In an article, which created a sensation, in La Nouvelle Revue Française for September, 1912, M. Dumont-Wilden compares Maeterlinck's popularity with that of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre three generations ago. He says:
"La gloire de Bernardin n'est point négligeable, et la comparaison s'impose d'elle-même entre Maeterlinck et lui. En écrivant Les Etudes de la Nature, cet auteur vieilli dont on ne lit plus guère qu'une bluette charmante qu'il composa en se jouant, apportait une nourriture salutaire au public de son temps, à ce public moyen que Jean-Jacques dépassait. Son finalisme ingénu calmait les inquiétudes de ceux que la sécheresse d'une morale utilitaire et d'un matérialisme sans grandeur avait déçus et qui, pourtant, se refusaient à faire, même avec Chateaubriand, le voyage du pénitent vers les autels délaissés."
Now, if Jean-Jacques was to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre what Nietzsche is to Maeterlinck, it would not be difficult to prove that Maeterlinck appeals to Nietzscheans, and that his teaching has points of contact with that of Nietzsche. To be quite short, Maeterlinck's man of the future is essentially the superman. And even if it were true that Maeterlinck's writings will be no more read in the future than are those of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre to-day, that would not reduce him to the rank of a minor writer. Voltaire's writings, which prepared a revolution, are now little read; and yet how much of Voltaire's thinking, or abstract of thinking (was Voltaire "original"?) is woven into the fabric of the mental life of to-day? We cannot, it is true, draw a close comparison between Voltaire and Maeterlinck, for Maeterlinck has no venom, and no disposition to thrust himself forward into the forefront of public interest; but it would be possible to compare his present position with that of Goethe (another writer the great mass of whose writings, as far as the non-German reading public is concerned, is dead). What Goethe was to the élite of Europe in the opening decades of the nineteenth century, Maeterlinck is to-day. His position, too, was assailed by a younger school of authors; but they could not shake it. Goethe, by the final moral of Faust, taught his generation to channel their activities and, confident of the result, to pour their strength into unselfish work; Maeterlinck teaches the same doctrine, and it may be said again of him, as he has said of Goethe, that he has brought us to the shores of the sea of serenity.
So much for Maeterlinck's philosophy. But his critics, especially M. Dumont-Wilden, are apt to forget one thing—his poetry. It is possible, of course, to state even his dramas in terms of philosophy; but when you have interpreted the symbols, there still remains something that cannot be set down in equations—the poetry. Granted that Maleine = the human soul: does she not still remain a beautiful dream, a Sadist's dream of a girl?[2] Against M. Dumont-Wilden's criticism
Albert Mockel, La Wallonie,
June and July, 1890.
it must be urged that Maeterlinck, besides being a thinker, is also a poet—not a lyric poet, of course (his rank is low here), but a creator of new things, a master of atmosphere and suggestion—in short, when all deductions are made, a great writer. The philosophy will be absorbed by everyday life and become commonplace; but Interior and The Sightless will always be the first-fruits of a new poetry and deathless works of art.
There is one other thing to be said. There have been thinkers whose private life did not bear comparison with the ideals proclaimed in their writings. Of Maeterlinck the man nothing but good is known. The man he is would stand unshaken if all his literary works withered like bindweed round a tree at the first breath of winter. A eulogy of his character based on the long list of his good deeds is impossible; for these are unknown—suspected merely, or secrets of his friends and not to be revealed without offending him. But the sage needs no approbation save his own; and Maeterlinck's good deeds were done, not for praise, but because he was Maeterlinck.
[1] Academy; 22nd June, 1912.
[2] "C'est une fillette de van Lerberghe si inconsciemment venue dans les Serres Chaudes, et qui s'y meurt; étouffée en ce palais empoisonné, elle s'y meurt, elle s'y meurt! Elle est claire, elle est pure, d'une chasteté d'étrangère apparue,—et pourtant son haleine est d'une malade, il sourd de sa poitrine des effluves angéliques et pervers; elle est équivoque et triste, et nul ne saurait affirmer avec certitude que tout cela existe, ni qu'elle-même est bien là, devant nous. C'est la Princesse, la Princesse ... Elle, ses paupières vagues et toutes ses boucles en lianes; ses cheveux qui s'enrouleraient de caresses vivantes, étrangement tièdes sinon de glace, un col irréel où s'enlaceraient des malheurs,—un san Giovannino de Donatello parmi des terreurs ambiguës, un Botticelli dans la Malaria."