Maeterlinck "interior" 1o572m
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represents a happy compromise between Maeterlinck's own drama of stasis and
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traditional dramatic plotting. Aurelien Lugne-Poe directed Maeterlinck's early work at the Theatre d'Art and the Theatre de l'Oeuvre, capturing Maeterlinck's atmospherics through the use of dim lights as well as the actors' monotone vocal delivery and slow or measured movements. Claude Debussy composed the opera version of Pelleas and Melisande (1892), and in 1909 Konstantin Stanislavsky produced the Moscow premiere of Maeterlinck's last significant work for the theater, The Blue Bird (1908). Yet following Maeterlinck's acceptance of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1911 , his influence waned. Perhaps under the adverse influence of his own essay "The Modern Drama:' his plays became more optimistic, or in any event more accessible, as they began to conform to dramatic convention. Never theless, his early Symbolist dramas influenced a wide range of playwrights, in cluding Strindberg, Wilde, Yeats, and Synge, in addition to serving as distant precursors of the Theater of the Absurd. He died on May 6, 1949, in Nice, .
Evolution of European "Drama of the Interior" Maeterlinck
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n Interieur (1894) Maeterlinck created a powerful and haunting stage image to express his sense of the strangeness of ordinary ~ human life and the myste.ries which we usually prefer not to con template. He makes us look With new eyes at a quite ordinary family of ~ father, mother, and three children by the simple, brilliant device of placing them behind glass in their commonplace house, so that we see but never hear them. Our viewpoint is that of an Old Man and a Stranger who stand in a corner of a garden looking into the lighted, curtainless room where the family are sitting, noting every small movement and waiting for the moment when the Old Man will have courage to go into the room and break the tragic news that one of their daughters has been found drowned. We are involved, so to speak, in a godlike position, seeing the pathos of the family's ignorant happiness, their unawareness of the pitying and curious eyes upon them and of the future that is already formed for them. Maeterlinck calls for a dreamlike effect in the move ments of the mute family; they should appear "grave, slow, apart, and as though spiritualised by the distance, the light, and the transparent film of the window pane." He builds up subtle metaphysical implications through the situation of watching and being watched . The eavesdroppers watch the parents, who are watching their youngest child sleeping: they muse on the strangeness of this recession and are prompted to reflect, "We too are watched." At such moments the audience themselves, those other watchers, are drawn into the experience; it may cross their minds to wonder whether in some other sense it might be said of them also, "We are watched ." Although the people in the interior are so enclosed and separated, so un hearing and unseeing, they are allowed occasionally to have intuitions of what lies in the dark outside. When the Old Man and the Stranger are speaking of the drowned girl's hair pathetically floating on the water, her two sisters move uneasily in the room, their hair seeming to "tremble;' while at another moment they are drawn to the window, where they stand looking into the garden as if they had a sense of someone there. "No one comes to the middle window;' says one of the watchers, and surely then we feel a shudder of apprehenSion, as though a shadowy figure might slowly form there, the wraith of the drowned girl. Although the family do not learn the news until the Old Man goes into the house at the end of the play, delicate movements such as I have described suggest that, as Maeterlinck might say, the soul is responding to invisible pressures on it; that the interior can never be totally sealed off. The play ends, indeed, with the family plucked out of the safe, lighted interior. We see-though we do not hear-the Old Man breaking the news and the family leaving the room by a door at the back of the stage. They will find there the body
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Excerpted from Katharine Worth . "Evolution of European 'Drama of the Interior'; Maeterlinck, Wilde, and Yeats," Maske und Kothurn: Intemationa/e Beilriige zur Theaterwissenschaft 15. 1-2 (1979): 161-70.
of the dead girl, but Maeterlinck supplies a stage direction which calls for an unexpected view. When the door is thrown open, what we see is a moonlit sky with a lawn and fountain bathed in light; the moment of apprehending death is associated not with darkness but with emergence into the light. The effective ness of this subtle ending depends entirely upon stagecraft, and especially light ing, for its realisation. Maeterlinck is in this sense a pioneer of "total theatre" techniques. Interieur is a poetic demonstration of how the physical resources of theatre can be used to transmute ordinary reality and draw a mysterious patina over the surface of things, so making us realise that itis only a surface. Seen in the lighted frame, silently moving about their everyday business, unaware that they are being watched from their garden by a messenger bringing tidings of death, the characters of Interieur do indeed seem to inhabit some other dimension which is the essence of the Symbolist aesthetic or enterprise in drama.
Interior Maurice Maeterlinck
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Select Bibliography on Maeterlinck Halls, W. D. Maeterlinck: A Study of His Life and Thought Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960. Knapp, Bettina L. Maurice Maeterlinck. Boston: Twayne, 1975. Konrad, Linn Bratteteig. Modern Drama as Crisis: The Case of Maeterlinck. New York: Pe ter Lang, 1986. Mahony, Patrick. Maurice Maeterlinck, Mystic and Dramatist 2d ed. Washington, D.C.: In stitute for the Study of Man, 1984. Worth, Katharine. "Maeterlinck in the Light of the Absurd." In Around the Absurd: Essays on Modern and Postmodern Drama, ed. Enoch Brater and Ruby Cohn, 19-32. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990. --. Maeter!inck's Plays in Performance (book and slide set). Cambridge, England: Chadwyck-Healey, 1985. See also Daniels; Deak; Lambert; Lilar; Mallinson; McFarlane; and Rose, in the General Bibliography.
CHARACTERS
In the Garden THE OLD MAN
THE STRANGER
MARTHA
MARY
}
Granddaughters of the Old Man
)
Silent personages
A PEASANT
THE CROWD
In the House THE FATHER THE MOTHER THE TWO DAUGHTERS THE CHILD
The interval that elapses between the occurrence of a disaster and the breaking of the news to the bereaved is one full of tragedy; and here the pathetic ignorance of the drowned girl's family and the painful knowledge of the reluctant bearers of the evil tidings provide material for a touching little play-slight material to all appearance, but in the hands of M. Maeterlinck sufficient for the display ofa wealth ofkindly wisdom and sympathetic knowl edge ofhuman nature. An old garden planted with willows. At the back, a house, with three ofthe ground-floor windows lighted up. Through them a family is pretty distinctly Reprinted from The Nobel Prize Treasury, ed. Marshall McClintock; trans. William Archer (New York: Doubleday, 1948), 203-9.
vis!ble, gathered for the evening round the lamp. The FATHER is. seate? at.the chzmney comer. The MOTHER, resting one elbow on the table, zs gazzng znto vacancy. Two young girls, dressed in white, sit at their embroidery, dreaming and smiling in the tranquillity of the room. A child is asleep, his head resting on his mother's left arm. When one of them rises, walks, or makes a gesture, the movements appear grave, slow, apart, and as though spiritualized by the distance, the light, and the transparent film of the windowpanes. THE OLD MAN and THE STRANGER enter the garden cautiously. Here we are in the part of the garden that lies behind the house. They never come here. The doors are on the other side . They are closed and the shutters shut. But there are no shutters on this side of the house, and I saw the light ... Yes, they are still sitting up in the lamplight. It is well that they have not heard us; the mother or the girls would perhaps have come out, and then what should we have done?
THE OLD MAN.
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What are we going to do?
THE OLD MAN. I want first to see if they are all in the room. Yes, I see the father
seated at the chimney corner. He is doing nothing, his hands resting on
his knees. The mother is leaning her elbow on the table . . .
THE STRANGER.
She is looking at us. THE OLD MAN. No, she is looking at nothing; her eyes are fixed. She can not see us; we are in the shadow of the great trees. But do not go any nearer ... There, too, are the dead girl's two sisters; they are embroider ing slowly. And the little child has fallen asleep. It is nine on the clock in the corner ... They divine no evil , and they do not speak. THE STRANGER. If we were to attract the father's attention, and make some sign to him? He has turned his head this way. Shall I knock at one of the windows? One of them will have to hear of it before the others ...
THE STRANGER.
I do not know which to choose .. . We must be very careful. The father is old and ailing-the mother too-and the sisters are too young . . . And they all loved her as they will never love again. I have never seen a happier household ... No, no! do not go up to the window; that would be the worst thing we could do. It is better that we should tell them of it as simply as we can, as though it were a commonplace occur rence; and we must not appear too sad, else they will feel that their sorrow must exceed ours, and they will not know what to do .. . Let us go round to the other side of the garden. We will knock at the door, and go in as if nothing had happened. I will go in first: they will not be surprised to see me ; I sometimes look in of an evening, to bring them some flowers or
THE OLD MAN.
fruit, and to an hour or two with them. Why do you want me to go with you? Go alone; I will wait until you call me . They have never seen me-I am only a erby, a
THE STRANGER.
stranger ...
It is better that I should not be alone. A misfortune announced by a single voice seems more definite and crushing. I thought of that as I came along ... If I go in alone, I shall have to speak at the very first moment; they will know all in a few words; I shall have nothing more to say; and I dread the silence which follows the last words that tell of a misfortune. It is then that the heart is torn. If we enter together, I shall go roundabout to work; I shall tell them, for example: "They found her thus, or thus ... She was floating on the stream, and her hands were clasped . .."
THE OLD MAN .
THE STRANGER.
Her hands were not clasped; her arms were floating at her
sides. You see, in spite of ourselves we begin to talk-and the misfortune is shrouded in its details. Otherwise, if I go in alone, I know them well enough to be sure that the very first words would produce a terrible effect, and God knows what would happen. But if we speak to them in turns, they will listen to us, and will forget to look the evil tidings in the face . Do not forget that the mother will be there, and that her life hangs by a thread . .. It is well that the first wave of sorrow should waste its strength in unnecessary words . It is wisest to let people gather round the unfortunate and talk as they will. Even the most indifferent carry off, without knowing it, some portion of the sorrow. It is dispersed without effort and without noise, like air or light ...
THE OLD MAN.
THE STRANGER.
Your clothes are soaked and are dripping on the flagstones.
It is only the skirt of my mantle that has trailed a little in the water. You seem to be cold. Your coat is all muddy . .. I did not notice it on the way, it was so dark.
