THE WORKS OF MAURICE MAETERLINCK

ESSAYS

PLAYS

HOLIDAY EDITIONS

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The Miracle of Saint Anthony

By Maurice Maeterlinck

Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

With Introduction by Arthur Bartlett Maurice

New York Dodd, Mead and Company Publishers

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Copyright, 1918 By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

This play was written some ten or twelve years ago, but has never been published or performed in the original. A translation in two acts was printed in Germany a few years before the war; but the present is the only authorized version, in its final, one-act form, that has hitherto appeared in any language.

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.

Chelsea, 27 February, 1918.

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CHARACTERS

The action takes place in the present century, in a small Flemish provincial town.

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INTRODUCTION

“The Miracle of St. Anthony”—whatever the exact date of its writing, and that is a point which the author himself has probably forgotten,—belongs in flavour and spirit, to that early period of the career of the Belgian seer and mystic to which Mr. James Huneker referred when he wrote “There is no denying the fact that at one time Maeterlinck meant for most people a crazy crow, masquerading in tail feathers plucked from the Swan of Avon.” For it was to Shakespeare that he was first compared, though the title “the Belgian Shakespeare” was applied ironically by some, just as later manifestations[10] of his genius won for him the appellation of “the Belgian Emerson.” But “The Miracle of St. Anthony” differs from the other plays of what may be called “the early Maeterlinck.” Most of them, to quote Mr. Edward Thomas, have a melancholy, a romance of unreality, a morbidity, combined with innocence, which piques our indulgence. He has no irony to put us on the defensive. But irony is the very essence of “The Miracle of St. Anthony.” Nor does the scene of the

little play belong to that land of illusion, that mystic border country, half twilight and half mirage, in which so many of the early plays were laid. The St. Anthony from whom the satire takes its title may be the blessed St. Anthony of Padua, but the atmosphere is unmistakably the gray, sombre Flemish atmosphere that Maeterlinck knew in his early youth, while the[11] Marionettes who speak the lines were drawn, not from Fairy-land, but from some town of the Low-Countries.

Maeterlinck’s nationality was not a mere chance of birth, but a heritage of many generations. The Flemish family of which he was born in Ghent on August 29, 1862, had for six centuries been settled in the neighborhood. His childhood was passed at Oostacker, in a house on the bank of a canal connecting Ghent with Terneuzen. So near was the water that the ships seemed to be sliding through the garden itself. The seven years spent at the Jesuit college of St. Barbe were not happy years, but there were developed his first literary aspirations, and there he formed certain friendships that lasted into later life. At the University, where he studied for the Bar, he met Émile Verhaeren, who was destined to stand out with[12] King Albert, Cardinal Mercier, and Maeterlinck, as one of the great figures of the land when Belgium came to experience her agony.

But it was not in Maeterlinck to settle down to a lawyer’s work and a bourgeois life. “Like Rodenbach,” said M. Edouard Schuré, “he had dreamed alongside the sleeping waters of Belgium and in the dead cities, and, though his dream did not become a paralysing reverie, thanks to his vigorous and healthy body, he was already troubled in such a way that he was unlikely to accept the conditions of a legal career.” So, when at twenty four, he made his first trip to Paris, though the visit was professedly in the interests of his studies, it was with the result that he plunged definitely and whole heartedly into literature. To Villiers de l’Isle Adam, and others of the ultra modern school, he[13] was introduced by an old copain of the Jesuit college, Gregoire Le Roy. Le Roy read to the group Maeterlinck’s “The Massacre of the Innocents,” a perfectly Flemish piece of objective realism. It was applauded, and soon after appeared in “La Pléïde,” a short-lived review which also printed some of the poems collected in “Serres Chaudes.”

That first stay in Paris was one of about six months. Returning to Ghent, he conformed to the wishes of his family to the extent of dabbling a little at the Bar. But his heart was with “La Jeune Belgique,” to which he had been introduced by Rodenbach, author of “Bruges la Morte,” and for which he was writing his poems. Then in 1889, when he was twenty-seven years of age, “Serres Chaudes” was published, and with it went the last tie binding him to the law.

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Continuing to live in his native Oostacker, his days were divided between writing, tending his bees, and outdoor pastimes. As a member of the Civic Guard of Ghent he was as poor an amateur soldier as Balzac had been when enrolled in the National Guard of the France of his time. His musket was allowed to rust until the night before an inspection. Material surroundings meant little to him. As with Barrie, the four walls were enough. He could people the homely room to suit his fancy. In imagination a table became a mountain range, a chair the nave of a superb cathedral, a side-board a limitless expanse of surging ocean. Through the window he could look out over a country suggesting the scene of his early play, “Les Sept Princesses,” “A dark land of marshes, of pools, and of oak and pine forests. Between enormous willows a straight and[15] gloomy canal, on which a great ship of war advances.”

