Life and Writings of Maurice Maeterlinck

"In these plays," he says, "faith is held in enormous powers, invisible and fatal. No one knows their intentions, but the spirit of the drama assumes they are malevolent, attentive to all our actions, hostile to smiles, to life, to peace, to happiness. Destinies which are innocent but involuntarily hostile are here joined, and parted to the ruin of all, under the saddened eyes of the wisest, who foresee the future but can change nothing in the cruel and inflexible games which Love and Death practise among the living. And Love and Death and the other powers here exercise a sort of sly injustice, the penalties of which – for this injustice awards no compensation – are perhaps nothing but the whims of fate…

"This Unknown takes on, most frequently, the form of Death. The infinite presence of death, gloomy, hypocritically active, fills all the interstices of the poem. To the problem of existence no reply is made except by the riddle of its annihilation."

There is another thing to be remembered (this is a repetition, but it is necessary) in reading Maeterlinck's early plays. Behind the scene which he chooses with varying degrees of clearness, lies Plato's famous image – the image of a cavern on whose walls enigmatic shadows are reflected.47 In this cavern man gropes about in exile, with his back to the light he is seeking.

The mysterious coming of death is the theme of The Intruder, a play by Maeterlinck which was published in 1890. It appeared as the first of two plays in a volume called Les Aveugles (The Sightless). This is the name of the second play in the book; but the grandfather in The Intruder too is blind, and through both plays runs the idea that we are blind beings groping in the dark (in Plato's cavern), and that those who see least see most.

The subject of The Intruder can be told in a few words. In a dark room in an old castle are sitting the blind grandfather, the father, the uncle, and the three daughters. In the adjoining room lies the mother who has recently been confined. She has been at death's door; but at last the doctors say the danger is over, and all but the grandfather are confident. He thinks she is not doing well… he has heard her voice. They think he is querulous. The uncle is more anxious about the child: he has scarcely stirred since he was born, he has not cried once, he is like a wax baby. The sister is expected to arrive at any minute. The eldest daughter watches for her from the window. It is moonlight, and she can see the avenue as far as the grove of cypresses. She hears the nightingales. A gentle breeze stirs in the avenue; the trees tremble a little. The grandfather remarks that he can no longer hear the nightingales, and the daughter is afraid someone has entered the garden. She sees no one, but somebody must be passing near the pond, for the swans are afraid, and all the fish dive suddenly. The dogs do not bark; she can see the house-dog crouching at the back of his kennel. The nightingales continue silent – there is a silence of death – it must be a stranger frightening them, says the grandfather. The roses shed their leaves. The grandfather feels cold; but the glass door on to the terrace will not shut – the joiner is to come to-morrow, he will put it right. Suddenly the sharpening of a scythe is heard outside – it must be the gardener preparing to mow the grass. The lamp does not burn well. A noise is heard as of someone entering the house, but no one comes up the stairs. They ring for the servant. They hear her steps, and the grandfather thinks she is not alone. The father opens the door; she remains on the landing. She is alone. She says no one has entered the house, but she has closed the door below, which she had found open. The father tells her not to push the door to; she denies that she is doing so. The grandfather, who, though he is blind, is conscious of light, thinks they are putting the lamp out. He asks whether the servant, who has gone downstairs, is in the room: it had seemed to him that she was sitting at the table. He cannot believe that no one has entered. He asks why they have put the light out. He is filled with an unendurable desire to see his daughter, but they will not let him – she is sleeping. The lamp goes out. They sit in the darkness. Midnight strikes, and at the last stroke of the clock they seem to hear a noise as of someone rising hastily. The grandfather maintains that someone has risen from, his chair. Suddenly the child is heard crying, crying in terror. Hurried steps are heard in the sick woman's chamber. The door of it is opened, the light from it pours into the room, and on the threshold appears a Sister of Charity, who makes the sign of the Cross to announce the mother's death.

Already in The Princess Maleine the miraculous happenings could all be explained by natural causes. Still more so in The Intruder. It was not the reaper Death who was sharpening his scythe, but the gardener. If the lamp goes out, it is because there is no oil in it. Accompanying the naturalness of the atmosphere (the atmosphere that is natural when a patient is in danger of dying), there is the naturalness of the dialogue. The family is worn out with anxious watching: how natural then is the sleepy tone of the talking, which is only quickened somewhat by the apparent irritability of the grandfather:

THE FATHER: He is nearly eighty.

THE UNCLE: No wonder he's eccentric.

THE FATHER: He's like all blind people.

THE UNCLE: They think too much.

