"When one loves as I love thee, it is not what he says, it is not what he does, it is not what he is that one loves in what one loves; it is he, and nothing but him, and he remains the same, through the years and misfortunes that pass.... It is he alone, it is thou alone, and in thee nothing can change without making love grow.... He who is all in thee; thou who art all in him, whom I see, whom I hear, whom I listen to without pause, and whom I love always.... We have to fight, we shall have to suffer; for this is a world which seems full of traps.... We are only two, but we are all love!..."
"Men are victimised by every beautiful woman," comments Mieszner, "and only the woman to whom they surrender themselves blindly can educate them to a higher love. This is the idea that clearly shines through the action ... woman rescuing sensual man from his sensuality."
Merlin now instils a subtle poison into Lancéor's veins, confirms Joyzelle's suspicions that her lover is on the point of death, but offers to save his life if she will give herself to him. "You would not need to tell him," the old swine suggests. "But I should have to tell him, because I love him," she answers. (Moral again: love cannot lie.) Joyzelle is not willing to do for one human being, though he is the being she loves best on earth, what Monna Vanna was willing to do for hundreds of strangers. She feigns consent, however, and promises to come at night; but she makes Merlin restore Lancéor there and then. When she comes to the old man's couch, it is with a dagger ready; she finds him sleeping, and lifts the dagger, but Arielle prevents the blow. Her trials are over; she has stood the last test. Merlin explains matters to his son: "She might have yielded," he says, "might have sacrificed herself, her love; she might have despaired—and then she would not have been the one love craves." To Joyzelle he says that it was written that she and those who resemble her should have a right to the love fate shows them; and that this love (the one love in life) must break injustice down. As to his own love for the girl, he bids Arielle kiss her; it seems to her then that flowers she cannot gather are touching her brow and caressing her lips, and Merlin tells her not to brush them aside, they are sad and pure—a symbolisation, perhaps, of intellectual love which renounces sensuality.
Joyzelle was first performed, with Mme Leblanc in the title-rôle, at the Théâtre du Gymnase in Paris on the 20th May, 1903. In the same year Maeterlinck's comedy, Le Miracle de St Antoine (The Miracle of St Antony) was performed at Geneva and Brussels. It has been published in German, but not yet in French or English.
[1] Preface to Théâtre, p. XVIII. The interpretation given on the following page is his own, as given to a friend.
[2] Cf. Le Temple Enseveli, Chapters XXVI and XXVII.
[3] "Aus unseren Zierpuppen und aus unseren Blaustrümpfen werden erst Vollmenschen, nachdem die Mädchen und Frauen ihre natürlichen Reize entdeckt haben und sie selbst gebrauchen lernen."—Mieszner, Maeterlinck's Werke, p. 48.
[4] Cf. also Chapters XXVIII and XXIX of L'Evolution du Mystère in this volume.
[5] It was performed in December, 1911, by the Players' Club in Dublin.