[5] According to Mieszner, Aglavaine is a "Mannweib," Selysette a "Nurweib."
[6] Is the name from the German Volkslied "Herzogin von Orlamünde"?
CHAPTER IX
Towards the end of 1896 Maeterlinck settled in Paris. His life here was no less retired than it had been in Ghent. A new light had come into his life. The Treasure of the Humble had been dedicated to a Parisian lady, Georgette Leblanc. To her also he dedicates Sagesse et Destinée (Wisdom and Destiny), in 1898, in these words:
"To you I dedicate this book, which is, so to speak, your work. There is a higher and a more real collaboration than that of the pen—that of thought and example. I have not been constrained to imagine painfully the resolutions and the actions of an ideal sage, or to draw from my heart the moral of a beautiful dream perforce a little vague. It has sufficed me to listen to your words. It has sufficed me to let my eyes follow you attentively in your life; they were then following the movements, the gestures, the habits of wisdom itself."
The book was a great surprise for Maeterlinck's already world-wide community. "By the side of The Treasure of the Humble," wrote van Hamel, "it gives you the impression of a catechism by the side of a breviary." Not the unconscious, but the conscious, occupies the first place. The earlier philosophy is directly contradicted.[1] Whereas in The Treasure of the Humble we read of "the august, everyday life of a Hamlet ... who has the time to live because he does not act," we now hear of "the miserable blindness of Hamlet," who, though he had more intelligence than all those around him, was no wise man, for he did not, by exercising will-power, prevent the horrible tragedy. In the first book of essays action hinders life; in the second, to act is to think more rapidly and more completely than thought can do. To act is to think with one's whole being, not with the brain alone.
"It is our death that guides our life, and our life has no other object than death," Maeterlinck had said. Now he can write: "When shall we give up the idea that death is more important than life, and that misfortune is greater than happiness?... Who has told us that we ought to measure life by the standard of death, and not death by the standard of life?"[2]]
That a great change had taken place in Maeterlinck's conception of the universe would be clear to anyone who read his works consecutively. He himself wrote to G. van Hamel, soon after the publication of Sagesse et Destinée, to this effect. Van Hamel does not give the exact words, but reports the gist of the letter as follows: