Life and Writings of Maurice Maeterlinck

9

"The literary history of modern Belgium, by the freaks of chance, was born in one single house. In Ghent, the favourite city of the Emperor Charles V., in the old Flemish city heavy with fortifications, rises remote, far from noisy streets, Sainte-Barbe, the grey-walled Jesuit monastery. Its thick, defensive walls, its silent corridors and refectories, remind one somewhat of Oxford's beautiful colleges; here, however, there is no ivy softening the walls, there are no flowers to lay their variegated carpet over the green courts." – Stefan Zweig, Emile Verhaeren (Mercure de France, 1910), pp. 39-40.

10

Mme Georgette Leblanc, Morceaux choisis, Introduction.

11

Anselma Heine, Maeterlinck, p. 9. But cf. Léon Bazalgette, Emile Verhaeren, p. 14.

12

Gérard Harry, Maeterlinck, p. 9, note.

13

Gérard Harry, Maeterlinck, p. 26; Heine, Maeterlinck, p. 9.

14

Cf., for instance, Barbey's "Réfléchir sur son bonheur n'est-ce pas le doubler?" with the opening chapters of Sagesse et Destinée.

15

The review of the same name which was published at Brussels, by Lacomblez, beginning three years later, and in which Maeterlinck's criticism of Iwan Gilkin's Damnation de l'Artiste appeared, was a third-rate periodical.

16

The Massacre of the Innocents and other Tales by Belgian Writers.

17

Verhaeren's first vers libres appeared in book form in January, 1891 (printed in December, 1890) in Les Flambeaux noirs. But in May, 1890, he had published, in La Wallonie, a poem in vers libres; and this is dated 1889.

18

Poèmes anciens et romanesques, his first book of acknowledged symbolism, did not appear till 1890, but the poems which compose it were written between 1887 and 1888.

19

It was in 1886, too, that Gustave Kahn with the collaboration of Jean Moréas and Paul Adam, founded the review Le Symboliste.

20

A translation of Whitman's Enfants d'Adam, by Jules Laforgue, appeared in La Vogue in 1886. Stuart Merrill personally handed this translation to Whitman, who was delighted. (See Le Masque, Série ii, Nos. 9 and 10, 1912). Vielé-Griffin's first translation of Whitman appeared in November, 1888, in. La Revue indépendante; another translation of his appeared afterwards in La Cravache. A translation of Whitman had appeared in the Revue des deux Mondes in the reign of Napoleon III.

21

He himself told Huret that La Princesse Maleine was written in vers libres concealed typographically as prose.

22

The famous Wagner tenor.

23

The Brussels publisher.

24

The first number is dated Saturday, the 18th October, 1879, and begins with "rimes d'avant poste" by "Rodolphe" (=Verhaeren).

25

Iwan Gilkin, Quinze années de littérature.

26

Albert Giraud, Hors du Siècle.

27

In the thirteenth century in Germany, "Fleming" was synonymous with "verray parfit, gentil knight." The Bavarian Sir Neidhart von Reuental, for instance, refers to himself as a "Fleming."

28

Cf. Rodenbach's;

"Je vis comme si mon âme avait étéDe la lune et de l'eau qu'on aurait mis sous verre"

with Maeterlinck's:

"On en a mis plusieurs sur d'anciens clairs de lune."

– Serres Chaudes, "Cloches de verre."

29

G. van Hamel, Het Letterkundige Leven van Frankrijk, pp. 127-8.

30

Cf. Rodenbach, Le Règne du Silence, p. 1:

"Mais les choses pourtant entre le cadre d'orOnt un air de souffrir de leur vie inactive;Le miroir qui les aime a borné leur essorEn un recul de vie exigüe et captive…"

31

Gérard Harry, p. 19. Le Masque, Série ii, No. 5: "jeune encore, il avait sollicité les fonctions de juge de paix, mais le gouvernement belge, prévoyant son destin de poète, les lui avait généreusement refusées, et pour reconnaître ce service, Maeterlinck ne lui rend que mépris et dédain et refuse même les distinctions honorifiques les plus hautes, celles qu'on n'accorde généralement qu'aux très grands industriels ou aux très vieux militaires ou politiciens."

32

"Chambres pleines de songe! Elles vivent vraimentEn des rêves plus beaux que la vie ambiante,Grandissant toute chose au Symbole, voyantDans chaque rideau pâle une CommunianteAux falbalas de mousseline s'éployantQui communie au bord des vitres, de la Lune!"– Le Règne du Silence, p. 4.

