Part 1

Chapter 13,360 wordsPublic domain

Methuen’s Shilling Novels

1 The Mighty Atom Marie Corelli 2 Jane Marie Corelli 3 Boy Marie Corelli 4 Spanish Gold G. A. Birmingham 5 The Search Party G. A. Birmingham 6 Teresa of Watling Street Arnold Bennett 9 The Unofficial Honeymoon Dolf Wyllarde 12 The Demon C. N. and A. M. Williamson 17 Joseph Frank Danby 18 Round the Red Lamp Sir A. Conan Doyle 20 Light Freights W. W. Jacobs 22 The Long Road John Oxenham 71 The Gates of Wrath Arnold Bennett 72 Short Cruises W. W. Jacobs 81 The Card Arnold Bennett 87 Lalage’s Lovers G. A. Birmingham 92 White Fang Jack London 105 The Wallet of Kai Lung Ernest Bramah 108 The Adventures of Dr. Whitty G. A. Birmingham 113 Lavender and Old Lace Myrtle Reed 115 Old Rose and Silver Myrtle Reed 122 The Double Life of Mr. Alfred Burton E. Phillips Oppenheim 125 The Regent Arnold Bennett 127 Sally Dorothea Conyers 129 The Lodger Mrs. Belloc Lowndes 135 A Spinner in the Sun Myrtle Reed 137 The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu Sax Rohmer 139 The Golden Centipede Louise Gerard 140 The Love Pirate C. N. and A. M. Williamson 142 The Way of these Women E. Phillips Oppenheim 143 Sandy Married Dorothea Conyers 145 Chance Joseph Conrad 148 Flower of the Dusk Myrtle Reed 150 The Gentleman Adventurer H. C. Bailey 154 The Hyena of Kallu Louise Gerard 190 The Happy Hunting Ground Mrs. Alice Perrin 191 My Lady of Shadows John Oxenham 211 Max Carrados Ernest Bramah 212 Under Western Eyes Joseph Conrad 213 The Kloof Bride Ernest Glanville 215 Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo E. Phillips Oppenheim 216 The Wonder of Love E. M. Albanesi 217 A Weaver of Dreams Myrtle Reed 219 The Family Elinor Mordaunt 220 A Heritage of Peril A. W. Marchmont 221 The Kinsman Mrs. Sidgwick 222 Emmanuel Burden Hilaire Belloc 224 Broken Shackles John Oxenham 225 A Knight of Spain Marjorie Bowen 227 Byeways Robert Hichens 228 Gossamer G. A. Birmingham 229 My Friend the Chauffeur C. N. and A. M. Williamson 230 The Salving of a Derelict Maurice Drake 231 Cameos Marie Corelli 232 The Happy Valley B. M. Croker 233 Victory Joseph Conrad

A Selection only.

Methuen’s Shilling Library

36 De Profundis Oscar Wilde 37 Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime Oscar Wilde 38 Selected Poems Oscar Wilde 39 An Ideal Husband Oscar Wilde 40 Intentions Oscar Wilde 41 Lady Windermere’s Fan Oscar Wilde 42 Charmides and other Poems Oscar Wilde 43 Harvest Home E. V. Lucas 44 A Little of Everything E. V. Lucas 45 Vailima Letters Robert Louis Stevenson 46 Hills and the Sea Hilaire Belloc 47 The Blue Bird Maurice Maeterlinck 50 Charles Dickens G. K. Chesterton 53 Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to his Son George Horace Lorimer 54 The Life of John Ruskin W. G. Collingwood 57 Sevastopol and other Stories Leo Tolstoy 58 The Lore of the Honey-Bee Tickner Edwardes 60 From Midshipman to Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood 62 John Boyes, King of the Wa-Kikuyu John Boyes 63 Oscar Wilde Arthur Ransome 64 The Vicar of Morwenstow S. Baring-Gould 65 Old Country Life S. Baring-Gould 76 Home Life in France M. Betham-Edwards 77 Selected Prose Oscar Wilde 78 The Best of Lamb E. V. Lucas 80 Selected Letters Robert Louis Stevenson 83 Reason and Belief Sir Oliver Lodge 85 The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde 91 Social Evils and their Remedy Leo Tolstoy 93 The Substance of Faith Sir Oliver Lodge 94 All Things Considered G. K. Chesterton 95 The Mirror of the Sea Joseph Conrad 96 A Picked Company Hilaire Belloc 116 The Survival of Man Sir Oliver Lodge 126 Science from an Easy Chair Sir Ray Lankester 141 Variety Lane E. V. Lucas 144 A Shilling for my Thoughts G. K. Chesterton 146 A Woman of No Importance Oscar Wilde 149 A Shepherd’s Life W. H. Hudson 193 On Nothing Hilaire Belloc 200 Jane Austen and her Times G. E. Mitton 214 Select Essays Maurice Maeterlinck 223 Two Generations Leo Tolstoy 226 On Everything Hilaire Belloc 234 Records and Reminiscences Sir Francis Burnand

