the universe would be clear to anyone who read his works consecutively. He himself wrote to G. van Hamel, soon after the publication of _Sagesse et Destinee_, to this effect. Van Hamel does not give the exact words, but reports the gist of the letter as follows:

"The mysterious seems to have lost a great deal of its attraction for him. Only the great, the 'metaphysical mystery,' 'the unknowable essence of reality,' continues to chain him. But the many mysteries which have dominated the mind and the life of men, and which possess no sufficient reality, he would now banish from art as well. Fate, divine justice, and all those other obsolete ideas have no longer the power to dominate even the imagination.

Life, the life of the artist too, must be cleansed of all that is unreal."

Maeterlinck added to the above (these words are quoted in French):

"I do not know whether I am doing better or worse; all I do know is that I want to express things more and more simple, things more and more human, less and less brilliant, more and more true."[3]

The change in Maeterlinck is generally ascribed to the inspiration of Mme Georgette Leblanc. He has himself drawn her portrait in a chapter of a later book, _Le double Jardin_. In 1904 she published a novel, _Le Choix de la Vie_; it is full of the words "beauty" and "happiness."

Happiness is what humanity was made for, Maeterlinck teaches in _Wisdom and Destiny_. Misery is an illness of humanity, just as illness is a misery of man. We ought to have doctors for human misery, just as we have doctors for illness. Because illness is common, it does not follow that we ought never to talk of health; and the fact that we live in the midst of misery is no reason why the moralist should not make happiness his starting-point. To be wise is to learn to be happy.

To be happy is only to have freed our soul from the unrest of unhappiness. To be happy we must learn to separate our exterior destiny from our moral destiny. Nothing happens to men except what they will shall happen to them. We have very little influence over a certain number of exterior events; but we have a very powerful action on what these events become in ourselves. It is what happens to most men that darkens or lightens their life; but the interior life of good men itself lightens all that happens to them. If you have been betrayed, it is not the treason that matters; it is the forgiveness that has come of it in your soul. Nothing happens which is not of the same nature as ourselves.

Climb the mountain or descend to the village, you will find none but yourself on the highroads of chance.

In proportion as we become wise, we escape from some of our instinctive destinies. Every man who is able to diminish the blind force of instinct in himself, diminishes around him the force of destiny. Destiny has remained a barbarian; it cannot reach souls that have grown n.o.bler than itself. That is why tragic poets rarely permit a sage to appear on the scene; no drama ever happens among sages, and the presence of the sage paralyses destiny. There is not a single tragedy in which fatality reigns; what the hero combats in all of them is not destiny, but wisdom.

If predestination exists, it only exists in character; and character can be modified. Fatality obeys those who dare give it orders, and therefore there is no inevitable tragedy.

The shadow of destiny casts an enormous shadow over the valley it seems to drown in darkness, and in this shadow we are born; but many men can travel beyond it; and those who cannot may find happiness in wisdom which no catastrophe can reach.

But what is wisdom? Consciousness of oneself; knowledge of oneself. It is not reason: reason opens the door to wisdom. It is from the threshold of reason that all sages set out; but they travel in different directions. Reason gives birth to justice; wisdom gives birth to goodness. There is no love in reason; there is much in wisdom. Not reason, but love, must be the gla.s.s in which the flower of genuine wisdom is cultivated. It is true that reason is found at the root of wisdom; but wisdom is not the flower of reason. Wisdom is the light of love; love, and you will be wise.

And does the sage never suffer? He suffers; and suffering is one of the elements of his wisdom. It is not suffering we must avoid, but the discouragement--it brings to those who receive it like a master. People suffer little by suffering itself; they suffer enormously by the way they accept it. Misfortune comes to us, but it only does what it is ordered to do.

What is it that decides what suffering shall bring to us? Not reason, but our anterior life, which has formed our soul. Nothing is more just than grief; and our life waits till the hour strikes, as the mould awaits the molten bronze, to pay us our wage.