THE FATHER: They've too much time on their hands.

THE UNCLE: They've nothing else to do.

THE FATHER: It's their only way of passing the time.

THE UNCLE: It must be terrible.

THE FATHER: I suppose you get used to it.

THE UNCLE: I dare say.

THE FATHER: They are certainly to be pitied.

In this play, as also in The Sightless, and later on in The Life of the Bees, Maeterlinck shows himself a master of irony. The passage just quoted is an example.

To Maeterlinck, with reference to The Intruder, has been applied what Victor Hugo said to Baudelaire after he had read The Flowers of Evil: "You have created a new shudder." Certainly, the new frisson is there; but was it Maeterlinck who created it? It will be well to go into this question; for Maeterlinck, in connection with The Intruder, has been charged with plagiarism.

The Intruder first appeared in La Wallonie for January, 1890. In the same periodical for January, 1889, that is, exactly a year before, had appeared Les Flaireurs, a drama in three acts by Maeterlinck's friend, Charles van Lerberghe. It is dedicated "to the poet Maurice Maeterlinck." The title is annotated: "Légende originale et drame en 3 actes pour le théâtre des fantoches." Here, to begin with, we have a "drama for marionettes." Maeterlinck seems to have first used the word "marionette" in connection with his plays when undergoing cross-examination by Jules Huret, whose Enquête was published in 1891: when writing Princess Maleine, he said, he had wanted to write "a play in Shakespeare's manner for marionettes." Maeterlinck and van Lerberghe were seeing each other nearly every day at the time Les Flaireurs was being written; and there is nothing to show that they did not discuss their theories of the drama; it is only certain that with regard to the idea, superb irony, of a theatre for marionettes, the published priority rests with van Lerberghe. Van Lerberghe, however, was charged with having imitated Maeterlinck; and it was only when Maeterlinck himself proclaimed the priority of Les Flaireurs48 that the charge of plagiarism was turned against him. Now the fact is that Maeterlinck, to a certain extent, collaborated in Les Flaireurs.

The subject of the two plays is identical; both symbolise the coming of death to a woman. But each is entirely independent. In Les Flaireurs death is expected; in The Intruder it is not expected. In van Lerberghe's play resistance is offered to visible personifications of death; in Maeterlinck's play resistance is impossible, because death is invisible. The first play is full of brawling noise, and peasant slang, and the action is violent: the second is only a succession of whispers tearing the web of silence;49 nothing visible happens, there is only expectancy. In short, one play is for the senses; the other is for the soul. The charge of plagiarism is absolutely unfounded: it is only a case of friendly rivalry in the working out of an idea – the tale indeed goes that the idea occurred to the two friends simultaneously. If it really was a game of skill, it would be hard to say who was victor: each play is a masterpiece.

The scene of Les Flaireurs is laid in a very poor cottage. It is a stormy night; the rain whips the windows, the wind howls, and a dog is barking in the distance. The room is lit by two candles. Loud knocking at the door. A girl jumps out of the bed with gestures of terror. She is in her night-shirt; her fair hair is unbound. She asks: "Who is there?" and "The Voice," after some beating about the bush, answers: "I'm the man with the water." The voice of the mother, who thinks it is Jesus Christ, is heard from the bed urging the daughter to let Him in. She refuses, and the man answers that he will wait. Ten o'clock sounds, and the daughter puts the two candles out. ACT II. Knocking at the door again. The two candles are relit, and the daughter is seen standing against the bed, at watch, with her face turned towards the door. A voice is heard demanding admittance. "You said you would wait," says the girl. "Why, I've only just come!" answers the voice. She asks who he is, and he replies, "The man with the linen." The mother again urges her to open the door – she thinks it is the Virgin Mary. The daughter is obstinate, and the voice cries, "All right, I'll wait." ACT III. Louder knocks, and a voice again. This time it is "The man with the … thingumbob." The mother still thinks it is the Virgin Mary. She bids her daughter raise the curtain: and the shadow of the hearse is projected on the wall. The mother asks what the shadow is; the daughter drops the curtain. The voice now answers brutally: "I'm the man with the coffin, that's what I am." The neighing of horses is heard. The girl dashes herself against the door, but it is beaten in. An arm is seen putting a bucket into the room. Midnight strikes. The old woman utters a hoarse cry; the daughter, who had been holding the door back, rushes to the bed; the door falls with a mighty din, and extinguishes the two candles.