“La Princesse Maleine,” which also appeared in 1889, had been first privately printed by the author himself, on a hand press. With it Maeterlinck was launched into the fierce light of fame. Octave Mirbeau wrote of it in the Figaro of Paris. He said that no one could be more unknown than the author, but that his book was a masterpiece, “comparable—shall I dare say it? superior in beauty to the most beautiful in Shakespeare.” There were less generous critics who suggested that the play was Shakespeare, because it had been made with scraps of Shakespeare. A champion of Maeterlinck retorted that in comparison with Maleine and Hjalmar the characters of Shakespeare were marionettes. So the storm raged, to the author’s infinite disgust. Finally in a spirit of[16] modesty and frank acknowledgment he called the play “Shakespearterie.” There was no pose in that assumption of humility. From all testimony he has ever been the same. Invited to a dinner his acceptance has been conditional on absolute simplicity. “After all, I am a peasant.” It was Gerard Harry who quoted

that. Again, at the end of a first night of one of his plays, he has been described as “modest, simple, altogether without display in dress or manner.” His gestures were gentle with reflection, his voice low and rarely heard. He had no pride of success, but an air at once uneasy and detached, as if tired of being there. His deep blue eye was cold and mournful, like a mirror that retains the images of indefinite and impalpable things, as Barbey d’Aurevilly says the eyes always are of those who look more within than without.[17] His brow was deep and square and shone pale. He made the observer think of his own untranslatable words:

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[18] “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[19] 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[20] 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[21] 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[22] 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[23] 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.[24] 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[25] 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[26] 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.)

The Father—I could almost wish him ill for the suffering he has caused his mother.

The Uncle—Be reasonable. It is[27] not the poor little thing’s fault. He is quite alone in the room.

More and more is the old man troubled. He complains that he can no longer hear the nightingales, and that some one must be in the garden. The trees in the park are trembling as if some one was brushing a way through, the swans are scared, and the fishes diving in the pond, but the watch-dog does not bark. Through the glass door, that some mysterious agency has opened, the cold rushes into the room. The sound of a scythe being sharpened is heard outside. The child that has before been silent, begins to cry. There is a knock at the door. The Father partly opens it, and speaks to the servant, who answers, remaining on the outside.

The Grandfather—Your sister is at the door?

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The Uncle—I can see only the servant.

The Father—It was only the servant. (To the servant) Who was that, that came into the house?

A note is struck similar to one used later by Lord Dunsany in “A Night at an Inn.” Some invisible force is pushing open the door. The servant protests that it is not she, as she is standing three yards away from the door. The Grandfather is conscious of a new presence. “And who is that sitting there?” he asks. “But there is no one there,” he is told. But he will not believe them, maintaining that in pity they are deceiving him. A ray of moon-light penetrates, throwing strange gleams. The clock strikes midnight; at the last stroke there is a sound as of some one rising in haste. Cries of terror from the child’s room: quick and heavy steps.[29] Then silence. The door of the sick woman’s room slowly opens, and the Sister of Mercy appears on the threshold. She bows as she makes the sign of the Cross.

In “Les Aveugles” Maeterlinck turned from a typically Flemish setting to a forest on a small island—“a very ancient northern forest, eternal of aspect, beneath a sky profoundly starred.” Six old blind men are on the right, and six old blind women on the left. They are from a Home for the Blind and they are in the charge of a priest—a very old priest, wrapped in a wide black cloak, and whose eyes, “dumb and fixed, no longer gaze at the visible side of eternity, and seem bleeding beneath a multitude of immemorial sorrows and of tears.” Fear is in the hearts of the priest’s charges. They are startled by the flutter of wings, by the touch of the falling snow, by the barking of dogs. They understand[30] nothing save the sound of the sea and they do not know how near that is. In the priest’s company they have been exploring their island, which has “a mountain that no one has climbed, valleys with no one to go down to, and caves that have not been entered to this day.” They know not yet that the priest is dead, but they are conscious that something has happened to

him. They offer conjectures, they dig into the past, they deplore their state. At length one of the men is led by a dog to the center, where the body of the priest is. He touches a face. The others follow and recognise by feeling the features of their protector. What are they to do? The only seeing eyes are those of a child at its mother’s breast. The child cries at a noise, and they think that it must be something and move towards the sound that has provoked the cry. Their hope is that the[31] men from the light-house will see them. At last the footsteps stop. “Who are you?” asks the child’s mother. But only silence. “Have pity on us,” cries the oldest blind woman.