A Selection only.

GLEANINGS FROM MAETERLINCK

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE BLUE BIRD OUR ETERNITY DEATH MARY MAGDALENE THE UNKNOWN GUEST THE WRACK OF THE STORM THE TREASURE OF THE HUMBLE WISDOM AND DESTINY THE LIFE OF THE BEE THE BURIED TEMPLE THE DOUBLE GARDEN LIFE AND FLOWERS AGLAVAINE AND SELYSETTE MONNA VANNA JOYZELLE SISTER BEATRICE; AND ARIANE AND BARBE BLEUE MY DOG OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS HOURS OF GLADNESS

GLEANINGS FROM MAETERLINCK

TRANSLATED AND COMPILED BY ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON

_First Published in 1917_

_All rights reserved_

_Copyright U.S.A. by Dodd, Mead & Co. Inc. 1913 to 1917._

INTRODUCTION

In the first act of _The Blue Bird_, the fairy Bérylune sends Mytyl and Tyltyl in search of happiness. Shepherded and protected by Light, they explore the Past and the Future, the Palace of Night, the Kingdoms of the Dead and of the Unborn. At one moment they find themselves in a graveyard; and Mytyl grows fearful at her first contact with the great mystery of Death. Yet the graveyard with its wooden crosses and grass-covered mounds is moonlit and tranquil; and of a sudden, as the revealing diamond is turned in Tyltyl’s fingers, even the tombstones and ‘all the grand investiture of death’ disappear, to be replaced by luxuriant, swaying clusters of Madonna lilies.

“Where are the dead?” asks Mytyl, in amazement, searching in the grass for traces of even one tombstone.

Her brother also looks:

“There are no dead,” is his reply.

Any one who was present on the first night of the play at the Haymarket Theatre, in 1909, will not easily forget the audience’s little gasp of delighted surprise. Yet the two lines of dialogue were more than a stage effect, more than an aspect of mysticism; almost they may be regarded as the essence of Maeterlinck’s later work. Since the _Life of the Bee_, since the earlier essays and such pure drama as _Monna Vanna_, _The Blind_ and _Pelléas and Mélisande_, his mind seems to have been brooding more and more on the part which Death, the great twin mystery of the world, plays in the life of man and of the race. In _The Death of Tintagiles_ there is a barred and studded door, through which, for all its studs and bars, there steals a miasma of dread. And, when the door opens, it is to release a spirit of annihilation which the concerted efforts of Tintagiles’ sisters can neither restrain nor force back.

In _The Blue Bird_ we are shown that a man cannot die so long as he dwells in the memory of those who loved him. In his latest work Maeterlinck gives to the dead an objective existence. In part each generation survives its own death and transmits to its successors the heritage of aspiration and achievement, of knowledge and passion, which it has received from its predecessors; in greater part the objective existence is founded on new modes of communication, a new study of psychic relationship and a new belief in a subliminal state.