THE OLD MAN .
THE STRANGER. THE OLD MAN.
I went into the water up to my waist.
Had you found her long before I came up?
Only a few moments. I was going toward the village; it was already late , and the dusk was falling on the riverbank. I was walking along with my eyes fixed on the river, because it was lighter than the road, when I saw something strange close by a tuft of reeds ... I drew nearer, and I saw her hair, which had floated up almost into a circle round her head, and was swaying hither and thither with the current ... (In the room the two young girls tum their heads towards the window.)
THE STRANGER.
Did you see her two sisters' hair trembling on their shoulders? THE STRANGER. They turned their heads in our direction-they simply turned their heads. Perhaps I was speaking too loudly. (The two girls resume their former position. ) They have turned away again already .. . I went into the water up to my waist, and then I managed to grasp her hand and easily drew her to the bank. She was as beautiful as her sisters ... THE OLD MAN. I think she was more beautiful ... I do not know why I have lost all my courage. . . THE OLD MAN.
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What courage do you mean? We did all that man could do. She had been dead for more than an hour. THE OLD MAN. She was living this morning! I met her coming out of church. She told me that she was going away; she was going to see her grand mother on the other side of the river in which you found her. She did not know when I should see her again ... She seemed to be on the point of asking me something; then I suppose she did not dare, and she left me abruptly. But now that I think of it-and I noticed nothing at the time! she smiled as people smile who want to be silent, or who fear that they will not be understood ... Even hope seemed like a pain to her; her eyes were veiled, and she scarcely looked at me. THE STRANGER.
Some peasants told me that they saw her wandering all the afternoon on the bank. They thought she was looking for flowers ... It is possible that her death ... THE OLD MAN. No one can tell ... What can anyone know? She was perhaps one of those who shrink from speech, and everyone bears in his breast more than one reason for ceasing to live. You cannot see into the soul as you see into that room. They are all like that-they say nothing but trivial things, and no one dreams that there is aught amiss. You live for months by the side of one who is no longer of this world, and whose soul cannot stoop to it; you answer her unthinkingly; and you see what happens. They look like lifeless puppets, and all the time so many things are ing in their souls. They do not themselves know what they are. She might have lived as the others live. She might have said to the day of her death: "Sir, or Madam, it will rain this morning," or, "We are going to lunch; we shaH be thirteen at table," or "The fruit is not yet ripe." They speak smilingly of the flowers that have fallen, and they weep in the darkness. An angel from heaven would not see what ought to be seen; and men understand nothing until after all is over ... Yesterday evening she was there, sitting in the lamplight like her sisters; and you would not see them now as they ought to be seen if this had not happened ... I seem to see her for the first time ... Something new must come into our ordinary life before we can understand it. They are at your side day and night; and you do not really see them until the moment when they depart forever. And yet, what a strange little soul she must have had-what a poor little, artless, unfathomable soul she must have had-to have said what she must have said, and done what she must have done! THE STRANGER.
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THE STRANGER. THE OLD MAN.
See, they are smiling in the silence of the room ... They are not at all anxious-they did not expect her this
evening. They sit motionless and smiling. But see, the father puts his fingers to his lips ... THE OLD MAN. He points to the child asleep on its mother's breast .. . THE STRANGER. She dares not raise her head for fear of disturbing it .. . THE STr'RANGER.
THE OLD MAN.
They are not sewing any more. There is a dead silence
They have let fall their skein of white silk ...
They are looking at the child ...
THE STRANGER. THE OLD MAN.
They do not know that others are looking at them ...
We, too, are watched ...
THE STRANGER. THE OLD MAN.
THE STRANGER. THE OLD MAN.
They have raised their eyes .. .
And yet they can see nothing .. .
They seem to be happy, and yet there is something-I cannot tell what ...
THE STRANGER.
They think themselves beyond the reach of danger. They have closed the doors, and the windows are barred with iron. They have strengthened the walls of the old house; they have shot the bolts of the three oaken doors. They have foreseen everything that can be foreseen ... THE STRANGER. Sooner or later we must tell them. Someone might come in and blurt it out abruptly. There was a crowd of peasants in the meadow where we left the dead girl-if one of them were to come and knock at the door ... THE OLD MAN.
Martha and Mary are watching the little body. The peasants
were going to make a litter of branches, and I told my eldest granddaugh
ter to hurry on and let us know the moment they made a start. Let us wait till she comes; she will go with me.... I wish we had not been able to watch them in this way. I thought there was nothing to do but to knock at the door, to enter quite simply, and to tell all in a few phrases .... But I have watched them too long, living in the lamplight. ... (Enter MARY.) MARY. They are coming, grandfather.
THE OLD MAN.
Is that you? Where are they?
They are at the foot of the last slope.
THE OLD MAN. MARY.
THE OLD MAN. MARY.
They are coming silently.
I told them to pray in a low voice. Martha is with them.
Are there many of them?
THE OLD MAN.
The whole village is around the bier. They had brought lanterns; I
bade them put them out.
MARY.
THE OLD MAN.
What way are they coming?
They are coming by the little path. They are moving slowly. OLD MAN. It is time ...
MARY. THE
MARY.
Have you told them, grandfather?
You can see that we have told them nothing. There they are, still sitting in the lamplight. Look, my child, look: you will see what life
THE OLD MAN. IS ...
Oh! how peaceful they seem! I feel as though I were seeing them in a dream.
MARY.
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THE STRANGER. THE OLD MAN.
Look there-I saw the two sisters give a start.
They are rising ... I believe they are coming to the windows.
THE STRANGER.
(At this moment one of the two sisters comes up to the first window, the other to the third; and resting their hands against the panes they stand gazing into the darkness.) No one comes to the middle window. MARY. They are looking out; they are listening .. . THE OLD MAN. The elder is smiling at what she does not see. THE STRANGER. The eyes of the second are full of fear. THE OLD MAN . Take care : who knows how far the soul may extend around the body.... (A long silence. MARY nestles close to THE OLD MAN'S breast and THE OLD MAN .
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kisses him.) MARY.
Grandfather! Do not weep, my child; our turn will come. (A pause. )
THE OLD MAN .
They are looking long ... . THE OLD MAN. Poor things, they would see nothing though they looked for a hundred thousand years-the night is too dark. They are looking this way; and it is from the other side that misfortune is coming. THE STRANGER. It is well that they are looking this way. Something, I do not know what, is approaching by way of the meadows. MARY. I think it is the crowd; they are too far off for us to see clearly. THE STRANGER. They are following the windings of the path-there they come in sight again on that moonlit slope . MARY. Oh! how many they seem to be. Even when I left, people were coming up from the outskirts of the town. They are taking a very roundabout way.... THE OLD MAN . They will arrive at last, nonetheless. I see them, too-they are crossing the meadows-they look so small that one can scarcely dis tinguish them among the herbage. You might think them children play ing in the moonlight; if the girls saw them, they would not understand. Turn their backs to it as they may, misfortune is approaching step by step, and has been looming larger for more than two hours past. They cannot bid it stay; and those who are bringing it are powerless to stop it. It has mastered them , too, and they must needs serve it. It knows its goal , and it takes its course. It is unwearying, and it has but one idea . They have to lend it their strength. They are sad, but they draw nearer. Their hearts are full of pity, but they must advance ... . MARY. The elder has ceased to smile, grandfather. THE STRANGER. They are leaving the windows.. .. MARY. They are kissing their mother. . ..
THE STRANGER.
The elder is stroking the child's curls without wakening it.
MARY. Ah! the father wants them to kiss him , too ....
THE STRANGER. Now there is silence .. ..
MARY. They have returned to their mother's side.
THE STRANGER. And the father keeps his eyes fixed on the great pendulum of
the clock .. . THE STRANGER.
They seem to be praying without knowing what they do .. . . THE STRANGER. They seem to be listening to their own souls ... . (A pause.) MARY. Grandfather, do not tell them this evening! MARY.
You see, you are losing courage, too . I knew you ought not to look at them . I am nearly eighty-three years old, and this is the first time that the reality of life has come home to me . I do not know why all they do appears to me so strange and solemn. There they sit awaiting the night, simply, under their lamp, as we should under our own; and yet I seem to see them from the altitude of another world, because I know a little fact which as yet they do not know .. . Is it so, my children? Tell me, why are you, too, pale? Perhaps there is something else that we cannot put in words, and that makes us weep? I did not know that there was anything so sad in life, or that it could strike such terror to those who look on at it. And even if nothing had happened, it would frighten me to see
them sit there so peacefully. They have too much confidence in this
world . There they sit, separated from the enemy by only a few poor panes
of glass. They think that nothing will happen because they have closed
their doors, and they do not know that it is in the soul that things always
happen, and that the world does not end at their house-door. They are so
secure of their little life, and do not dream that so many others know
more of it than they, and that I, poor old man, at two steps from their
door, hold all their little happiness, like a wounded bird, in the hollow of
myoId hands, and dare not open them . ..
MARY. Have pity on them, grandfather. .. .
THE OLD MAN.
We have pity on them, my child, but no one has pity on us. MARY. Tell them tomorrow, grandfather; tell them when it is light, then they will not be so sad.
THE OLD MAN .
Perhaps you are right, my child .. . . It would be better to leave all this in the night. And the daylight is sweet to sorrow... . But what would they say to us tomorrow? Misfortune makes people jealous; those upon whom it has fallen want to know of it before strangers-they do not like to leave it in unknown hands. We should seem to have robbed them of something. THE STRANGER. Besides, it is too late now; already I can hear the murmur of prayers. MARY. They are here-they are ing behind the hedges . (Enter MARTHA.) THE OLD MAN.
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Here I am. I have guided them hither-I told them to wait in the road. (Cries of children are heard.) Ah! the children are still crying. I forbade them to come, but they want to see, too, and the mothers would not obey me. I will go and tell them-no, they have stopped crying. Is everything ready? I have brought the little ring that was found upon her. I have some fruit, too, for the child. I laid her to rest myself upon the bier. She looks as though she were sleeping. I had a great deal of trouble with her hair-I could not arrange it properly. I made them gather marguerites-it is a pity there were no other flowers. What are you doing here? Why are you not with them? (She looks in at the windows.) They are not weeping! They-you have not told them! THE OLD MAN . Martha, Martha, there is too much life in your soul; you cannot understand .... MARTHA. Why should I not understand? (After a silence, and in a tone ofgrave reproach.) You really ought not to have done that, grandfather .... MARTHA.
