Maurice Maeterlinck

“ We are not called upon to contest each day with dishonour, despair, or death; but it is imperative, perhaps, that I should be able to tell myself, at every hour of sadness, that there exists, somewhere, an unchangeable, unconquerable soul that has drawn near to my soul—a soul that is faithful and silent, blind to all that it deems not conformable with the truth. We can only have praise for heroism, and for surpassingly generous deeds; but more praise still—as it demands a more vigilant strength—for the man who never allows an inferior thought to seduce him ”

“ We must act as though we were masters—as though all things were bound to obey us; and yet let us carefully tend in our soul a thought whose duty it shall be to offer noble submission to the mighty forces we may encounter. It is well that the hand should believe that all is expected, foreseen; but well, too, that we should have in us a secret idea, inviolable, incorruptible, that will always remember that whatever is great most often must be unforeseen. It is the unforeseen, the unknown, that fulfil what we never should dare to attempt ”

“ We love to throw the dim light of our reason on to our unconsciousness: why not let it play on what we term the unconsciousness of the universe? We are no less deeply concerned with the one than the other. "After he has become acquainted with the power that is in him," said a philosopher, "one of the highest privileges of man is to realise his individual powerlessness. Out of the very disproportion between the infinite which kills us and this nothing that we are, there arises within us a sensation that is not without grandeur ”

“ And brazen music at the windows
Of men who are sick to death!
Seek out the coolest corners—
And you think of a woman who has swooned
on a day of harvest.
Postilions have entered the courtyard of the hospital,
And there passes yonder an Uhlan, who has turned sick-nurse.
Behold it all by moonlight!
(Nothing, nothing is in its rightful place!)
And you think of a madwoman haled before the judges,
A warship in full sail on the waters of a canal,
Birds of the night perched among lilies,
And the knell of a passing-bell at the mid-day hour of Angelus. ”

“ The corpse was there, in the greedy light that devoured the cave, lying like a stiff and shapeless statue, closely bound in grave-clothes, the face covered with a napkin. The crowd, heaped up in a semicircle, irresistibly attracted and repelled, leaned forward, stretched its thousand necks, without daring to approach. The Nazarene stood alone, in front. He raised his hand, spoke a few words which I did not catch and then, addressing the corpse in a voice whose pent-up force I shall never forget, he cried, "Lazarus, come forth!" ”

“ We are setting ourselves—we cannot too often repeat it—against the will of earth. Our enemies are urged forward by a force that drives us back. They are marching with nature, whereas we are striving against the great current that sweeps the globe. The earth has an idea, which is no longer ours. She remains convinced that man is an animal in all things like other animals. She has not yet observed that he is withdrawing himself from the herd. She does not yet know that he has climbed her highest mountain-peaks. She has not yet heard tell of justice, pity, loyalty and honour ”

“ He no longer requires that death, or friendship, or love should come to him decked out with garlands illusion has woven, or escorted by omen, coincidence, presage; but they come in their bareness and simpleness, and are always sure of his welcome. He believes that all that the weak, and the idle, and thoughtless consider sublime and exceptional, that the fall equivalent for the most heroic deed, can be found in the simple life that is bravely and wholly faced. He no longer considers himself the chosen son of the universe ”

“ It is not man’s life that is at stake, but the idea which he forms of the honour, the happiness and the duties of his life. To save his life he had but to submit to the enemy; the invader would not have exterminated him. You cannot exterminate a great people; it is not even possible to enslave it seriously or to inflict great sorrow upon it for long. He had nothing to be afraid of except disgrace. He did not so much as see the infamous temptation appear above the horizon of his most instinctive fears; he does not even suspect that it is able to exist ”

“ The inner life begins when the soul becomes good, and not when the intellect ripens. It is somewhat strange that this inner life can never be formed out of evil. No inner life is for him whose soul is bereft of all nobleness. He may have full knowledge of self; he may know, it may be, wherefore he shuns goodness; and yet shall he seek in vain for the refuge, the strength, the treasure of invisible gladness, that form the possessions of him who can fearlessly enter his heart. For the inward life is built up of a certain rejoicing of soul ”

“ From the point of view of our future beyond the grave, it is in no way necessary that we should have an answer to everything. Whether the universe have already found its consciousness, whether it find it one day or seek it everlastingly, it could not exist for the purpose of being unhappy and of suffering, either in its entirety, or in any one of its parts; and it matters little if the latter be invisible or incommensurable, considering that the smallest is as great as the greatest in what has neither limit nor measure. To torture a point is the same thing as to torture the worlds ”

“ Now to me chance has always been a faithful and far-seeing friend; and as I glance over my past, and review the five or six decisive moments which, as with all men, were the golden pivots on which fortune turned, I am induced to believe in my star, and am morally certain that if I alone were concerned in the step I am taking to-day, it would be bound to succeed, because I am 'lucky.' But the person on whose behalf I am acting has never been fortunate. Her intellect is remarkably subtle and profound, her will is a thousand times stronger and better balanced than my own ”

“ It is possible for you to cause extraordinary tears to flow; it is possible that you may fill a heart with unheard of certitudes, and give eternal life unto a soul, and no one shall know of it, nor shall you even know yourself. It may be that nothing is changing; it may be that were it put to the test all would crumble, and that this goodness we speak of would yield to the smallest fear. It matters not. Something divine has happened; and somewhere must our God have smiled. May it not be the supreme aim of [168] life thus to bring to birth the inexplicable within ourselves ”