It will be seen that whereas in The Intruder there is nothing which cannot be explained by natural causes, the symbolism of Les Flaireurs is untrue – death does not come with bucket, linen, and coffin. Death does not break the door in. This only amounts to saying that Maeterlinck's method is less romantic than that of his friend. Maeterlinck's close realism, however, does give him certain advantages – the helplessness of the grandfather, for instance, is far more pathetic than the spectacle of the girl dashing herself against the door, though it does not move us so directly.

The Intruder was first acted in French at Paul Fort's Théâtre d'Art in Paris, on the 20th May, 1891, at a historic performance of this and other playlets for the benefit of Paul Verlaine and the painter, Paul Gauguin.

In the second play of the 1890 volume, The Sightless, which was first acted on the 7th December, 1891, at the Théâtre d'Art, we have again the mystery of death; but the main theme would seem to be the mystery of human life – "this earthly existence is conceived as a deep, impenetrable night of ignorance and uncertainty."50 The fable is this:

In a very ancient forest in the north, under a sky profoundly starred, is sitting a very agèd priest, wrapped in an ample black cloak. He is leaning his head and the upper part of his body against the bole of a huge, cavernous oak. His motionless face has the lividity of wax; his lips are violet and half open. His eyes seem bleeding under a multitude of immemorial griefs and tears. His white hair falls in rigid and scanty locks over a face more illumined and more weary than all that surrounds him in the attentive silence of the desolate forest. His emaciated hands are rigidly joined on his thighs. To the right of him six blind old men are sitting on stones, stumps of trees, and dead leaves. To the left, separated from them by an unrooted tree and split boulders, six women who are likewise blind sit facing the old men. Three of these women are praying and moaning uninterruptedly. A fourth is extremely old; the fifth, in an attitude of speechless madness, holds a sleeping baby on her knees. The sixth is young and radiantly beautiful, and her hair floods her whole being. Most of them sit waiting, with their elbows on their knees, and their faces in their hands. Great funereal trees, yews, weeping willows, cypresses, cover them with faithful shadows. A cluster of tall and sickly asphodel are in blossom near the priest. The darkness is extraordinary, in spite of the moonlight which, here and there, glints through the darkness of the foliage.

The blind people are waiting for their priest to return. He is getting too old, the men murmur; they suspect that he has not been blest with the Best of sight himself of late. They are sure he has lost his way and is looking for it. They have walked a long time; they must be far from the asylum. He only talks to the women now; they ask them where he has gone to. The women do not know. He had told them he wanted to see the island for the last time before the sunless winter. He was uneasy because the storms had flooded the river, and because all the dikes seemed ready to burst. He has gone in the direction of the sea, which is so near that when they are silent they can hear it thudding on the rocks. Where are they? None of them know. When did they come to the island? They do not know, they were all blind when they came. They were not born here, they came from beyond the sea. They hear the asylum clock strike twelve; they do not know whether it is noon or midnight. They are frightened at noises which they cannot understand. Suddenly the wind rises in the forest, and the sea is heard bellowing against the cliffs. The sea seems very near; they are afraid it will reach them. They are about to rise and try to go away when they hear a noise of hasty feet in the dead leaves. It is the dog of the asylum. It puts its muzzle on the knees of one of the blind men. Feeling it pull, he rises, and it leads him to the motionless priest. He touches the priest's cold face … and they know that their guide is dead. The dog will not move away from the corpse. A squall whirls the dead leaves round. It begins to snow. They think they hear footsteps … The footsteps seem to stop in their midst…

The Sightless is a notable example of clear symbolism. The dead priest is religion. Religion is dead now in the midst of us; and we are without a guide and groping in the dark. "There is something which moves above our heads, but we cannot reach it." We are prisoners in a little finite space washed round by the Ocean of Infinity, whose mighty waters we can hear in our calm seasons. Above the dense forest somewhere rises a lighthouse (Wisdom). We have strayed from the asylum (that goodness which religion instilled in us when it was alive). The baby alone can see; but it cannot speak yet (the future will reveal).

The virtues and failings of humanity are hinted at with gentle irony. One blind man, when he goes out in the sunshine, suspects the great radiances; another prefers to stay near the good coal fire in the refectory… The oldest blind woman dreams sometimes that she sees; the oldest blind man only sees when he dreams… The young beauty smells the scent of flowers around them (the promptings of sense guide us; and the beautiful are the sensuous); one who was born blind only smells the scent of the earth (Philistines)… Heaven is mentioned, and all raise their heads towards the sky, except the three who were born blind – they keep their faces bent earthwards…

Lessing thought no man could write a good tragedy till he was thirty. Here are two written by a man of twenty-eight.