I have collected in the present volume a selection of essays illustrating the later stages of Maeterlinck’s quest. Never in history have so many women and men, stricken suddenly and without warning, sought so unanimously and painfully to penetrate the veil wherein the world’s oldest mystery is shrouded. The finality of death was a challenge flung down and eagerly taken up by all whom the loss of son or brother had taken unawares. To Maeterlinck the war has brought in great part the annihilation of a people, his own people; it has inspired him to a splendour of indignation and pity; but, more gravely and urgently than ever before, it has demanded of him an answer to the question of the Sadducees, who “say there is no resurrection.”

Readers wishing to study the complete series of essays from which the sixteen in this volume are taken will find them in the three books entitled, _Our Eternity_, _The Unknown Guest_ and _The Wrack of the Storm_, all of which are issued by the present publishers.

ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

CHELSEA, _9 April 1917_

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION vii

I. OUR INJUSTICE TO DEATH 13

II. ANNIHILATION 31

III. COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE DEAD 37

IV. OUR ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS 63

V. THE TWO ASPECTS OF INFINITY 75

VI. OUR FATE IN THOSE INFINITIES 89

VII. CONCLUSIONS 105

VIII. THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE FUTURE 115

IX. HEROISM 181

X. ON RE-READING THUCYDIDES 193

XI. THE DEAD DO NOT DIE 205

XII. IN MEMORIAM 213

XIII. THE LIFE OF THE DEAD 217

XIV. THE WAR AND THE PROPHETS 225

XV. THE WILL OF EARTH 237

XVI. WHEN THE WAR IS OVER 247

OUR INJUSTICE TO DEATH

It has been well said:

“Death and death alone is what we must consult about life; and not some vague future or survival, where we shall not be. It is our own end; and everything happens in the interval between death and now. Do not talk to me of those imaginary prolongations which wield over us the childish spell of number; do not talk to me—to me who am to die outright—of societies and peoples! There is no reality, there is no true duration, save that between the cradle and the grave. The rest is mere bombast, show, delusion! They call me a master because of some magic in my speech and thoughts; but I am a frightened child in the presence of death!”[1]

That is where we stand. For us, death is the one event that counts in our life and in our universe. It is the point whereat all that escapes our vigilance unites and conspires against our happiness. The more our thoughts struggle to turn away from it, the closer do they press around it. The more we dread it, the more dreadful it becomes, for it but thrives upon our fears. He who seeks to forget it has his memory filled with it; he who tries to shun it meets naught else. It clouds everything with its shadow. But though we think of death incessantly, we do so unconsciously, without learning to know death. We compel our attention to turn its back upon it, instead of going to it with uplifted head. All the forces which might avail to face death we exhaust in averting our will from it. We deliver it into the groping hands of instinct and we grant it not one hour of our intelligence. Is it surprising that the idea of death, which should be the most perfect and the most luminous of ideas—being the most persistent and the most inevitable—remains the flimsiest and the only one that is a laggard? How should we know the one power which we never look in the face? How could it have profited by gleams kindled only to help us escape it? To fathom its abysses, we wait until the most enfeebled, the most disordered moments of our life arrive. We do not begin to think of death until we have no longer the strength, I will not say, to think, but even to breathe. A man returning among us from another century would have difficulty in recognizing, in the depths of a present-day soul, the image of his gods, of his duty, of his love or of his universe; but the figure of death, when everything has changed around it and when even that which composes it and upon which it depends has vanished, he would find almost untouched, rough-drawn as it was by our fathers, hundreds, nay, thousands of years ago. Our intelligence, grown so bold and active, has not worked upon this figure, has not, so to speak, retouched it in any way. Though we may no longer believe in the tortures of the damned, all the vital cells of the most sceptical among us are still steeped in the appalling mystery of the Hebrew Sheol, the pagan Hades, or the Christian Hell. Though it may no longer be lighted by very definite flames, the gulf still opens at the end of life and, if less known, is all the more formidable. And therefore, when the impending hour strikes to which we dared not raise our eyes, everything fails us at the same time. Those two or three uncertain ideas whereon, without examining them, we had meant to lean give way like rushes beneath the weight of the last minutes. In vain we seek a refuge among reflections which are illusive or are strange to us and which do not know the roads to our heart. No one awaits us on the last shore where all is unprepared, where naught remains afoot save terror.