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Martha, you do not know .... I will go and tell them. MAN. Remain here, my child, and look for a moment.
THE OLD MAN. MARTHA. THE OLD MARTHA.
Oh, how I pity them! They must wait no longer. ...
Why not? MARTHA. I do not know, but it is not possible! THE OLD MAN. Come here, my child .... MARTHA. How patient they are! THE OLD MAN . Come here, my child . ... THE OLD MAN.
(turning) . Where are you, grandfather? I am so unhappy, I cannot see you any more. I do not myselfknow now what to do ... .
MARTHA
Do not look any more; until they know all. .. . I want to go with you ... .
THE OLD MAN. MARTHA.
No, Martha, stay here. Sit beside your sister on this old stone bench against the wall of the house, and do not look. You are too young, you would never be able to forget it. You cannot know what a face looks like at the moment when Death is ing into its eyes. Perhaps they will cry out, too ... Do not turn round. Perhaps there will be no sound at all. Above all things, if there is no sound, be sure you do not turn and look. One can never foresee the course that sorrow will take. A few little sobs wrung from the depths, and generally that is all. I do not know myself what I shall] do when I hear them-they do not belong to this life. Kiss me, my child, before I go. (The murmur of prayers has gradually drawn
THE OLD MAN.
nearer. A portion of the crowd forces its way into the garden. There is a sound ofdeadened footfalls and ofwhispering.) THE STRANGER (to the crowd ). StoJD here-do not go near the window. Where is she?
A PEASANT.
Who?
THE STRANGER. A PEASANT.
The others-the bearers.
They are coming by the avenue that leads up to the door.
(THE
OLD MAN goes out. MARTHA and MARY have seated themselves on the bench, their backs to the windows. Low murmurings are heard among the crowd.) THE STRANGER. Hush! Do not speak. (In the room the taller of the two sisters . rises, goes to the door, and shoots the bolts.) MARTHA .
She is opening the door! On the contrary, she is fastening it. (A pause.) Grandfather has not come in?
THE STRANGER. MARTHA.
No. She takes her seat again at her mother's side. The others do not move, and the child is still sleeping. (A pause.) MARTHA. My little sister, give me your hands. MARY. Martha! (They embrace and kiss each other.)
THE STRANGER .
He must have knocked-they have all raised their heads at the same time-they are looking at each other.
THE STRANGER.
MARTHA.
Oh! oh! my poor little sister!
r can
scarcely help crying out, too.
(She smothers her sobs on her sister's shoulder.) He must have knocked again. The father is looking at the clock. He rises... .
THE STRANGER.
Sister, sister, I must go in too-they cannot be left alone. Martha, Martha! (She holds her back.)
MARTHA. MARY.
The father is at the door-he is drawing the bolts-he is opening it cautiously.
THE STRANGER.
Oh!-you do not see the . .. STRANGER. What?
MARTHA. THE
MARTHA .
The bearers .. .
He has only opened it a very little. I see nothing but a corner of the lawn and the fountain . He keeps his hand on the door-he takes a step back-he seems to be saying, "Ah, it is you!" He raises his arms. He carefully closes the door again. Your grandfather has entered the room ... (The crowd has come up to the window. MARTHA and MARY half
THE STRANGER .
rise from their seat, then rise altogether and follow the rest toward the windows, pressing close to each other. THE OLD MAN is seen advancing into the room. The two SISTERS rise; the MOTHER also rises, and carefully settles the CHILD in the armchair which she has left, so that from outside the little one can be seen sleeping, his head a little bent forward, in the middle ofthe room. The MOTHER advances to meet THE OLD MAN, and holds out her hand to him, but draws it back again before he has had time to take it. One of the girls wants to take off the visitor's mantle, and the other pushes forward an armchair for him. But THE OLD MAN makes a little gesture of
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refusal. The FATHER smiles with an air of astonishment. looks toward the windows. ) THE STRANGER.
THE OLD MAN
He dares not tell them. He is looking toward us. (Murmurs in
the crowd.) Hush! (THE OLD MAN , seeing faces at the windows, quickly averts his eyes. As one of the girls is still offering him the armchair, he at last sits down and es his right hand several times over his forehead.) THE STRANGER. He is sitting down ... . (The others who are in the room also sit down, while the FATHER seems to be speaking volubly. At last THE OLD MAN opens his mouth, and the sound ofhis voice seems to arouse their attention. But the FATHER interrupts him. THE OLD MAN begins to speak again, and little by little the others grow tense with apprehension. All of a sudden the MOTHER starts and rises.) MARTHA. Oh! the mother begins to understand! (She turns away and hides her face in her hands. Renewed murmurs among the crowd. They elbow each other. Children cry to be lifted up, so that they may see too. Most of the mothers do as they wish.) THE STRANGER. Hush! he has not told them yet. .. . (The MOTHER is seen to be questioning THE OLD MAN with anxiety. He says a few more words; then, suddenly, all the others rise, too, and seem to question him. Then he slowly makes an affirmative movement of his head.)
The Modern Drama
THE STRANGER.
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THE STRANGER.
He has told them-he has told them all at once!
VOICES IN THE CROWD.
He has told them! he has told them!
I can hear nothing.. .. (THE OLD MAN also rises, and, without turning, makes a gesture indicating the door, which is behind him. The MOTHER, the FATHER, and the two DAUGHTERS rush to this door, which the FATHER has difficulty in opening. THE OLD MAN tries to prevent the MOTHER from going out.) VOICES IN THE CROWD . They are going out! they are going out! (Confusion among the crowd in the garden. All hurry to the other side ofthe house and disappear, except THE STRANGER, who remains at the windows. In the room, the folding door is at last thrown wide open; all go out at the same time. Beyond can be seen the starry sky, the lawn, and the fountain in the moonlight; while, left alone in the middle ofthe room, the CHILD continues to sleep peacefully in the armchair. A pause.) THE STRANGER . The child has not wakened! (He also goes out.)
THE STRANGER.
CURTAIN
Maurice Maeterlinck
When I speak of the modern drama, I naturally refer only to those regions of dramatic literature that, sparsely inhabited as they may be, are yet essentially new. Down below, in the ordinary theatre, ordinary and traditional drama is doubtless yielding slowly to the influence of the vanguard; but it were idle to wait for the laggards when we have the pioneers at our call. The first thing that strikes us in the drama of the day is the decay, one might almost say the creeping paralysis, of external action. Next we note a very pronounced desire to penetrate deeper and deeper into human con sciousness, and place moral problems upon a high pedestal; and finally the search, still very timid and halting, for a kind of new beauty that shall be less abstract than was the old. It is certain that, on the actual stage, we have far fewer extraordinary and violent adventures. Bloodshed has grown less frequent, ions less tur bulent; heroism has become less unbending, courage less material and less fero cious. People still die on the stage, it is true, as in reality they still must die, but death has ceased-or will cease, let us hope , very soon-to be re garded as the indispensable setting, the ultima ratio, the inevitable end, of every dramatic poem. In the most formidable crises of our life-which, cruel though it may be, is cruel in silent and hidden ways-we rarely look to death for a solution; and for all that the theatre is slower than the other arts to follow the evolution of human consciousness, it will still be at last compelled, in some measure, to take this into . Reprinted from Maurice Maete rlinck, The Double Garden, trans. Alfred Sutro (New York: Dodd, Mead. 1904), 11 5-35.
When we consider the ancient and tragi cal anecdotes that constitute the entire basis of the classical drama, the Italian, Scandinavian, Spanish, or mythical stories that provided the plots, not only for all the plays of the Shakespearian period, but also-not altogether to over an art that was infinitely less spontaneous-for those of French and German Romanticism, we discover at once that these anecdotes are no longer able to offer us the direct interest they presented at a time when they appeared highly natural and possible, at a time, when, at any rate, the circumstances, manners, and sentiments they recalled were not yet extinct in the minds of those who witnessed their reproduction .
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To us, however, these adventures no longer correspond to a living and actual reality. Should a youth of our own time love, and meet obstacles not unlike those which, in another order of ideas and events, beset Romeo's ion, we need no telling that his adventure will be embellished by none of the fea
tures that gave poetry and grandeur to the episode of Verona . Gone beyond
recall is the entrancing atmosphere of a lordly, ionate life; gone the brawls in picturesque streets, the interludes of bloodshed and splendour, the mysterious poisons, the majestic, complaisant tombs! And where shall we look for that exquisite summer's night, which owes its vastness, its savour, the very appeal that it makes to us, to the shadow of an heroic, inevitable death that already lay heavy upon it? Divest the story of Romeo and Juliet of these beautiful trappings, and we have only the very simple and ordinary desire of a noble-hearted, unfortunate youth for a maiden whose obdurate parents deny him her hand. All the poetry, the splendour, the ionate life of this desire, result from the glamour, the nobility, tragedy, that are proper to the environment wherein it has come to flower; nor is there a kiss, a murmur of love, a cry of anger, grief, or despair but borrows its majesty, grace, its hero icism, tenderness-in a word, every image that has helped it to visible form from the beings and objects around it; for it is not in the kiss itself that the sweetness and beauty are found , but in the circumstance, hour, and place wherein it was given. Again, the same objections would hold if we chose to imagine a man of our time who should be jealous as Othello was jealous, possessed of Macbeth's ambition, unhappy as Lear; or, like Hamlet, restless and wavering, bowed down beneath the weight of a frightful and unrealis able duty.