33

They make one think of what Novalis wrote: "poems unconnected, yet with associations, like dreams; poems, melodious merely and full of beautiful words, but absolutely without sense or connection – at most individual sentences intelligible – nothing but fragments, so to speak, of the most varied things."

34

See Schlaf's Maeterlinck, p. 12; ibid., p. 30; and Monty Jacobs' Maeterlinck, p. 39. But Maeterlinck's brain was always as healthy as his body. At the time he wrote Serres Chaudes disease was fashionable, that is all; and, beside the main influence of Baudelaire, there was the fear of death instilled by the Jesuits.

35

Verhaeren, in his monograph on Rembrandt (1905), has suggested that the man of genius may, "in specially favourable conditions, create a new race, thanks to the happy deformation of his brain fixing itself first, by a propitious crossing, in his direct descendants, to be transmitted afterwards to a whole posterity."

36

See Tancrède de Visan's interpretation in L'Attitude du Lyrisme contemporain, pp. 119 ff.

37

Maeterlinck told Huret that he had been influenced by Schopenhauer "qui arrive jusqu'à vous consoler de la mort."

38

Figaro, 24th August, 1890.

39

Pronounced in German like the French Maleine.

40

Preface to Théâtre, p. 2.

41

In Swedenborg's mysticism, the literal meanings of words are only protecting veils which hide their inner meanings. See "Le Tragique Quotidien" (in Le Trésor des Humbles) pp. 173-4. That Maeterlinck was meditating the famous chapter on "Silence" in The Treasure of the Humble when he wrote Princess Maleine may be inferred from Act ii. sc. 6: "I want to see her at last in presence of the evening… I want to see if the night will make her think. May it not be that there is a little silence in her heart?"

42

Schlaf's Maeterlinck, p. 31.

43

Suggested, perhaps, by the strangling of Little Snow-white in Grimm's story.

44

Preface to Théâtre, pp. 4-5.

45

"Les Avertis" (in Le Trésor des Humbles), p. 53.

46

Cf. also "L'Evolution du Mystère" (in Le Temple Enseveli) Chapters V., XXI., and XXII.

47

See Chapter XXVIII. of L'Intelligence des Fleurs.

48

In a letter inserted in the programme when Les Flaireurs was staged by Paul Fort at the Théâtre d'Art (after The Intruder had gone over the same boards). This statement of Maeterlinck's is a noble defence of his friend, and, as such, not to be trusted.

49

But Death, in The Intruder, is understood to have made some noise while coming upstairs.

50

Is. van Dijk, Maurice Maeterlinck, pp. 81-82.

51

Les Jeunes, p. 230.

52

Johannes Schlaf's Maeterlinck, p. 32.

53

See chapter "La Morale mystique" in Le Trésor des Humbles. This is the doctrine for which quietism was condemned. I find the following definition of the soul quoted in La Wallonie for February to March, 1889; "Qu'est-ce donc que l'âme? Une possibilité idéale qui réside en nous comme la substance réelle de nous-mêmes, que les erreurs et les tâches de la vie ne peuvent entamer, que ses découragements ne peuvent abattre et qui les contemple avec sérénité dans l'extériorité réelle, et séparés, pour ainsi dire de sa propre essence." – JOHNSON.

54

"Le Réveil de L'Ame" (in Le Trésor des Humbles), p. 38.

55

Perhaps a Gallicised form of Golo, the lover of Genoveva. The name of Golaud's mother is Geneviève.

56

M.G.M. Rodrigue, of Le Thyrse tells me (and Grégoire Le Roy told him) that Maeterlinck at the time he wrote his early dramas drew inspiration from Walter Crane's picture-books. The Frog Prince was one of them. Perhaps Maeterlinck had Grimm's Household Stories, done into pictures by Walter Crane (Macmillan, 1882).

57

Ablamore was not really wise, according to the theories propounded in Wisdom and Destiny. A wise man is one who knows himself; but he is not wise if he does not know himself in the future as well as in the present and in the past. He knows a part of his future because he is himself already a part of this future; and, since the events which will happen to him will become assimilated to his own nature, he knows what these events will become (Chapter VIII).

58

Cf. in Strindberg's Legends, "The soul's irradiation and dilatability": "The secret of a great actor lies in his inborn capacity to let his soul ray out, and thereby enter into touch with his audience. In great moments there is actually a radiance round a speaker who is full of soul, and his face irradiates a light which is visible even to those who do not believe." The idea is more or less of a commonplace.

59

Impressions de Théâtre, huitième série, p. 153.

