Maurice Maeterlinck

“ Why wait till the firmament shall open amid the roar of the thunderbolt? We must watch for the happy moments when it opens in silence; and it is ever thus opening. You seek God in your life, and you say God appears not. But in what life are there not thousands of hours akin to the hour in that drama where all are waiting for the divine intervention, and none perceive it, till an invisible thought that has flitted across the consciousness of a dying man suddenly reveals itself, and an old man cries out, sobbing for joy and terror, ‘But God, there is God!’.... ”

“ Is it fully borne home to you that if you have perchance this morning done anything that shall have brought sadness to a single human being, the peasant, with whom you are about to talk of the rain or the storm, will know of it—his soul will have been warned even before his hand has thrown open the door? Though you assume the face of a saint, a hero or a martyr, the eye of the passing child will not greet you with the same unapproachable smile if there lurk within you an evil thought, an injustice, or a brother’s tears. ”

“ In all truth might it be said that beauty is the unique aliment of our soul, for in all places does it search for beauty, and it perishes not of hunger even in the most degraded of lives. For indeed nothing of beauty can pass by and be altogether unperceived. Perhaps does it never pass by save only in our unconsciousness, but its action is no less puissant in gloom of night than by light of day; the joy it procures may be less tangible, but other difference there is none. Look at the most ordinary of men, at a time when a little beauty has contrived to steal into their darkness. ”

“ Are not other forces, other words one cannot hear, brought into being, and do not these determine the event? What I say often counts for so little; but my presence, the attitude of my soul, my future and my past, that which will take birth in me and that which is dead, a secret thought, the stars that approve, my destiny, the thousands of mysteries which surround me and float about yourself—all this it is that speaks to you at that tragic moment, all this it is that brings to me your answer. ”

“ Are not deeper chords set vibrating by all these things than by the dagger-stroke of conventional drama? Is it not at the very moment when a man believes himself secure from bodily death that the strange and silent tragedy of the being and the immensities does indeed raise its curtain on the stage? Is it while I flee before a naked sword that my existence touches its most interesting [101] point? Is life always at its sublimest in a kiss? Are there not other moments, when one hears purer voices that do not fade away so soon? Does the soul only flower on nights of storm? ”

“ It would even seem, the more we think of it, that the soul has no other reason for existence, and that all its activity is consumed in amassing, at the depths of us, a treasure of indescribable beauty. Might not everything naturally turn into beauty, were we not unceasingly interrupting the arduous labours of our soul? Does not evil itself become precious so soon as it has gathered therefrom the deep lying diamond of repentance? The acts of injustice whereof you have been guilty, the tears you have caused to flow, will not these end too by becoming so much radiance and love in your soul? ”

“ Will it be our shame to have striven against our soul, or is there an invisible struggle between our soul and God? And is this struggle so strangely silent that not even a whisper floats on the air? Is there a moment when we can hear the queen whose lips are sealed? She is sternly silent when events do but float on the surface; but there are others perhaps that we scarcely heed, which have their roots deep down in eternity. Some one is dying, some one looks at you, or cries, some other is coming towards you for the first time, or an enemy is passing by—may she not perhaps whisper then? ”

“ THE INNER BEAUTY NOTHING in the whole world is so athirst for beauty as the soul, nor is there anything to which beauty clings so readily. There is nothing in the world capable of such spontaneous up-lifting, of such speedy ennoblement; nothing that offers more scrupulous obedience to the pure and noble commands it receives. There is nothing in the world that yields deeper submission to the empire of a thought that is loftier than other thoughts. And on this earth of ours there are but few souls that can withstand the dominion of the soul that has suffered itself to become beautiful. ”

“ Where shall we find the code of morality that can enlighten us? Is there a mysterious morality that holds sway in regions far beyond our thoughts? Are our most secret desires only the helpless satellites of a central star, that is hidden from our eyes? Does a transparent tree exist within us, and are all our actions and all our virtues only its ephemeral flowers and leaves? Indeed we know not what are the wrongs that our soul can commit, nor what there can be that should make us blush before a higher intelligence or before another soul ”

“ What can this be, this mysterious movement that I speak of here in connection with love only, but which may well take place in the smallest events of life? Is it I know not what sacrifice or inner embrace, is it the profoundest desire to be soul for a soul, or the consciousness, ever quickening within us, of the presence of a life that is invisible, but equal to our own? Is it all that is admirable and sorrowful in the mere act of living that, at such moments, floods our being—is it the aspect of life, one and indivisible? ”

“ Would you not love as you never yet have loved? Is it the virtue or evil of the appearances around you that would be magnified? Would it be given you to behold the beauty or the ugliness of the soul? Would not everything, down to actual evil and suffering, be transformed into love, overflowing with gentlest tears? Does not, to quote the sage, each opportunity for pardon rob departure or death of something of its bitterness? And yet, in the radiance or sorrow or death, is it towards truth or error that one has taken the last steps one is allowed to take? ”

“ It is when we are near to those gates that we see; it is when we are near to those gates that we love. For to love one’s neighbour does not mean only to give oneself to him, to serve, help, and sustain others. We may possibly be neither good, nor noble, nor beautiful, even in the midst of the greatest sacrifice; and the sister of charity who dies by the bedside of a typhoid patient may perchance have a mean, rancorous, miserable soul. To love one’s neighbour in the immovable depths means to love in others that which is eternal ”

“ I have caused suffering because we are in a world where all is held together by invisible threads, in a world where none are alone, and where the gentlest gesture of love or kindliness may so often wound the innocence by our side!—I have caused suffering, too, because there are times when the best and tenderest are impelled to seek I know not what part of themselves in the grief of others. For, indeed, there are seeds that only spring up in our soul beneath the rain of tears shed because of us, and none the less do these seeds produce good flowers [154] and salutary fruit. ”

“ When we raise our eyes it yearns for a ray of sun or star, that it may weave into a thought, or, haply, an impulse, which shall be unconscious and very pure. And if our eyes bring it nothing, still will it know how to turn its pitiful disillusion into something ineffable, that it will conceal even till its death. When we love, how eagerly does it drink in the light from behind the closed door—keen with expectation, it yet wastes not a minute, and the light that steals through the apertures becomes beauty and truth to the soul. ”

“ Cannot a living thought—proud or humble, it matters not; so it come but from your soul, it is great for you—cannot a lofty desire, or simply a moment of solemn watchfulness to life, enter a little room? And if you love not, or are unloved, and can yet see with some depth of insight that thousands of things are beautiful, that the soul is great and life almost unspeakably earnest, is that not as beautiful as though you loved or were loved? And if the sky itself is hidden from you, ‘does not the great starry sky,’ asks the poet, ‘spread over our soul, in spite of all, under guise of death?’ ... ”