Joyzelle is little more than a series of situations, in which the heroine is tested by the stern old enchanter Merlin. When I called upon the poet at his picturesque little house in Passy, I asked him about The Tempest, which the critics one and all saw in his play. He smiled and replied that Shakespeare was a good point of departure. Could there be a better one? The resemblance is rather superficial. Prospero and Miranda are, in the mysterious island of Maeterlinck, Merlin and Lanceor—the latter the magician's son; and Joyzelle is, if you will, a female Ferdinand come to woo the youth.
The changes to be rung on such a theme are not a few. But Maeterlinck has elected to introduce a new and more disturbing element. It is Arielle, the subconscious nature of Merlin, who always warns him of impending danger. Instead of the old-fashioned soliloquy, we are given, because of this dualism, dialogues between Merlin and his subliminal self. This sounds terribly metaphysical, but as treated by Maeterlinck Merlin's alter ego—his doppelgänger, as the German mystics have it—is a charming young woman attired in gray and purple, minor in key. If she is his constant mentor, he has also the power of projecting her into the visible world—materializing, the spiritualists call it; and as Klingsor tempted Parsifal by transforming Kundry into a seductive shape, so Merlin uses Arielle as an agent of temptation against his son, his weak and handsome Lanceor.
The plot is slight. Love, a very passionate, earthly love, is the theme. Doubtless Maeterlinck intends the entire conte as a symbol; theatre-goers will be more interested in its external garb. Briefly, Merlin interrogates the sleeping Arielle and learns that his son Lanceor, who has just arrived on the island, is at the crisis of his life. "Le destin de ton fils est inscrit tout entier dans un cercle d'amour." He is condemned by the Fates to die within the month if he does not find a perfect love, and to this love all is permitted, even crime. If the girl upon whom he casts his eyes will sacrifice all for her love, then happiness will be his portion. We are plunged into a fairy land at the first words of Merlin. This gift of evoking an atmosphere in a few phrases is Maeterlinck's own. All resemblance to Shakespeare's folk vanishes as the scheme is unfolded. At first we see Merlin addressing Arielle. When she sleeps he loses his force and so he awakens her. After learning Lanceor's destiny, he resolves to be on his guard. Joyzelle is cast up by the sea, and, encountering Lanceor, the inflammable pair fall madly in love with each other. Nothing can come between, or if any one does—! Lanceor is more assured than Joyzelle that this is his first, his perfect passion. But Merlin, who pretends anger, as does Prospero, resolves to test the newly kindled flame. He threatens to kill Joyzelle if she meets Lanceor, but she defies him, and refuses to bind herself to any promise imposed upon her. To a sonorous and emphatic Non! the curtain intervenes.
Merlin now devises a series of tests for his son. Like Marco Colonna in Monna Vanna, he would be cruel only to be kind. The first is the trial by separation. In a lonely tower Lanceor is found by Joyzelle. The place is as forbidding as the country of Browning's Childe Roland. Joyzelle calls to Lanceor, who rushes to her arms. As they embrace each other, trees put on full bloom, flowers carpet the ground, and all nature bursts into life—only the order of decay and bloom is reversed. Then Merlin has Lanceor bitten by a serpent, and falling into a magic slumber Arielle appears, and he finds her instead of Joyzelle, who has been sternly sent away. She returns only to find her lover desperately enamoured of a strange woman. Even this does not shake her faith. She refuses to believe the treachery of Lanceor. After Arielle has departed, in a scene of singular power he drives forth his patient Griselidis. It is almost brutal in its intensity.
In Act III Arielle bids Merlin leave Lanceor and seize Joyzelle for himself,—a genuine subconscious suggestion this! In the security of her wonderful love he may find safety from that Viviane, who later saps his soul in the old-world wood of Broceliande. Joyzelle is proof against the most insidious temptations, and in the trial by faith she emerges triumphantly. Merlin suddenly commands her to look around, and she will see Lanceor held captive in the arms of another. She moves away without turning her head, thus averting the fate of a second Lot's wife. The spectator, drugged by this time, begins to wonder if this paragon has an Achilles heel. Merlin is quite as envious, for in the next trial he causes Lanceor—poor Lanceor!—to be brought nigh death's door, and Joyzelle, rendered desperate, throws herself at the cruel parent's feet. She promises to fulfil any condition he may see fit in his caprice to impose. Impose one he does. If Lanceor is restored to health, will she become Merlin's bride instead of the son's? This, it must be admitted, is a very ingenious form of torture, and yet, when in the bigness of her soul Joyzelle acquiesces, we feel that another bead has been touched in this rosary of pain.
How to extricate the girl from her grave position? Lanceor's good looks have been spoiled by his illness—a mere trifle for this insatiable creature. In the last act Merlin lies sleeping, Arielle on guard. Joyzelle approaches, her face set in despair, yet firm in her purpose to fulfil her destiny. She has promised. Lanceor has been saved. She will pay. As she reaches the couch of the magician she plucks forth a dagger and would have bloody murder. This is the supreme test—rather a disquieting doctrine to the passivists and gentle persons who feed on Maeterlinck's balmy philosophies. Love that does not flinch at crime is the keystone to this little arch of a play. Merlin is satisfied. Joyzelle has undergone his tests. She is the perfect woman for Lanceor's perfect love. The two are united, and the lovely landscape fades from our view like the misty pictures in a Chopin Ballade.
Ideal love is the motive of this new play, love that will march to the jaws of hell, if needs be, for the beloved one; Orpheus and Eurydice, Hero and Leander, or any other enamoured couple come to your memory as the ingenuous Joyzelle, who has not a faint trace of humour in her, proceeds gravely to the unpleasant tasks set her by Merlin. I could not help recalling that Princess Istar,—set to music by d'Indy,—who goes down into Hades and at each of its seven gates casts away a part of her belongings. At the seventh and last gate she has remaining only her nakedness. Maeterlinck removes leaf after leaf from the flower-like soul of Joyzelle until its very core is reached.
While she bears a sisterly resemblance to many of his narve infantile women, she is nearer related to Monna Vanna in her affirmative nature. She is very full-blooded for a dream maiden, and at times she showed something of Sardou's tigress-like creatures. Possibly one received this impression because Georgette Leblanc, who originated the title rôle, has evidently been a close student of Sarah Bernhardt's methods. As is the case with modern féministe writers—were there ever ancient ones?—the woman is enthroned, she is the Eternal Womanly, and she has the final word in the destiny of things, as in Goethe's poem. Lanceor does not appear in an undesirable light, while Merlin represents Wisdom and makes very Maeterlinckian speeches. His final words are full of the sober dignity we expect from the author of Wisdom and Destiny.
In Joyzelle the words count for something, no matter what the author intends them to convey by the "second intention." He once wrote "Les hommes out je ne sais quelle peur étrange de la beauté." This strange fear the young Belgian Merlin evokes of his own accord. We sense the beauty, but are uncomfortable in its presence. Human beings or semi-humans must act to reveal themselves. This they do in Joyzelle. There can be no reproach here of the abuse of the "static," only the action and words—couched in harmonious prose—do not quite summon reality to us.
The disembodied thoughts of the poet are given a local habitation and a name, and still they remain thoughts, abstractions; they are not of our flesh and blood, but seem to inhabit that "Third Kingdom" Ibsen has foretold. More "interior" than Monna Vanna, Joyzelle is hardly apt to be appreciated. I feel quite sure that many of the adjectives lavished upon it by the Parisian press were not sincere. As a race the French cannot be in sympathy with the gray, slow, poetic images of this Belgian mystic.