“ Happiness is what humanity was made for, Maeterlinck teaches in Wisdom and Destiny. Misery is an illness of humanity, just as illness is a misery of man. We ought to have doctors for human misery, just as we have doctors for illness. Because illness is common, it does not follow that we ought never to talk of health; and the fact that we live in the midst of misery is no reason why the moralist should not make happiness his starting-point. To be wise is to learn to be happy. ”

“ The side of the human mind that can attain a region loftier than reality is necessarily timid and hesitating. Human thought is capable of many things; it has, in the course of time, brought startling improvement to bear upon what seemed immutable in the species or the race. But even at the moment when it is pondering the transformation of which it has caught a distant glimpse, the improvement that it so eagerly desires, even then it is still thinking, feeling, seeing like the thing that it seeks to alter, even then it lies captive beneath the yoke. ”

“ ARKËL. What ails him?—He is drunk?
MÉLISANDE (in tears) .
No, no; he does not love me any more.... I am not happy!... I am not happy!...
ARKËL. If I were God, I would have pity on men's hearts....
SCENE III.—A terrace of the castle. Little YNIOLD discovered, trying to lift a bowlder. LITTLE YNIOLD. Oh, this stone is heavy!... It is heavier than I am.... It is heavier than everybody.... It is heavier than everything that ever happened.... I can see my golden ball between the rock and this naughty stone, and I cannot reach it.... My little arm is not long enough,... ”

“ If he misses it, he wanders miserably over the face of the earth. The search goes on till he dies, with the great duty unfulfilled which he owes to all those who are within him. But he seldom has an idea of this. He walks along, his eyes shut; seizes some woman whom he chances to meet in the dark; and shows her to his friends as proudly as though the gates of Paradise were opening. He fancies himself alone in the world and imagines that in his own heart all things begin and end.... Which is absurd.... But no more of that! Is everything ready? Put on your hat and turn the sapphire ”

“ GOLAUD. At once?... Oh! oh! I must tell her....—Mélisande! Mélisande!...
Leave me alone! leave me alone with her!...
ARKËL. No, no; do not come near.... Trouble her not.... Speak no more to her.... You know not what the soul is....
GOLAUD. It is not my fault!... It is not my fault!
ARKËL. Hush!... Hush!... We must speak softly now.—She must not be disturbed.... The human soul is very silent.... The human soul likes to depart alone.... It suffers so timorously.... But the sadness, Golaud ... the sadness of all we see!... Oh! oh! ”

“ ROSELLE and AIMETTE make a rush at BELLINE and ROSARELLE, while MILETTE and JALLINE vainly try to separate the combatants. THE VEILED GIRL alone remains motionless in her corner, as though she were not present. The others claw one another's faces, tear one another's hair and end by uttering such piercing yells and shrieks that TYLTYL, returning from the MISER'S, hears them from the far end of the palace and comes running up, scared and dismayed. He is bare-headed and only half-dressed and does not understand what is going on. ”

“ The sheep do not know whither they are being driven; when they come to cross-roads they do not know which to take; but they do feel, dimly, that they are not on the road to the fold. Hence the tragedy of their emotions; and it is the state of the soul filled with love, as tragic and as mystical a consciousness or subconsciousness as that of the soul in the clutch of fate or in the shadow of death, that Maeterlinck projects into Pelleas and Melisanda as into Alladine and Palomides and Aglavaine and Selysette. ”

“ Not to know what he has come upon this earth to do: that is man’s great and everlasting torment. Now we must perforce admit that the actual truth of the universe, if some day we learn it, will probably be very similar to one or other of those revelations which, while appearing to teach us everything, teach us nothing at all. It will at least possess the same inhuman character. It will necessarily be as unlimited in both space and time, as abysmal, as foreign to our senses and our brain. The more tremendous, the more majestic the revelation, the greater chance will it have of being true ”

“ No one had the least interest in procuring the old man's death. The body bore no marks of violence; besides, the minds of those concerned did not for a moment entertain the thought of an assault. The poor man, whose mental derangement was known to all those about him, obsessed by the desire and thought of death, had gone quietly and obstinately to seek it in the nearest coppice. There was therefore no criminal in the case, in other words, there was no possible or imaginable communication between the medium's subconsciousness, and that of any living person. ”

“ To torture a point is the same thing as to torture the worlds; and, if it torture the worlds, it is its own substance that it tortures. Its very destiny, in which we are placed, protects us. Our sufferings there could be but ephemeral; and nothing matters that is not eternal. It is possible, although somewhat incomprehensible, that parts should err and go astray; but it is impossible that sorrow should be one of its lasting and necessary laws; for it would have brought that law to bear against itself. In like manner, the universe is and must be its own law and its [Pg 101] sole master ”

“ The radiant shapes of amber-coloured light bathe in unspeakable gladness all the things that they touch; and everywhere are signs of a deep and unfaltering joy. The boundless horizon stretches towards the veiled white of the Milky Way, the ether quivering with myriads of unknown stars.
(When the curtain opens, TYLTYL, LIGHT, DESTINY and THE SIX GIRLS are in the foreground, on the right, at the foot of one of the alabaster columns supporting the entrance-arch. They take a few steps into the immense deserted hall, while THE WHITE PHANTOM hides timidly behind the column.) ”

“ GOLAUD. Where do you want to go?
YNIOLD. Where it is light, little father.
GOLAUD. No, no, my child; let us stay in the dark a little longer.... One cannot tell, one cannot tell yet.... Do you see those poor people down there trying to kindle a little fire in the forest?—It has rained. And over there, do you see the old gardener trying to lift that tree the wind has blown down across the road?—He cannot; the tree is too big; the tree is too heavy, and it will lie where it fell. All that cannot be helped.... I think Pélléas is mad....
YNIOLD. No, little father, he is not mad; he is very good. ”