Sous l’eau du songe qui s’élève
Mon âme a peur, mon âme a peur.
The same writer says that, by way of contrast, the playwright keeps bees and teaches a dog to sing; he calls him a sportsman, a man always getting about, a great drinker of ale—a great boy, a Bohemian. Here also may be discerned the writer in praise of the sword, the fist, and the automobile, the friend of the bull-dog and the creator of Tylo. That was describing the Maeterlinck of the early days. He seems never to have greatly changed. Was not almost the last picture of him that we had before the outbreak of the Great War one of poet playing with pugilist at the manly art of self-defense—the author of “L’Oiseau Bleu” sparring and wrestling daily with the French champion Carpentier?
New influences began to show in Maeterlinck’s work. His Introduction to his translation from the Flemish of Ruysbroeck l’Admirable’s “L’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles” made public his interest in Plato, Plotinous, Novalis, Jacob Behman, and Coleridge. He published a translation of Novalis’s “Disciples et Sais.” His feeling for Emerson had become such that he wrote an Introduction to the Essays of the American that had been translated into French by I. Will. To that period of his career as a playwright belong “Les Sept Princesses,” the little plays, “L’Intruse,” and “Les Aveugles,” “Pélléas et Mélisande,” “Alladine et Palomides,” “Interieur,” and “La Mort de Tintagiles.” Then, in 1896, he left Oostacker for good, and settled in Paris. In the same year he published “Le Tresor des Humbles,” his first volume of Essays, and “Aglavaine et Selysette.” In a letter to Madame Maeterlinck he said that Aglavaine brought him “a new atmosphere, a will to happiness, a power to hope.” Henceforth her light will direct him in a “serene, happy and consoling course.” Also it was about that time that his life was joined to the life of Georgette Leblanc.
In “La Vie Belge,” published in 1905, Camille Lemonnier told of Maeterlinck’s first meeting with the talented woman who was to become his wife. It took place in a house in the Rue Ducale in Brussels, the home of Edmond Picard, the great barrister and patron of Belgian literature. One midnight, after a performance of Strindberg’s “Father” at the Théâtre du Parc, all were invited there for supper. Maeterlinck, who still lived in Flanders, had left his bees, and was there, grave, silent, dreaming, a little out of his element, as he always was in the city. He was truly himself only in the country, his pipe in his coarse peasant fingers, filling its black bowl with a fresh pinch of tobacco from time to time. I had known him at the house of the painter, Claus, at whose door he sometimes leaped from his wheel, bare-necked, muscular, broad of shoulders and loins, a regular country boy from the village. This great, silent, contemplative spirit little knew that he was about to see appear, under the guise of the charming Georgette Blanc, the very visage of his destiny. A great silence spread from the far end of the hall, and suddenly she entered, stately and slow, with the jewel of her ferronière on her forehead, like a sign of the empire, in the long swishing of her train. Picard presented them; she gave a little cry; and he looked at her, embarrassed, with his deep-set peasant eyes, bowing awkwardly, while, with a deep reverence like a rite, the beautiful actress, with the ceremonious grace of a little queen of Byzantium, dedicated to him, without a word, the homage of her artist’s worship. Maeterlinck looked at her a great deal, but scarcely spoke to her during supper.
But if his tongue was backward, there were other ways of wooing. “Le Tresor des Humbles” was dedicated to her. “La Sagesse et la Destinée” was dedicated to her, “as the result of her collaboration in thought and example: he had only to listen to her words and follow her life with his eyes when he wrote the book; for to do so was to follow the words, the movements, the habits of wisdom itself.” At any rate the woman understood. Perhaps she helped matters along a little. Perhaps her poise served to put the shy peasant at his ease. It was a wise union, a union destined for happiness. “Truly,” said Gerard Harry of it, “henceforward he looks upon life less desperately and less fearfully.” The glimpses that Mr. Edward Thomas gave of the ménage show Maeterlinck as he was in the last year or two of world peace, come to fifty years, in the full vigor of his mature powers, at the height of his popularity and material success. Nearly all his books are multiplied and repeated, by new editions and translations into many languages. Always independent, money could only add ease and opportunities for gratifying minor tastes. He spends the winter at Quatre Chemins near Grasse, in the south of France, the summer at the ancient Benedictine Abbey of St. Wandrille, in the Department of Seine-Inferieure. But there is hardly a moment when Madame Maeterlinck is not a part of his life and work. She plays “Macbeth” in her husband’s translation, while he smokes a pipe of peace as well as in solitude. The pipe, according to Gerard Harry, contains a denicotinised herb; for thus, by a piece of heroism discovered by his hero-worshipper, Maeterlinck circumvents his insatiable craving for tobacco in his working hours. “By wise disposition,” says Madame Maeterlinck, “he has reduced his weakness, economised his strength, balanced his faculties, multiplied his energies, disciplined his instincts.”
“Yet,” says Mr. Thomas, “he continues to write. He is early to rise and go to his garden and his bees, for which his liking is now near thirty years old. Two hours, always exactly two hours, of work follow. Then he goes out again, canoeing, motoring, cycling, or walking. He reads in the evening and goes to bed in good time.” The work of these two hours is prepared easily and quietly during the pleasures and other duties of the day. Madame Maeterlinck compares him taking up his work to a child leaving its games and going on with them as soon as allowed—an innocent and ambiguous comparison. She implies that his work is sub-consciously matured and methodically put on paper, and that his natural tranquillity and the surroundings and conditions of his life have long been felicitously combined; and she says it might seem that the mysterious powers have woven between him and the world a veil which allows him a clear vision whilst yet himself invisible, as they have favored him by the gift of a home not less wonderful than the castles he imagined for Alladine and Selysette and Maleine.
However in a consideration of “The Miracle of St. Anthony,” the life of the man, his place as a philosopher, and his achievements as a poet are only indirectly concerned. The little play counts first of all in its relation to “La Princesse Maleine,” “Les Sept Princesses,” and especially, “Les Aveugles,” and “L’Intruse.” Perhaps closest to it of them all is “L’Intruse.” To recall that play. It does not need the Dutch clock in the corner to fix the scene in the Lowlands. In a dimly lighted room in an old country house the grandfather, the father, the uncle, the three daughters are sitting about a table. It has rained the whole week and the night without is damp and cold. In the next room lies the sick mother. The father is hopeful, relying on the assurances of the doctors. But not the grandfather. They are expecting some one. They speak in low voices, at random. Besides the woman in the other room there is a young child.
The Uncle—The little one would cause me more anxiety than your wife. It is now several weeks since he was born, and he has scarcely stirred. He has not cried once all the time! He is like a wax doll.
The Grandfather—I think he will be deaf—dumb, too, perhaps—the usual result of marriages between cousins. (A reproving silence.)