III These conditions no longer exist. The adventure of the modern Romeo-to consider only the external events which it might provoke-would not pro vide material for a comple of acts. Against this it may be urged that a modern poet who desires to put on the stage an analogous poem of youthful love is
perfectly justified in borrowing from days gone by a more decorative setting, one that shall be more fertile in heroic and tragi cal incident. Granted; but what can the result be of such an expedient? Would not the feelings and ions that demand for their fullest, most perfect expression and develop ment the atmosphere of today (for the ions and feelings of a modern poet must, in despite of himself, be entirely and exclusively modern), would not these suddenly find themselves transplanted to a soil where all things pre vented their living? They no longer believe, yet are charged with the fear and hope of eternal judgement. In their hours of distress they have discovered new forces to cling to, that seem trustworthy, human and just; and behold them thrust back to a century wherein prayer and the sword decide all! They have profited, unconsciously perhaps, by every moral advance we have made-and they are suddenly flung into abysmal days when the least gesture was governed by prejudices at which they can only shudder or smile. In such an atmosphere, what can they do; how hope that they truly can live there? IV But we need dwell no further on the necessarily artificial poems that arise from the impossible marriage of past and present. Let us rather consider the drama that actually stands for the reality of our time, as Greek drama stood for Greek reality, and the drama of the Renaissance for the reality of the Renaissance. Its scene is a modern house, it es between men and women of today. The names of the invisible protagonists-the ions and ideas are the same, more or less, as of old. We see love, hatred, ambition, jealousy, envy, greed; the sense of justice and idea of duty; pity, goodness, devotion, piety, selfishness, vanity, pride, etc. But although the names have remained more or less the same, how great is the difference we find in the aspect and quality, the extent and influence, of these ideal actors! Of all their ancient weapons not one is left them, not one of the marvellous moments of olden days . It is seldom that cries are heard now; bloodshed is rare, and tears not often seen. It is in a small room, round a table, close to the fire, that the joys and sorrows of mankind are decided. We suffer, or make others suffer, we love, we die, there in our corner; and it were the strangest chance should a door or a window suddenly, for an instant, fly open, beneath the pressure of extraordinary despair or rejoicing. Accidental, adventitious beauty exists no longer; there remains only an external poetry that has not yet become poetic. And what poetry, if we probe to the root of things-what poetry is there that does not borrow nearly all of its charm, nearly all of its ecstasy, from elements that are wholly external? Last of all, there is no longer a God to widen, or master, the action; nor is there an inexorable fate to form a mysterious, solemn, and tragical background for the slightest gesture of man; nor the sombre and abundant atmosphere that was able to ennoble even his most contemptible weaknesses, his least pardonable crimes. There still abides with us, it is true, a terrible unknown; but it is so diverse
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and elusive, it becomes so arbitrary, so vague and contradictory, the moment we try to locate it, that we cannot evoke it without great danger; cannot even, without the mightiest difficulty, avail ourselves of it, though in all loyalty, to raise to the point of mystery the gestures, actions, and words of the men we every day. The endeavour has been made; the formidable, problematic enigma of heredity, the grandiose but improbable enigma of inherent jus tice, and many others beside, have each in their turn been put forward as a substitute for the vast enigma of the Providence or Fatality of old. And it is curious to note how these youthful enigmas, born but of yesterday, already seem older, more arbitrary, more unlikely, than those whose places they took in an access of pride. ::IIi:
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v Where are we to look, then, for the grandeur and beauty that we find no longer in visible action, or in words, stripped as these are of their attraction and glamour? For words are only a kind of mirror which reflects the beauty of all that surrounds it; and the beauty of the new world wherein we live does not seem as yet able to project its rays on these somewhat reluctant mirrors. Where shall we look for the horizon, the poetry, now that we no longer can seek it in a mystery which, for an that it still exists, does yet fade from us the moment we endeavour to give it a name? The modern drama would seem to be vaguely conscious of this. Incapa ble of outside movement, deprived of external ornament, daring no longer to make serious appeal to a determined divinity or fatality, it has fallen back on itself, and seeks to discover, in the regions of psychology and of moral prob lems, the equivalent of what once was offered by exterior life. It has pene trated deeper into human consciousness but has encountered difficulties there no less strange than unexpected. To penetrate deeply into human consciousness is the privilege, even the duty, of the thinker, the moralist, the historian, the novelist, and to a degree, of the lyrical poet; but not of the dramatist. Whatever the temptation, he dare not sink into inactivity, become mere philosopher or observer. Do what one will, discover what marvels one may, the sovereign law of the stage, its essential demand, will always be action. With the rise of the curtain, the high intellectual desire within us undergoes transformation; and in place of the thinker, psychologist, mystic, or moralist there stands the mere instinctive spectator, the man electrified negatively by the crowd, the man whose one desire it is to see something happen. This transformation or substitution is incontestable, strange as it may seem; and is due, perhaps, to the influence of the human polypier, to some undeniable faculty of our soul, which is endowed with a special, primitive, almost unimprovable organ, whereby men can think, and feel, and be moved, en masse. And there are no words so profound, so noble and irable, but they win soon weary us if they leave
the situation unchanged, if they lead to no action, bring about no decisive conflict, or hasten no definite solution.
VI But whence is it that action arises in the consciousness of man? In its first stage it springs from the struggle between diverse conflicting ions. But no sooner has it raised itself somewhat-and this is true, if we examine it closely, of the first stage also-than it would seem to be solely due to the conflict between a ion and a moral law, between a duty and a desire. Hence the eagerness with which modern dramatists have plunged into all the problems of contemporary morality; and it may safely be said that at this moment they confine themselves almost exclusively to the discussion of these different problems. This movement was initiated by the dramas of Alexandre Dumas {tIs, dramas which brought the most elementary of moral conflicts onto the stage; dramas, indeed, whose entire existence was based on problems such as the spectator, who must always be regarded as the ideal moralist, would never put to himself in the course of his whole spiritual existence, so evident is their solution. Should the faithless husband or wife be forgiven? Is it well to avenge infidelity by infidelity? Has the illegitimate child any rights? Is the marriage of inclination-such is the name it bears in those regions preferable to the marriage for money? Have parents the right to oppose a marriage for love? Is divorce to be deprecated when a child has been born of the union? Is the sin of the adulterous wife greater than that of the adulterous husband? etc., etc . Indeed, it may be said here that the entire French theatre of today, and a considerable proportion of the foreign theatre, which is only its echo, exist solely on questions of this kind, and on the entirely superfluous answers to which they give rise. On the other hand, however, the highest point of human consciousness is attained by the dramas of Bjornson, of Hauptmann, and, above all, of Ibsen. Here we touch the limit of the resources of modern dramaturgy. For, in truth, the further we penetrate into the consciousness of man, the less struggle do we discover. It is impossible to penetrate far into any conscious ness unless that consciousness be very enlightened; for, whether we advance ten steps, or a thousand, in the depths of a soul that is plunged into darkness, we shall find nothing there that can be unexpected, or new; for darkness everywhere will resemble only itself. But a consciousness that is truly en lightened will possess ions and desires infinitely less exacting, infinitely more peaceful and patient, more salutary, abstract, and general, than are those that reside in the ordinary consciousness. Thence, far less struggle-or at least a struggle of far less violence-between these nobler and wiser pas sions; and this for the very reason that they have become vaster and loftier;
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for if there be nothing more restless, destructive, and savage than a dammed up stream, there is nothing more tranquil, beneficent, and silent than the beautiful river whose banks ever widen.
VII Again, this enlightened consciousness will yield to infinitely fewer laws, it infinitely fewer doubtful or harmful duties. There is, one may say, scarcely a falsehood or error, a prejudice, half-truth or convention, that is not capable of assuming, that does not actually assume, when the occasion presents itself, the form of a duty in an uncertain consciousness. It is thus that honour, in the chivalrous, conjugal sense of the word (I refer to the honour of the husband, which is supposed to suffer by the infidelity of the :II!
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Z certain gods, and a thousand other illusions have been, and still remain, the ...J a:: unquenchable source of a multitude of duties that are still regarded as abso w
I lutely sacred, absolutely incontrovertible, by a vast number of inferior con
w c:( sciousnesses. And these so-called duties are the pivot of almost all the dramas I: of the Romantic period, as of most of those of today. But not one of these sombre, pitiless duties that so fatally impel mankind to death and disaster g can readily take root in the consciousness that a healthy, living light has adequately penetrated; in such there will be no room for honour or ven geance, for conventions that clamour for blood. It will hold no prejudices that exact tears, no injustice eager for sorrow. It will have cast from their throne the gods who insiston sacrifice, and the love that craves for death. For when the sun has entered into the consciousness of him who is wise, as we may hope that it will some day enter into that of all men, it will reveal one duty, and one alone, which is that we should do the least possible harm and love others as we love ourselves; and from this duty no drama can spring.
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VIII Let us consider what happens in Ibsen's plays. He often leads us far down into human consciousness, but the drama remains possible only because there goes with us a singular flame, a sort of red light, which, sombre, capri cious-unhallowed, one almost might say-falls only on singular phantoms. And indeed nearly all the duties which form the active principle of Ibsen's tragedies are duties situated no longer within, but without the healthy, il lumined consciousness; and the duties we believe we discover outside this consciousness often come perilously near an unjust pride, or a kind of soured and morbid madness. Let it not be imagined, however-for indeed this would be wholly to misunderstand me-that these remarks of mine in any way detract from my iration for the great Scandinavian poet. For, if it be true that Ibsen has
contributed few salutary elements to the morality of our time, he is perhaps the only writer for the stage who has caught sight of, and set in motion a new, though still disagreeable poetry, which he has succeeded in investi~g with a kind of age, gloomy beauty, and grandeur (surely too savage and gloomy for it to become general or definitive); as he is the only one who owes nothing to the poetry of the violently illumined dramas of antiquity or of the Renaissance. But, while we wait for the time when human consciousness shall recog nise more useful ions and less nefarious duties, for the time when the world's stage shall consequently present more happiness and fewer tragedies, there still remains, in the depths of every heart of loyal intention, a great duty of charity and justice that eclipses all others. And it is perhaps from the struggle of this duty against our egoism and ignorance that the veritable drama of our century shall spring. When this goal has been attained-in real life as on the stage-it will be permissible perhaps to speak of a new theatre, a theatre of peace, and of beauty without tears.
