Maurice Maeterlinck.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 6 November 1911, Page 4

Maurice Maeterlinck.

« A cable message announces that tho Nobel prize for iliteraturo has been awarded to Maurice Maeterlinck. It will add no leaf to his crown, to which thorn is no pretence of a pretender. He is the greatest of tliio.se who made the Belgian renaissance, and Largely throughtiiin the school lias won the .recognition it deserves. In the year 18S3 the. world at large was made aware that a new corps ihad boon added to the little ■army of the writers of Young France. These new-comers were Fleming.?; and, says Vance Thompson, until three years before tlnat time Belgium was a desert. Camille Lemmonier (had written three or four of his wonderful novels, but he had been as tlie voice of one crying

in tlie night. Then there oamo np to Brussels from Louvian and Ghent and many an Old World town, a band of young nieiij who had theories, Art for art, art for tire beautiful. Belgian literature. Jiatl become, a, trade for dull 'gazctters .ami duller professors. Those young men onfrored literature "like a hand :<>f Sioux." They founded a. review, they fought for their ideas. Camillo' licnimonior was the head ami the doyen of the Jittle band, and it was in Jiis name that the fii-st oublic revolt was organised. At the end of every five years the State was supposed to award a prizo of some, few thousand francs to the author of thfc best book which has appeared during tho 'half decade. In 1883 the jury decided that no book worthy of distinction had been pub; lished". Young .Belffiu.ni denounced the award as an insult to their marechal de letters. They measures swords with the State; and though the award waft unshaken, they Joa.rnt their own strength. Thereafter, tho history of the group varied but slightly from the histories of other such .coteries. Horn in vehemence and enthusiasm it attacked the old modes and old prejudices. In tho end each of those who counted found himself, and was no more a member of a notable group, but an Individual. Each of them, as best Jiio could, engaged his art in Jibe service of a cause. There was Ecklioud, with his grip of steel on life, seeing things and saying them—that sublime privilege of genius; Varhaeren, a Herseker of verse; and thero was Maurice Maeterlinck, dreaming pale legendary dreams. .But eachj as be travelled his road, bore with him the burden of his nationality, a strange and profound melancholy. Tho young Maeterlinck studied law and philosophy. And ho studied English; the language, the literature, kind the art of the English; (those who have read his preface to Sutro's "Cave of Illusion" fcnow what knowledge is his) and perhaps for tihic reason, he stayed but a little while with the 'Symbolists. He wrote lor their organ "La i'leiade." .But though he was with them ,1k? was not of them. All knew agreed. that when ho wrote '"The Princess Maleine." The artist Mas in accord with himsi'lf. and so tihe. critics disCuriously, the majority of criticisms of French literature, in English, are tho work of Americans. Mr Alvan F. Sanborn wrote of bis plays:—-"With .an art whose very silences were potent, they symbolised those vague .and terrible aspects of sub-conscious existence which have usually been consjderd imposi'blo of expression. Tlbey were dramas of doubt, of restlessness of gloom, of moral terror, of dospair; nightmares, on'ly the more horrible for their ineffable beauty of form ; poetic presentations, rhythmic without rhyme, of tflve mystery of life and the inesorablness of destiny. Their scenes were laid in crumbling castles full of secret passages, forgotten dungeons and subterranean pools, and surrounded by black sunless forests or by bramble-grown, weed-choked gardens, strewn with broken and prostrate statues. Their characters were half-mad, halfpliantom kings, queens, princes, and princesses, dominated by irresistible passions which made them mere puppets of Fate." Octave Miraibeua had a different opinion. Ho lavished sudhi praise uimn "La Princesse CMaleine" that Maeterlinck awoke suddenly to find that fame had come to him. ".I know nothing of Maeterlinck," said the enthusiastic Parisian, "I do not know wilio be is, or what be is like. Whether he is old or young, rich or poor, 1 know not. I only know that no one is more unknown than he, and that he has produced a masterpiece. Pl'he has given us the most brilliant work of this period." And that was the opiwion of a critic, written at a time when Fronee held such men as Mondes, Mallarme. Moreas. .Such fame was his! He became the fashion. Ernest la Jeune,?se made iii.s work the subject of one of his experiments in criticism

l».v parody: Vance Thompson went up from tlie Quartier to Brussels that he might spend one evening witih the young man. The result of that journey was an .interview so exquisite that it should be "praised in a flight of silver phrases." Maeterlinck recognised an artist and was prodigal of iiis/own art. To quote from that interview would be criminal; to take even one word from its fellows would be to mar the whole. In ten words Maeterlinck gave w'li.at was then his theory of the drama: " The soul of a play is in its useless dialogue." Ho said that be did not care for his plays when they are written; their importance had been exaggerated. He was experimenting; Ihe did not know when he would find his way. He was not satisfied with "Princess Maleine." "L'Jntruse," or the "Aveugles." "Tintagiles" alone had answered his thought. Maeterlinck dreamed strange, uncanny dreams. His dreams wero the pictures of life as he saw it. He described the pictures rather than painted tfiom, knowing that "if man once- peeped within the halfopen door and saw his God, wfliere He sits in _ His majesty, though the vision blinded him, his .imagination would create a greater." His voice was the voipe of those who tramped # with Whitman's Great Army, as it wound its way through a heavy wood in the darkness, the footfalls muffled br pashed snow. He wrote as ho thought—suddenly bis style of thought changed. Vance Thompson says that Maeterlinck met Nietzsche, and that the noise of their dialectics is echoed in "Wisdom and Destiny"; Sanborn says that ho met his wife. Georgette Le Blanc, and that her influence gladdened him. All tiliiat men know is that 'ho dedicated that hook to his wife, saying, in effect, that it was her work. He knew that there could bo a collaboration more real tdiian that of the pen. So with all his later hooks. He had clone with pulling up his soul by the roots. He was no longer morbid. He developed a marvellous appreciation of the beauty of hum'ble and l quotidian life. " Even unliappiness is better than sleep." In tlhose words are the root of his philosophy and the flower. "As we grow better we meet better men'—a fine truth! "A being who is good irresistibly attracts events as good as himself." And again: "To a (beautiful eoul the saddest mischance turns to "beauty." It is, as one critic has said, it is a serene and beautiful philosophy of life._ If Madame Maeterlinck Ms inspired it, the world ottos much to her; so much, .perhaps, that men may be willing to forget tlh'at it was, it seems certain, she who taught him the stage craft which made- "Mary Magdalene" possible. —OC.G.T. in Ohristchurch Nears.)