60

See note 3 below.

61

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."

62

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 identity of all things, there is everywhere and always identical mystery, there God 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."

63

In The Invisible Goodness.

64

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

65

Is the name from the German Volkslied "Herzogin von Orlamünde"?

66

Schrijver in his Maeterlinck, pp. 54 ff., collects passages in The Treasure which point forward to Wisdom and Destiny.

67

Sagesse et Destinée, p. 122. Cf. Verhaeren, "Un Matin" (Les Forces Tumultueuses):

"Il me semble jusqu'à ce jour n'avoir vécuQue pour mourir et non pour vivre."

68

Het Letterkundig Leven van Frankrijk, pp. 180-181. Cf. also Chapter VII of "L'Evolution du Mystère" in Le Temple Enseveli.

69

In the Buried Temple, Chapter XXI, Maeterlinck says: "Nature rejects renunciation in all its forms, except that of maternal love."

70

Cf. Chapter XXI of L'Inquiétude de notre Morale (in L'Intelligence des Fleurs): "We are no longer chaste, now that we have recognised that the work of the flesh, cursed during twenty centuries, is natural and legitimate. We no longer go out in search of resignation, of mortification, of sacrifice; we are no longer humble in heart nor poor in spirit."

71

"Man is created to live in harmony with others; it is in society and not in solitude that he finds numerous opportunities of practising Christian charity to his neighbours." – Swedenborg.

72

In "Portrait de Femme" (Le double Jardin) Maeterlinck distinguishes between virtue and vice: they are the same forces, he says … a virtue is only a vice that rises instead of falling.

73

Verhaeren, p. 298.

74

Les Heures d'après-midi.

75

Wisdom and Destiny, Chapter I.

76

Verhaeren, "La Foule" (Les Visages de la Vie).

77

Preface to Théâtre, p. XVIII. The interpretation given on the following page is his own, as given to a friend.

78

Cf. Le Temple Enseveli, Chapters XXVI and XXVII.

79

"Aus unseren Zierpuppen und aus unseren Blaustrümpfen werden erst Vollmenschen, nachdem die Mädchen und Frauen ihre natürlichen Reize entdeckt haben und sie selbst gebrauchen lernen." – Mieszner, Maeterlinck's Werke, p. 48.

80

Cf. also Chapters XXVIII and XXIX of L'Evolution du Mystère in this volume.

81

It was performed in December, 1911, by the Players' Club in Dublin.

82

The play (the symbol of the fates of the poet and Mme Leblanc, according to Oppeln-Bronikowski, the German translator of Maeterlinck's works —Bühne und Welt, November-Heft 2, 1902) had been specially written for her. As Monna Vanna, she made her debut as an actress – she had previously been an opera-singer.

83

He does not mention the soft mouth of the old English sheep-dog.

84

The Abbé Dimnet, in an article in The Nineteenth Century for January, 1912, charges Maeterlinck with indelicacy for having occupied the abbey so soon after its confiscation! The abbé does not mention the chemical project.

85

LAZARUS: Come. The Master calls you.

[MAGDALENE leaves the column against which she is leaning and takes four or five steps towards LAZARUS as though walking in her sleep.]

–

MAGDALENE: He fixed his eyes for but a moment on mine; and that will be enough for the rest of my life. – (p. 72).

86

I have re-translated from the French in which Mr de Sélincourt's article was reproduced in Le Thyrse for January, 1912.

87

"L'Immortalité" (in L'Intelligence des Fleurs) p. 282.

88

Ibid., p. 295.

89

Ibid., p. 307.

90

Academy; 22nd June, 1912.

91

"C'est une fillette de van Lerberghe si inconsciemment venue dans les Serres Chaudes, et qui s'y meurt; étouffée en ce palais empoisonné, elle s'y meurt, elle s'y meurt! Elle est claire, elle est pure, d'une chasteté d'étrangère apparue, – et pourtant son haleine est d'une malade, il sourd de sa poitrine des effluves angéliques et pervers; elle est équivoque et triste, et nul ne saurait affirmer avec certitude que tout cela existe, ni qu'elle-même est bien là, devant nous. C'est la Princesse, la Princesse … Elle, ses paupières vagues et toutes ses boucles en lianes; ses cheveux qui s'enrouleraient de caresses vivantes, étrangement tièdes sinon de glace, un col irréel où s'enlaceraient des malheurs, – un san Giovannino de Donatello parmi des terreurs ambiguës, un Botticelli dans la Malaria."

92

Sister of Francis Vielé-Griffin.