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MAURICE MAETERLINCK
both sides of every case. He, who has spoken of our tendency t
lieve in a universal justice as "the prejudice which has its roots deepest
in our hearts," cannot have failed, from the very start, to perceive
how the elusive thing we call "right" refuses to stay undivided with
any one person or cause.
^ At twenty-four he went to Paris—to the place where,if we may
believe Alfred Sutro, "art is more than a word, more than a cult—a
brotherhood." From the first Maeterlinck was received as a member
of that brotherhood by the grace of God. The air was then full of a
sort of symbolism that endeavored to express by the innate melody
of words what might be too elusive for their meaning. And young
Maeterlinck wrote poems as hauntingly incomprehensible as any of
the rest.
Then he published his first play, "Princess Maleine," and Octave
Mirbeau proclaimed him "greater than Shakespeare." Most men
would have lost their heads over the ill-worded praise, or their hearts
over the ridicule it provoked. Nothing illustrates his wonderful mental
equilibrium better than his calm disregard of both applause and
laughter. And it was not long before other plays followed—of a
quaintness and a daintiness such as the world had never seen before—
and with each of them his fame waxed and spread. . .
And so he has continued to do ever since—'"loving what he wrote,
and writing only what he loved." Now the day is gone when the authenticity
of his genius might be seriously questioned. Probably
nothing has done more to settle that question than his fairy play,
"The Blue Bird," by which he succeeded in appealing to the many as
formerly he had appealed to the few. They tell me that at one time
this play was given by fifty-nine different companies in Russia alone.
Be that as it may, there is now no civilized language into which his
works have not been transplanted. Nor is there a nook so hidden in
any part of the Western world that it is not likely to hold some life
made a little more livable by his wise musings. And yet one may wonder
whether his influence on those more accustomed to lead than to
follow is not even more noteworthy, as these words by August Strindberg
seem to indicate:
"One can neither steal nor borrow from Maeterlinck. It is even
difficult to become his pupil, for there are no free passes that give entrance
into his world of beauty. But one may be urged by his example
into searching one's own dross-heaps for gold—and it is in this sense
that I acknowledge my debt to the master."
To take up his works separately would lead me beyond my present
purpose. All I wish to do here is to suggest certain general aspects
that seem inseparable from whatever he does—that, in a word,
are one with his spirit. Of course, he must be acclaimed a master in
the handling of the written word, and his mastery shows itself not the
least in the harmony with which his sentences invariably are fraught.
But the better part of the beauty springing from his soul lies, nevertheless,
in the thoughts to which his words give wings—thoughts like
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