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traditional dramatic plotting. Aurelien Lugne-Poe directed Maeterlinck's early work at the Theatre d'Art and the Theatre de l'Oeuvre, capturing Maeterlinck's atmospherics through the use of dim lights as well as the actors' monotone vocal delivery and slow or measured movements. Claude Debussy composed the opera version of Pelleas and Melisande (1892), and in 1909 Konstantin Stanislavsky produced the Moscow premiere of Maeterlinck's last significant work for the theater, The Blue Bird (1908). Yet following Maeterlinck's acceptance of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1911 , his influence waned. Perhaps under the adverse influence of his own essay "The Modern Drama:' his plays became more optimistic, or in any event more accessible, as they began to conform to dramatic convention. Never theless, his early Symbolist dramas influenced a wide range of playwrights, in cluding Strindberg, Wilde, Yeats, and Synge, in addition to serving as distant precursors of the Theater of the Absurd. He died on May 6, 1949, in Nice, .
Evolution of European "Drama of the Interior" Maeterlinck
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n Interieur (1894) Maeterlinck created a powerful and haunting stage image to express his sense of the strangeness of ordinary ~ human life and the myste.ries which we usually prefer not to con template. He makes us look With new eyes at a quite ordinary family of ~ father, mother, and three children by the simple, brilliant device of placing them behind glass in their commonplace house, so that we see but never hear them. Our viewpoint is that of an Old Man and a Stranger who stand in a corner of a garden looking into the lighted, curtainless room where the family are sitting, noting every small movement and waiting for the moment when the Old Man will have courage to go into the room and break the tragic news that one of their daughters has been found drowned. We are involved, so to speak, in a godlike position, seeing the pathos of the family's ignorant happiness, their unawareness of the pitying and curious eyes upon them and of the future that is already formed for them. Maeterlinck calls for a dreamlike effect in the move ments of the mute family; they should appear "grave, slow, apart, and as though spiritualised by the distance, the light, and the transparent film of the window pane." He builds up subtle metaphysical implications through the situation of watching and being watched . The eavesdroppers watch the parents, who are watching their youngest child sleeping: they muse on the strangeness of this recession and are prompted to reflect, "We too are watched." At such moments the audience themselves, those other watchers, are drawn into the experience; it may cross their minds to wonder whether in some other sense it might be said of them also, "We are watched ." Although the people in the interior are so enclosed and separated, so un hearing and unseeing, they are allowed occasionally to have intuitions of what lies in the dark outside. When the Old Man and the Stranger are speaking of the drowned girl's hair pathetically floating on the water, her two sisters move uneasily in the room, their hair seeming to "tremble;' while at another moment they are drawn to the window, where they stand looking into the garden as if they had a sense of someone there. "No one comes to the middle window;' says one of the watchers, and surely then we feel a shudder of apprehenSion, as though a shadowy figure might slowly form there, the wraith of the drowned girl. Although the family do not learn the news until the Old Man goes into the house at the end of the play, delicate movements such as I have described suggest that, as Maeterlinck might say, the soul is responding to invisible pressures on it; that the interior can never be totally sealed off. The play ends, indeed, with the family plucked out of the safe, lighted interior. We see-though we do not hear-the Old Man breaking the news and the family leaving the room by a door at the back of the stage. They will find there the body
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Excerpted from Katharine Worth . "Evolution of European 'Drama of the Interior'; Maeterlinck, Wilde, and Yeats," Maske und Kothurn: Intemationa/e Beilriige zur Theaterwissenschaft 15. 1-2 (1979): 161-70.
of the dead girl, but Maeterlinck supplies a stage direction which calls for an unexpected view. When the door is thrown open, what we see is a moonlit sky with a lawn and fountain bathed in light; the moment of apprehending death is associated not with darkness but with emergence into the light. The effective ness of this subtle ending depends entirely upon stagecraft, and especially light ing, for its realisation. Maeterlinck is in this sense a pioneer of "total theatre" techniques. Interieur is a poetic demonstration of how the physical resources of theatre can be used to transmute ordinary reality and draw a mysterious patina over the surface of things, so making us realise that itis only a surface. Seen in the lighted frame, silently moving about their everyday business, unaware that they are being watched from their garden by a messenger bringing tidings of death, the characters of Interieur do indeed seem to inhabit some other dimension which is the essence of the Symbolist aesthetic or enterprise in drama.
Interior Maurice Maeterlinck
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Select Bibliography on Maeterlinck Halls, W. D. Maeterlinck: A Study of His Life and Thought Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960. Knapp, Bettina L. Maurice Maeterlinck. Boston: Twayne, 1975. Konrad, Linn Bratteteig. Modern Drama as Crisis: The Case of Maeterlinck. New York: Pe ter Lang, 1986. Mahony, Patrick. Maurice Maeterlinck, Mystic and Dramatist 2d ed. Washington, D.C.: In stitute for the Study of Man, 1984. Worth, Katharine. "Maeterlinck in the Light of the Absurd." In Around the Absurd: Essays on Modern and Postmodern Drama, ed. Enoch Brater and Ruby Cohn, 19-32. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990. --. Maeter!inck's Plays in Performance (book and slide set). Cambridge, England: Chadwyck-Healey, 1985. See also Daniels; Deak; Lambert; Lilar; Mallinson; McFarlane; and Rose, in the General Bibliography.
CHARACTERS
In the Garden THE OLD MAN
THE STRANGER
MARTHA
MARY
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Granddaughters of the Old Man
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Silent personages
A PEASANT
THE CROWD
In the House THE FATHER THE MOTHER THE TWO DAUGHTERS THE CHILD
The interval that elapses between the occurrence of a disaster and the breaking of the news to the bereaved is one full of tragedy; and here the pathetic ignorance of the drowned girl's family and the painful knowledge of the reluctant bearers of the evil tidings provide material for a touching little play-slight material to all appearance, but in the hands of M. Maeterlinck sufficient for the display ofa wealth ofkindly wisdom and sympathetic knowl edge ofhuman nature. An old garden planted with willows. At the back, a house, with three ofthe ground-floor windows lighted up. Through them a family is pretty distinctly Reprinted from The Nobel Prize Treasury, ed. Marshall McClintock; trans. William Archer (New York: Doubleday, 1948), 203-9.
vis!ble, gathered for the evening round the lamp. The FATHER is. seate? at.the chzmney comer. The MOTHER, resting one elbow on the table, zs gazzng znto vacancy. Two young girls, dressed in white, sit at their embroidery, dreaming and smiling in the tranquillity of the room. A child is asleep, his head resting on his mother's left arm. When one of them rises, walks, or makes a gesture, the movements appear grave, slow, apart, and as though spiritualized by the distance, the light, and the transparent film of the windowpanes. THE OLD MAN and THE STRANGER enter the garden cautiously. Here we are in the part of the garden that lies behind the house. They never come here. The doors are on the other side . They are closed and the shutters shut. But there are no shutters on this side of the house, and I saw the light ... Yes, they are still sitting up in the lamplight. It is well that they have not heard us; the mother or the girls would perhaps have come out, and then what should we have done?
THE OLD MAN.
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What are we going to do?
THE OLD MAN. I want first to see if they are all in the room. Yes, I see the father
seated at the chimney corner. He is doing nothing, his hands resting on
his knees. The mother is leaning her elbow on the table . . .
THE STRANGER.
She is looking at us. THE OLD MAN. No, she is looking at nothing; her eyes are fixed. She can not see us; we are in the shadow of the great trees. But do not go any nearer ... There, too, are the dead girl's two sisters; they are embroider ing slowly. And the little child has fallen asleep. It is nine on the clock in the corner ... They divine no evil , and they do not speak. THE STRANGER. If we were to attract the father's attention, and make some sign to him? He has turned his head this way. Shall I knock at one of the windows? One of them will have to hear of it before the others ...
THE STRANGER.
I do not know which to choose .. . We must be very careful. The father is old and ailing-the mother too-and the sisters are too young . . . And they all loved her as they will never love again. I have never seen a happier household ... No, no! do not go up to the window; that would be the worst thing we could do. It is better that we should tell them of it as simply as we can, as though it were a commonplace occur rence; and we must not appear too sad, else they will feel that their sorrow must exceed ours, and they will not know what to do .. . Let us go round to the other side of the garden. We will knock at the door, and go in as if nothing had happened. I will go in first: they will not be surprised to see me ; I sometimes look in of an evening, to bring them some flowers or
THE OLD MAN.
fruit, and to an hour or two with them. Why do you want me to go with you? Go alone; I will wait until you call me . They have never seen me-I am only a erby, a
THE STRANGER.
stranger ...
It is better that I should not be alone. A misfortune announced by a single voice seems more definite and crushing. I thought of that as I came along ... If I go in alone, I shall have to speak at the very first moment; they will know all in a few words; I shall have nothing more to say; and I dread the silence which follows the last words that tell of a misfortune. It is then that the heart is torn. If we enter together, I shall go roundabout to work; I shall tell them, for example: "They found her thus, or thus ... She was floating on the stream, and her hands were clasped . .."
THE OLD MAN .
THE STRANGER.
Her hands were not clasped; her arms were floating at her
sides. You see, in spite of ourselves we begin to talk-and the misfortune is shrouded in its details. Otherwise, if I go in alone, I know them well enough to be sure that the very first words would produce a terrible effect, and God knows what would happen. But if we speak to them in turns, they will listen to us, and will forget to look the evil tidings in the face . Do not forget that the mother will be there, and that her life hangs by a thread . .. It is well that the first wave of sorrow should waste its strength in unnecessary words . It is wisest to let people gather round the unfortunate and talk as they will. Even the most indifferent carry off, without knowing it, some portion of the sorrow. It is dispersed without effort and without noise, like air or light ...
THE OLD MAN.
THE STRANGER.
Your clothes are soaked and are dripping on the flagstones.
It is only the skirt of my mantle that has trailed a little in the water. You seem to be cold. Your coat is all muddy . .. I did not notice it on the way, it was so dark.
THE OLD MAN .
THE STRANGER. THE OLD MAN.
