The Treasure of the Humble

by Maurice Maeterlinck

THE STAR

WELL might it be said that, from century to century, a tragic poet ‘has wandered through the labyrinths of destiny with the torch of poesy in his hand.’ For in this way has each one, according to the forces of his hour, fixed the souls of the annals of man, and it is divine history that has thus been composed. It is in the poets alone that we can follow the countless variations of the great unchanging power; and to follow them is indeed interesting, for at the root of the idea that they have formed of this power is to be found, perhaps, the purest essence of a nation’s soul. It is a power that has never entirely ceased to be, yet moments there are when it scarcely seems to stir; and at such moments one feels that life is neither very active nor very profound. Once only has it been the object of undivided worship; then was it, even for the gods, an awe-inspiring mystery. And there is a thing that is passing strange—it was the very period when the featureless divinity seemed most terrible and most incomprehensible that was the most beautiful period of mankind, and the people to whom destiny wore the most formidable aspect were the happiest people of all.

It would seem that a secret force must underlie this idea, or that the idea is itself the manifestation of a force. Does man develop in the measure that he recognises the greatness of the unknown that sways him, or is it the unknown that develops in proportion to the man? To-day the idea of destiny would seem to be again awakening, and to go forth in search of it were perhaps no unprofitable quest. But where shall it be found? To go in search of destiny—what is this but to seek all the sorrows of man? There is no destiny of joy, no star that bodes of happiness. The star that is so called is only a star of forbearance. Yet is it well that we should sally forth at times in search of our sorrows, so that we may learn to know them and admire them; and this even though the great shapeless mass of destiny be not encountered at the end.

Seeking our sorrows, we shall be the most effectively seeking ourselves, for truly may it be said that the value of ourselves is but the value of our melancholy and our disquiet. As we progress, so do they become deeper, nobler and more beautiful; and Marcus Aurelius is to be admired above all men, because, better than all men, has he understood how much there is of the soul in the meek resigned smile it must wear, at the depths of us. Thus is it, too, with the sorrows of humanity. They follow a road which resembles the road of our own sorrows; but it is longer, and surer, and must lead to fatherlands that the last comers alone shall know. This road also has physical sorrow for its starting-point; it has only just rounded the fear of the gods, and to-day it halts by a new abyss, whose depths the very best of us have not yet sounded.

Each century holds another sorrow dear, for each century discerns another destiny. Certain it is that we no longer interest ourselves, as was formerly the case, in the catastrophes of passion; and the quality of the sorrow revealed in the most tragic masterpieces of the past is inferior to the quality of the sorrows of to-day. It is only indirectly that these tragedies affect us now; only by means of that which is brought to bear on the simple accidents of love or hatred they reproduce, by the reflection and new nobility of sentiment that the pain of living has created within us.

There are moments when it would seem as though we were on the threshold of a new pessimism, mysterious and, perhaps, very pure. The most redoubtable sages, Schopenhauer, Carlyle, the Russians, the Scandinavians, and the good optimist Emerson, too (for than a wilful optimist there is nothing more discouraging), all these have passed our melancholy by, unexplained. We feel that, underlying all the reasons they have essayed to give us, there are many other profounder reasons, whose discovery has been beyond them. The sadness of man which seemed beautiful even to them, is still susceptible of infinite ennobling, until at last a creature of genius shall have uttered the final word of the sorrow that shall, perhaps, wholly purify....

In the meanwhile, we are in the hands of strange powers, whose intentions we are on the eve of divining. At the time of the great tragic writers of the new era, at the time of Shakespeare, Racine, and their successors, the belief prevailed that all misfortunes came from the various passions of the heart. Catastrophes did not hover between two worlds: they came hence to go thither, and their point of departure was known. Man was always the master. Much less was this the case at the time of the Greeks, for then did fatality reign on the heights; but it was inaccessible, and none dared interrogate it. To-day it is fatality that we challenge, and this is perhaps the distinguishing note of the new theatre. It is no longer the effects of disaster that arrest our attention; it is disaster itself, and we are eager to know its essence and its laws. It was the nature of disaster with which the earliest tragic writers were, all unconsciously, preoccupied, and this it was that, though they knew it not, threw a solemn shadow round the hard and violent gestures of external death; and it is this, too, that has become the rallying-point of the most recent dramas, the centre of light with strange flames gleaming, about which revolve the souls of women and of men. And a step has been taken towards the mystery so that life’s terrors may be looked in the face.

It would be interesting to discover from what point of view our latest tragic writers appear to regard the disaster that forms the basis of all dramatic poems. They see it from a nearer point of vision than the Greeks, and they have penetrated deeper into the fertile darknesses of its inner circle. The divinity is perhaps the same; they know nothing of it, yet do they study it more closely. Whence does it come, whither does it go, why does it descend upon us? These were problems to which the Greeks barely gave a thought. Is it written within us, or is it born at the same time as ourselves? Does it of its own accord start forward to meet us, or is it summoned by conniving voices that we cherish at the depths of us? If we could but follow, from the heights of another world, the ways of the man over whom a great sorrow is impending! And what man is there that does not laboriously, though all unconsciously, himself fashion the sorrow that is to be the pivot of his life!

The Scotch peasants have a word that might be applied to every existence. In their legends they give the name of ‘Fey’ to the frame of mind of a man who, notwithstanding all his efforts, notwithstanding all help and advice, is forced by some irresistible impulse, towards an inevitable catastrophe. It is thus that James I., the James of Catherine Douglas, was ‘fey’ when he went, notwithstanding the terrible omens of earth, heaven and hell, to spend the Christmas holidays in the gloomy castle of Perth, where his assassin, the traitor Robert Graeme, lay in wait for him. Which of us, recalling the circumstances of the most decisive misfortune of his life, but has felt himself similarly possessed? Be it well understood that I speak here only of active misfortunes, of those that might have been prevented: for there are passive misfortunes (such as the death of a person we adore) which simply come towards us, and cannot be influenced by any movement of ours. Bethink you of the fatal day of your life. Have we not all been forewarned; and though it may seem to us now that destiny might have been changed by a step we did not take, a door we did not open, a hand we did not raise, which of us but has struggled vainly on the topmost walls of the abyss, struggled without vigour and without hope, against a force that was invisible and apparently without power?

The breath of air stirred by the door I opened, one evening, was for ever to extinguish my happiness, as it would have extinguished a flickering lamp; and now, when I think of it, I cannot tell myself that I did not know.... And yet, it was nothing important that had taken me to the threshold. I could have gone away, shrugging my shoulders: there was no human reason that could force me to knock on the panel. No human reason, nothing but destiny....