I went into the water up to my waist.
Had you found her long before I came up?
Only a few moments. I was going toward the village; it was already late , and the dusk was falling on the riverbank. I was walking along with my eyes fixed on the river, because it was lighter than the road, when I saw something strange close by a tuft of reeds ... I drew nearer, and I saw her hair, which had floated up almost into a circle round her head, and was swaying hither and thither with the current ... (In the room the two young girls tum their heads towards the window.)
THE STRANGER.
Did you see her two sisters' hair trembling on their shoulders? THE STRANGER. They turned their heads in our direction-they simply turned their heads. Perhaps I was speaking too loudly. (The two girls resume their former position. ) They have turned away again already .. . I went into the water up to my waist, and then I managed to grasp her hand and easily drew her to the bank. She was as beautiful as her sisters ... THE OLD MAN. I think she was more beautiful ... I do not know why I have lost all my courage. . . THE OLD MAN.
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What courage do you mean? We did all that man could do. She had been dead for more than an hour. THE OLD MAN. She was living this morning! I met her coming out of church. She told me that she was going away; she was going to see her grand mother on the other side of the river in which you found her. She did not know when I should see her again ... She seemed to be on the point of asking me something; then I suppose she did not dare, and she left me abruptly. But now that I think of it-and I noticed nothing at the time! she smiled as people smile who want to be silent, or who fear that they will not be understood ... Even hope seemed like a pain to her; her eyes were veiled, and she scarcely looked at me. THE STRANGER.
Some peasants told me that they saw her wandering all the afternoon on the bank. They thought she was looking for flowers ... It is possible that her death ... THE OLD MAN. No one can tell ... What can anyone know? She was perhaps one of those who shrink from speech, and everyone bears in his breast more than one reason for ceasing to live. You cannot see into the soul as you see into that room. They are all like that-they say nothing but trivial things, and no one dreams that there is aught amiss. You live for months by the side of one who is no longer of this world, and whose soul cannot stoop to it; you answer her unthinkingly; and you see what happens. They look like lifeless puppets, and all the time so many things are ing in their souls. They do not themselves know what they are. She might have lived as the others live. She might have said to the day of her death: "Sir, or Madam, it will rain this morning," or, "We are going to lunch; we shaH be thirteen at table," or "The fruit is not yet ripe." They speak smilingly of the flowers that have fallen, and they weep in the darkness. An angel from heaven would not see what ought to be seen; and men understand nothing until after all is over ... Yesterday evening she was there, sitting in the lamplight like her sisters; and you would not see them now as they ought to be seen if this had not happened ... I seem to see her for the first time ... Something new must come into our ordinary life before we can understand it. They are at your side day and night; and you do not really see them until the moment when they depart forever. And yet, what a strange little soul she must have had-what a poor little, artless, unfathomable soul she must have had-to have said what she must have said, and done what she must have done! THE STRANGER.
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THE STRANGER. THE OLD MAN.
See, they are smiling in the silence of the room ... They are not at all anxious-they did not expect her this
evening. They sit motionless and smiling. But see, the father puts his fingers to his lips ... THE OLD MAN. He points to the child asleep on its mother's breast .. . THE STRANGER. She dares not raise her head for fear of disturbing it .. . THE STr'RANGER.
THE OLD MAN.
They are not sewing any more. There is a dead silence
They have let fall their skein of white silk ...
They are looking at the child ...
THE STRANGER. THE OLD MAN.
They do not know that others are looking at them ...
We, too, are watched ...
THE STRANGER. THE OLD MAN.
THE STRANGER. THE OLD MAN.
They have raised their eyes .. .
And yet they can see nothing .. .
They seem to be happy, and yet there is something-I cannot tell what ...
THE STRANGER.
They think themselves beyond the reach of danger. They have closed the doors, and the windows are barred with iron. They have strengthened the walls of the old house; they have shot the bolts of the three oaken doors. They have foreseen everything that can be foreseen ... THE STRANGER. Sooner or later we must tell them. Someone might come in and blurt it out abruptly. There was a crowd of peasants in the meadow where we left the dead girl-if one of them were to come and knock at the door ... THE OLD MAN.
Martha and Mary are watching the little body. The peasants
were going to make a litter of branches, and I told my eldest granddaugh
ter to hurry on and let us know the moment they made a start. Let us wait till she comes; she will go with me.... I wish we had not been able to watch them in this way. I thought there was nothing to do but to knock at the door, to enter quite simply, and to tell all in a few phrases .... But I have watched them too long, living in the lamplight. ... (Enter MARY.) MARY. They are coming, grandfather.
THE OLD MAN.
Is that you? Where are they?
They are at the foot of the last slope.
THE OLD MAN. MARY.
THE OLD MAN. MARY.
They are coming silently.
I told them to pray in a low voice. Martha is with them.
Are there many of them?
THE OLD MAN.
The whole village is around the bier. They had brought lanterns; I
bade them put them out.
MARY.
THE OLD MAN.
What way are they coming?
They are coming by the little path. They are moving slowly. OLD MAN. It is time ...
MARY. THE
MARY.
Have you told them, grandfather?
You can see that we have told them nothing. There they are, still sitting in the lamplight. Look, my child, look: you will see what life
THE OLD MAN. IS ...
Oh! how peaceful they seem! I feel as though I were seeing them in a dream.
MARY.
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THE STRANGER. THE OLD MAN.
Look there-I saw the two sisters give a start.
They are rising ... I believe they are coming to the windows.
THE STRANGER.
(At this moment one of the two sisters comes up to the first window, the other to the third; and resting their hands against the panes they stand gazing into the darkness.) No one comes to the middle window. MARY. They are looking out; they are listening .. . THE OLD MAN. The elder is smiling at what she does not see. THE STRANGER. The eyes of the second are full of fear. THE OLD MAN . Take care : who knows how far the soul may extend around the body.... (A long silence. MARY nestles close to THE OLD MAN'S breast and THE OLD MAN .
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kisses him.) MARY.
Grandfather! Do not weep, my child; our turn will come. (A pause. )
THE OLD MAN .
They are looking long ... . THE OLD MAN. Poor things, they would see nothing though they looked for a hundred thousand years-the night is too dark. They are looking this way; and it is from the other side that misfortune is coming. THE STRANGER. It is well that they are looking this way. Something, I do not know what, is approaching by way of the meadows. MARY. I think it is the crowd; they are too far off for us to see clearly. THE STRANGER. They are following the windings of the path-there they come in sight again on that moonlit slope . MARY. Oh! how many they seem to be. Even when I left, people were coming up from the outskirts of the town. They are taking a very roundabout way.... THE OLD MAN . They will arrive at last, nonetheless. I see them, too-they are crossing the meadows-they look so small that one can scarcely dis tinguish them among the herbage. You might think them children play ing in the moonlight; if the girls saw them, they would not understand. Turn their backs to it as they may, misfortune is approaching step by step, and has been looming larger for more than two hours past. They cannot bid it stay; and those who are bringing it are powerless to stop it. It has mastered them , too, and they must needs serve it. It knows its goal , and it takes its course. It is unwearying, and it has but one idea . They have to lend it their strength. They are sad, but they draw nearer. Their hearts are full of pity, but they must advance ... . MARY. The elder has ceased to smile, grandfather. THE STRANGER. They are leaving the windows.. .. MARY. They are kissing their mother. . ..
THE STRANGER.
The elder is stroking the child's curls without wakening it.
MARY. Ah! the father wants them to kiss him , too ....
THE STRANGER. Now there is silence .. ..
MARY. They have returned to their mother's side.
THE STRANGER. And the father keeps his eyes fixed on the great pendulum of
the clock .. . THE STRANGER.
They seem to be praying without knowing what they do .. . . THE STRANGER. They seem to be listening to their own souls ... . (A pause.) MARY. Grandfather, do not tell them this evening! MARY.
You see, you are losing courage, too . I knew you ought not to look at them . I am nearly eighty-three years old, and this is the first time that the reality of life has come home to me . I do not know why all they do appears to me so strange and solemn. There they sit awaiting the night, simply, under their lamp, as we should under our own; and yet I seem to see them from the altitude of another world, because I know a little fact which as yet they do not know .. . Is it so, my children? Tell me, why are you, too, pale? Perhaps there is something else that we cannot put in words, and that makes us weep? I did not know that there was anything so sad in life, or that it could strike such terror to those who look on at it. And even if nothing had happened, it would frighten me to see
them sit there so peacefully. They have too much confidence in this
world . There they sit, separated from the enemy by only a few poor panes
of glass. They think that nothing will happen because they have closed
their doors, and they do not know that it is in the soul that things always
happen, and that the world does not end at their house-door. They are so
secure of their little life, and do not dream that so many others know
more of it than they, and that I, poor old man, at two steps from their
door, hold all their little happiness, like a wounded bird, in the hollow of
myoId hands, and dare not open them . ..
MARY. Have pity on them, grandfather. .. .
THE OLD MAN.
We have pity on them, my child, but no one has pity on us. MARY. Tell them tomorrow, grandfather; tell them when it is light, then they will not be so sad.
THE OLD MAN .
Perhaps you are right, my child .. . . It would be better to leave all this in the night. And the daylight is sweet to sorrow... . But what would they say to us tomorrow? Misfortune makes people jealous; those upon whom it has fallen want to know of it before strangers-they do not like to leave it in unknown hands. We should seem to have robbed them of something. THE STRANGER. Besides, it is too late now; already I can hear the murmur of prayers. MARY. They are here-they are ing behind the hedges . (Enter MARTHA.) THE OLD MAN.
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Here I am. I have guided them hither-I told them to wait in the road. (Cries of children are heard.) Ah! the children are still crying. I forbade them to come, but they want to see, too, and the mothers would not obey me. I will go and tell them-no, they have stopped crying. Is everything ready? I have brought the little ring that was found upon her. I have some fruit, too, for the child. I laid her to rest myself upon the bier. She looks as though she were sleeping. I had a great deal of trouble with her hair-I could not arrange it properly. I made them gather marguerites-it is a pity there were no other flowers. What are you doing here? Why are you not with them? (She looks in at the windows.) They are not weeping! They-you have not told them! THE OLD MAN . Martha, Martha, there is too much life in your soul; you cannot understand .... MARTHA. Why should I not understand? (After a silence, and in a tone ofgrave reproach.) You really ought not to have done that, grandfather .... MARTHA.
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Martha, you do not know .... I will go and tell them. MAN. Remain here, my child, and look for a moment.
THE OLD MAN. MARTHA. THE OLD MARTHA.
Oh, how I pity them! They must wait no longer. ...
Why not? MARTHA. I do not know, but it is not possible! THE OLD MAN. Come here, my child .... MARTHA. How patient they are! THE OLD MAN . Come here, my child . ... THE OLD MAN.
(turning) . Where are you, grandfather? I am so unhappy, I cannot see you any more. I do not myselfknow now what to do ... .
MARTHA
Do not look any more; until they know all. .. . I want to go with you ... .
THE OLD MAN. MARTHA.
No, Martha, stay here. Sit beside your sister on this old stone bench against the wall of the house, and do not look. You are too young, you would never be able to forget it. You cannot know what a face looks like at the moment when Death is ing into its eyes. Perhaps they will cry out, too ... Do not turn round. Perhaps there will be no sound at all. Above all things, if there is no sound, be sure you do not turn and look. One can never foresee the course that sorrow will take. A few little sobs wrung from the depths, and generally that is all. I do not know myself what I shall] do when I hear them-they do not belong to this life. Kiss me, my child, before I go. (The murmur of prayers has gradually drawn
THE OLD MAN.
nearer. A portion of the crowd forces its way into the garden. There is a sound ofdeadened footfalls and ofwhispering.) THE STRANGER (to the crowd ). StoJD here-do not go near the window. Where is she?
A PEASANT.
Who?
THE STRANGER. A PEASANT.
The others-the bearers.
They are coming by the avenue that leads up to the door.
(THE
OLD MAN goes out. MARTHA and MARY have seated themselves on the bench, their backs to the windows. Low murmurings are heard among the crowd.) THE STRANGER. Hush! Do not speak. (In the room the taller of the two sisters . rises, goes to the door, and shoots the bolts.) MARTHA .
She is opening the door! On the contrary, she is fastening it. (A pause.) Grandfather has not come in?
THE STRANGER. MARTHA.
No. She takes her seat again at her mother's side. The others do not move, and the child is still sleeping. (A pause.) MARTHA. My little sister, give me your hands. MARY. Martha! (They embrace and kiss each other.)
THE STRANGER .
He must have knocked-they have all raised their heads at the same time-they are looking at each other.
THE STRANGER.
MARTHA.
Oh! oh! my poor little sister!
r can
scarcely help crying out, too.
(She smothers her sobs on her sister's shoulder.) He must have knocked again. The father is looking at the clock. He rises... .
THE STRANGER.
Sister, sister, I must go in too-they cannot be left alone. Martha, Martha! (She holds her back.)
MARTHA. MARY.
The father is at the door-he is drawing the bolts-he is opening it cautiously.
THE STRANGER.
Oh!-you do not see the . .. STRANGER. What?
MARTHA. THE
MARTHA .
The bearers .. .
He has only opened it a very little. I see nothing but a corner of the lawn and the fountain . He keeps his hand on the door-he takes a step back-he seems to be saying, "Ah, it is you!" He raises his arms. He carefully closes the door again. Your grandfather has entered the room ... (The crowd has come up to the window. MARTHA and MARY half
THE STRANGER .
rise from their seat, then rise altogether and follow the rest toward the windows, pressing close to each other. THE OLD MAN is seen advancing into the room. The two SISTERS rise; the MOTHER also rises, and carefully settles the CHILD in the armchair which she has left, so that from outside the little one can be seen sleeping, his head a little bent forward, in the middle ofthe room. The MOTHER advances to meet THE OLD MAN, and holds out her hand to him, but draws it back again before he has had time to take it. One of the girls wants to take off the visitor's mantle, and the other pushes forward an armchair for him. But THE OLD MAN makes a little gesture of
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refusal. The FATHER smiles with an air of astonishment. looks toward the windows. ) THE STRANGER.
THE OLD MAN
He dares not tell them. He is looking toward us. (Murmurs in
the crowd.) Hush! (THE OLD MAN , seeing faces at the windows, quickly averts his eyes. As one of the girls is still offering him the armchair, he at last sits down and es his right hand several times over his forehead.) THE STRANGER. He is sitting down ... . (The others who are in the room also sit down, while the FATHER seems to be speaking volubly. At last THE OLD MAN opens his mouth, and the sound ofhis voice seems to arouse their attention. But the FATHER interrupts him. THE OLD MAN begins to speak again, and little by little the others grow tense with apprehension. All of a sudden the MOTHER starts and rises.) MARTHA. Oh! the mother begins to understand! (She turns away and hides her face in her hands. Renewed murmurs among the crowd. They elbow each other. Children cry to be lifted up, so that they may see too. Most of the mothers do as they wish.) THE STRANGER. Hush! he has not told them yet. .. . (The MOTHER is seen to be questioning THE OLD MAN with anxiety. He says a few more words; then, suddenly, all the others rise, too, and seem to question him. Then he slowly makes an affirmative movement of his head.)
The Modern Drama
THE STRANGER.
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THE STRANGER.
He has told them-he has told them all at once!
VOICES IN THE CROWD.
He has told them! he has told them!
I can hear nothing.. .. (THE OLD MAN also rises, and, without turning, makes a gesture indicating the door, which is behind him. The MOTHER, the FATHER, and the two DAUGHTERS rush to this door, which the FATHER has difficulty in opening. THE OLD MAN tries to prevent the MOTHER from going out.) VOICES IN THE CROWD . They are going out! they are going out! (Confusion among the crowd in the garden. All hurry to the other side ofthe house and disappear, except THE STRANGER, who remains at the windows. In the room, the folding door is at last thrown wide open; all go out at the same time. Beyond can be seen the starry sky, the lawn, and the fountain in the moonlight; while, left alone in the middle ofthe room, the CHILD continues to sleep peacefully in the armchair. A pause.) THE STRANGER . The child has not wakened! (He also goes out.)
THE STRANGER.
CURTAIN
Maurice Maeterlinck
When I speak of the modern drama, I naturally refer only to those regions of dramatic literature that, sparsely inhabited as they may be, are yet essentially new. Down below, in the ordinary theatre, ordinary and traditional drama is doubtless yielding slowly to the influence of the vanguard; but it were idle to wait for the laggards when we have the pioneers at our call. The first thing that strikes us in the drama of the day is the decay, one might almost say the creeping paralysis, of external action. Next we note a very pronounced desire to penetrate deeper and deeper into human con sciousness, and place moral problems upon a high pedestal; and finally the search, still very timid and halting, for a kind of new beauty that shall be less abstract than was the old. It is certain that, on the actual stage, we have far fewer extraordinary and violent adventures. Bloodshed has grown less frequent, ions less tur bulent; heroism has become less unbending, courage less material and less fero cious. People still die on the stage, it is true, as in reality they still must die, but death has ceased-or will cease, let us hope , very soon-to be re garded as the indispensable setting, the ultima ratio, the inevitable end, of every dramatic poem. In the most formidable crises of our life-which, cruel though it may be, is cruel in silent and hidden ways-we rarely look to death for a solution; and for all that the theatre is slower than the other arts to follow the evolution of human consciousness, it will still be at last compelled, in some measure, to take this into . Reprinted from Maurice Maete rlinck, The Double Garden, trans. Alfred Sutro (New York: Dodd, Mead. 1904), 11 5-35.
When we consider the ancient and tragi cal anecdotes that constitute the entire basis of the classical drama, the Italian, Scandinavian, Spanish, or mythical stories that provided the plots, not only for all the plays of the Shakespearian period, but also-not altogether to over an art that was infinitely less spontaneous-for those of French and German Romanticism, we discover at once that these anecdotes are no longer able to offer us the direct interest they presented at a time when they appeared highly natural and possible, at a time, when, at any rate, the circumstances, manners, and sentiments they recalled were not yet extinct in the minds of those who witnessed their reproduction .
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To us, however, these adventures no longer correspond to a living and actual reality. Should a youth of our own time love, and meet obstacles not unlike those which, in another order of ideas and events, beset Romeo's ion, we need no telling that his adventure will be embellished by none of the fea
tures that gave poetry and grandeur to the episode of Verona . Gone beyond
recall is the entrancing atmosphere of a lordly, ionate life; gone the brawls in picturesque streets, the interludes of bloodshed and splendour, the mysterious poisons, the majestic, complaisant tombs! And where shall we look for that exquisite summer's night, which owes its vastness, its savour, the very appeal that it makes to us, to the shadow of an heroic, inevitable death that already lay heavy upon it? Divest the story of Romeo and Juliet of these beautiful trappings, and we have only the very simple and ordinary desire of a noble-hearted, unfortunate youth for a maiden whose obdurate parents deny him her hand. All the poetry, the splendour, the ionate life of this desire, result from the glamour, the nobility, tragedy, that are proper to the environment wherein it has come to flower; nor is there a kiss, a murmur of love, a cry of anger, grief, or despair but borrows its majesty, grace, its hero icism, tenderness-in a word, every image that has helped it to visible form from the beings and objects around it; for it is not in the kiss itself that the sweetness and beauty are found , but in the circumstance, hour, and place wherein it was given. Again, the same objections would hold if we chose to imagine a man of our time who should be jealous as Othello was jealous, possessed of Macbeth's ambition, unhappy as Lear; or, like Hamlet, restless and wavering, bowed down beneath the weight of a frightful and unrealis able duty.
III These conditions no longer exist. The adventure of the modern Romeo-to consider only the external events which it might provoke-would not pro vide material for a comple of acts. Against this it may be urged that a modern poet who desires to put on the stage an analogous poem of youthful love is
perfectly justified in borrowing from days gone by a more decorative setting, one that shall be more fertile in heroic and tragi cal incident. Granted; but what can the result be of such an expedient? Would not the feelings and ions that demand for their fullest, most perfect expression and develop ment the atmosphere of today (for the ions and feelings of a modern poet must, in despite of himself, be entirely and exclusively modern), would not these suddenly find themselves transplanted to a soil where all things pre vented their living? They no longer believe, yet are charged with the fear and hope of eternal judgement. In their hours of distress they have discovered new forces to cling to, that seem trustworthy, human and just; and behold them thrust back to a century wherein prayer and the sword decide all! They have profited, unconsciously perhaps, by every moral advance we have made-and they are suddenly flung into abysmal days when the least gesture was governed by prejudices at which they can only shudder or smile. In such an atmosphere, what can they do; how hope that they truly can live there? IV But we need dwell no further on the necessarily artificial poems that arise from the impossible marriage of past and present. Let us rather consider the drama that actually stands for the reality of our time, as Greek drama stood for Greek reality, and the drama of the Renaissance for the reality of the Renaissance. Its scene is a modern house, it es between men and women of today. The names of the invisible protagonists-the ions and ideas are the same, more or less, as of old. We see love, hatred, ambition, jealousy, envy, greed; the sense of justice and idea of duty; pity, goodness, devotion, piety, selfishness, vanity, pride, etc. But although the names have remained more or less the same, how great is the difference we find in the aspect and quality, the extent and influence, of these ideal actors! Of all their ancient weapons not one is left them, not one of the marvellous moments of olden days . It is seldom that cries are heard now; bloodshed is rare, and tears not often seen. It is in a small room, round a table, close to the fire, that the joys and sorrows of mankind are decided. We suffer, or make others suffer, we love, we die, there in our corner; and it were the strangest chance should a door or a window suddenly, for an instant, fly open, beneath the pressure of extraordinary despair or rejoicing. Accidental, adventitious beauty exists no longer; there remains only an external poetry that has not yet become poetic. And what poetry, if we probe to the root of things-what poetry is there that does not borrow nearly all of its charm, nearly all of its ecstasy, from elements that are wholly external? Last of all, there is no longer a God to widen, or master, the action; nor is there an inexorable fate to form a mysterious, solemn, and tragical background for the slightest gesture of man; nor the sombre and abundant atmosphere that was able to ennoble even his most contemptible weaknesses, his least pardonable crimes. There still abides with us, it is true, a terrible unknown; but it is so diverse
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and elusive, it becomes so arbitrary, so vague and contradictory, the moment we try to locate it, that we cannot evoke it without great danger; cannot even, without the mightiest difficulty, avail ourselves of it, though in all loyalty, to raise to the point of mystery the gestures, actions, and words of the men we every day. The endeavour has been made; the formidable, problematic enigma of heredity, the grandiose but improbable enigma of inherent jus tice, and many others beside, have each in their turn been put forward as a substitute for the vast enigma of the Providence or Fatality of old. And it is curious to note how these youthful enigmas, born but of yesterday, already seem older, more arbitrary, more unlikely, than those whose places they took in an access of pride. ::IIi:
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v Where are we to look, then, for the grandeur and beauty that we find no longer in visible action, or in words, stripped as these are of their attraction and glamour? For words are only a kind of mirror which reflects the beauty of all that surrounds it; and the beauty of the new world wherein we live does not seem as yet able to project its rays on these somewhat reluctant mirrors. Where shall we look for the horizon, the poetry, now that we no longer can seek it in a mystery which, for an that it still exists, does yet fade from us the moment we endeavour to give it a name? The modern drama would seem to be vaguely conscious of this. Incapa ble of outside movement, deprived of external ornament, daring no longer to make serious appeal to a determined divinity or fatality, it has fallen back on itself, and seeks to discover, in the regions of psychology and of moral prob lems, the equivalent of what once was offered by exterior life. It has pene trated deeper into human consciousness but has encountered difficulties there no less strange than unexpected. To penetrate deeply into human consciousness is the privilege, even the duty, of the thinker, the moralist, the historian, the novelist, and to a degree, of the lyrical poet; but not of the dramatist. Whatever the temptation, he dare not sink into inactivity, become mere philosopher or observer. Do what one will, discover what marvels one may, the sovereign law of the stage, its essential demand, will always be action. With the rise of the curtain, the high intellectual desire within us undergoes transformation; and in place of the thinker, psychologist, mystic, or moralist there stands the mere instinctive spectator, the man electrified negatively by the crowd, the man whose one desire it is to see something happen. This transformation or substitution is incontestable, strange as it may seem; and is due, perhaps, to the influence of the human polypier, to some undeniable faculty of our soul, which is endowed with a special, primitive, almost unimprovable organ, whereby men can think, and feel, and be moved, en masse. And there are no words so profound, so noble and irable, but they win soon weary us if they leave
the situation unchanged, if they lead to no action, bring about no decisive conflict, or hasten no definite solution.
VI But whence is it that action arises in the consciousness of man? In its first stage it springs from the struggle between diverse conflicting ions. But no sooner has it raised itself somewhat-and this is true, if we examine it closely, of the first stage also-than it would seem to be solely due to the conflict between a ion and a moral law, between a duty and a desire. Hence the eagerness with which modern dramatists have plunged into all the problems of contemporary morality; and it may safely be said that at this moment they confine themselves almost exclusively to the discussion of these different problems. This movement was initiated by the dramas of Alexandre Dumas {tIs, dramas which brought the most elementary of moral conflicts onto the stage; dramas, indeed, whose entire existence was based on problems such as the spectator, who must always be regarded as the ideal moralist, would never put to himself in the course of his whole spiritual existence, so evident is their solution. Should the faithless husband or wife be forgiven? Is it well to avenge infidelity by infidelity? Has the illegitimate child any rights? Is the marriage of inclination-such is the name it bears in those regions preferable to the marriage for money? Have parents the right to oppose a marriage for love? Is divorce to be deprecated when a child has been born of the union? Is the sin of the adulterous wife greater than that of the adulterous husband? etc., etc . Indeed, it may be said here that the entire French theatre of today, and a considerable proportion of the foreign theatre, which is only its echo, exist solely on questions of this kind, and on the entirely superfluous answers to which they give rise. On the other hand, however, the highest point of human consciousness is attained by the dramas of Bjornson, of Hauptmann, and, above all, of Ibsen. Here we touch the limit of the resources of modern dramaturgy. For, in truth, the further we penetrate into the consciousness of man, the less struggle do we discover. It is impossible to penetrate far into any conscious ness unless that consciousness be very enlightened; for, whether we advance ten steps, or a thousand, in the depths of a soul that is plunged into darkness, we shall find nothing there that can be unexpected, or new; for darkness everywhere will resemble only itself. But a consciousness that is truly en lightened will possess ions and desires infinitely less exacting, infinitely more peaceful and patient, more salutary, abstract, and general, than are those that reside in the ordinary consciousness. Thence, far less struggle-or at least a struggle of far less violence-between these nobler and wiser pas sions; and this for the very reason that they have become vaster and loftier;
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for if there be nothing more restless, destructive, and savage than a dammed up stream, there is nothing more tranquil, beneficent, and silent than the beautiful river whose banks ever widen.
VII Again, this enlightened consciousness will yield to infinitely fewer laws, it infinitely fewer doubtful or harmful duties. There is, one may say, scarcely a falsehood or error, a prejudice, half-truth or convention, that is not capable of assuming, that does not actually assume, when the occasion presents itself, the form of a duty in an uncertain consciousness. It is thus that honour, in the chivalrous, conjugal sense of the word (I refer to the honour of the husband, which is supposed to suffer by the infidelity of the :II!
U wife), that revenge, a kind of morbid prudishness, pride, vanity, piety to
Z certain gods, and a thousand other illusions have been, and still remain, the ...J a:: unquenchable source of a multitude of duties that are still regarded as abso w
I lutely sacred, absolutely incontrovertible, by a vast number of inferior con
w c:( sciousnesses. And these so-called duties are the pivot of almost all the dramas I: of the Romantic period, as of most of those of today. But not one of these sombre, pitiless duties that so fatally impel mankind to death and disaster g can readily take root in the consciousness that a healthy, living light has adequately penetrated; in such there will be no room for honour or ven geance, for conventions that clamour for blood. It will hold no prejudices that exact tears, no injustice eager for sorrow. It will have cast from their throne the gods who insiston sacrifice, and the love that craves for death. For when the sun has entered into the consciousness of him who is wise, as we may hope that it will some day enter into that of all men, it will reveal one duty, and one alone, which is that we should do the least possible harm and love others as we love ourselves; and from this duty no drama can spring.
••
VIII Let us consider what happens in Ibsen's plays. He often leads us far down into human consciousness, but the drama remains possible only because there goes with us a singular flame, a sort of red light, which, sombre, capri cious-unhallowed, one almost might say-falls only on singular phantoms. And indeed nearly all the duties which form the active principle of Ibsen's tragedies are duties situated no longer within, but without the healthy, il lumined consciousness; and the duties we believe we discover outside this consciousness often come perilously near an unjust pride, or a kind of soured and morbid madness. Let it not be imagined, however-for indeed this would be wholly to misunderstand me-that these remarks of mine in any way detract from my iration for the great Scandinavian poet. For, if it be true that Ibsen has
contributed few salutary elements to the morality of our time, he is perhaps the only writer for the stage who has caught sight of, and set in motion a new, though still disagreeable poetry, which he has succeeded in investi~g with a kind of age, gloomy beauty, and grandeur (surely too savage and gloomy for it to become general or definitive); as he is the only one who owes nothing to the poetry of the violently illumined dramas of antiquity or of the Renaissance. But, while we wait for the time when human consciousness shall recog nise more useful ions and less nefarious duties, for the time when the world's stage shall consequently present more happiness and fewer tragedies, there still remains, in the depths of every heart of loyal intention, a great duty of charity and justice that eclipses all others. And it is perhaps from the struggle of this duty against our egoism and ignorance that the veritable drama of our century shall spring. When this goal has been attained-in real life as on the stage-it will be permissible perhaps to speak of a new theatre, a theatre of peace, and of beauty without tears.
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