Bossuet, the great poet of the tomb, says:

“It is not worthy of a Christian”—and I would add, of a man—“to postpone his struggle with death until the moment when it arrives to carry him off.”

It were a salutary thing for each of us to work out his idea of death in the light of his days and the strength of his intelligence and stand by it. He would say to death:

“I know not who you are, or I would be your master; but, in days when my eyes saw clearer than to-day, I learnt what you were not: that is enough to prevent you from becoming mine.”

He would thus bear, graven on his memory, a tried image against which the last agony would not prevail and from which the phantom-stricken eyes would draw fresh comfort. Instead of the terrible prayer of the dying, which is the prayer of the depths, he would say his own prayer, that of the peaks of his existence, where would be gathered, like angels of peace, the most lucid, the most rarefied thoughts of his life. Is not that the prayer of prayers? After all, what is a true and worthy prayer, if not the most ardent and disinterested effort to reach and grasp the unknown?

“The doctors and the priests,” said Napoleon, “have long been making death grievous.”

And Bacon wrote:

“_Pompa mortis magis terret quam mors ipsa._”

Let us, then, learn to look upon death as it is in itself, free from the horrors of matter and stripped of the terrors of the imagination. Let us first get rid of all that goes before and does not belong to it. Thus we impute to it the tortures of the last illness; and that is not just. Illnesses have nothing in common with that which ends them. They form part of life and not of death. We readily forget the most cruel sufferings that restore us to health; and the first sun of convalescence destroys the most unbearable memories of the chamber of pain. But let death come; and at once we overwhelm it with all the evil done before it. Not a tear but is remembered and used as a reproach, not a cry of pain but becomes a cry of accusation. Death alone bears the weight of the errors of nature or the ignorance of science that have uselessly prolonged torments in whose name we curse death because it puts a term to them.

In point of fact, whereas sicknesses belong to nature or to life, the agony, which seems peculiar to death, is wholly in the hands of men. Now what we most dread is the awful struggle at the end and especially the last, terrible second of rupture which we shall perhaps see approaching during long hours of helplessness and which suddenly hurls us, naked, disarmed, abandoned by all and stripped of everything, into an unknown that is the home of the only invincible terrors which the soul of man has ever felt.

It is doubly unjust to impute the torments of that second to death. We shall see presently in what manner a man of to-day, if he would remain faithful to his ideas, should picture to himself the unknown into which death flings us. Let us confine ourselves here to the last struggle. As science progresses, it prolongs the agony which is the most dreadful moment and the sharpest peak of human pain and horror, for the watchers, at least; for very often the consciousness of him whom death, in Bossuet’s phrase, has “brought to bay” is already greatly dulled and perceives no more than the distant murmur of the sufferings which it seems to be enduring. All doctors consider it their first duty to prolong to the uttermost even the cruellest pangs of the most hopeless agony. Who has not, at the bedside of a dying man, twenty times wished and not once dared to throw himself at their feet and implore them to show mercy? They are filled with so great a certainty and the duty which they obey leaves so little room for the least doubt that pity and reason, blinded by tears, curb their revolt and recoil before a law which all recognize and revere as the highest law of man’s conscience.

One day, this prejudice will strike us as barbarous. Its roots go down to the unacknowledged fears left in the heart by religions that have long since died out in the intelligence of men. That is why the doctors act as though they were convinced that there is no known torture but is preferable to those awaiting us in the unknown. They seem persuaded that every minute gained amid the most intolerable sufferings is snatched from the incomparably more dreadful sufferings which the mysteries of the hereafter reserve for men; and of two evils, to avoid that which they know to be imaginary, they choose the only real one. Besides, in thus postponing the end of a torture, which, as old Seneca says, is the best part of that torture, they are but yielding to the unanimous error which makes its enclosing circle more iron-bound every day: the prolongation of the agony increasing the horror of death; and the horror of death demanding the prolongation of the agony.

The doctors, on their side, say or might say that, in the present stage of science, two or three cases excepted, there is never a certainty of death. Not to support life to its last limits, even at the cost of insupportable torments, might be murder. Doubtless there is not one chance in a hundred thousand that the patient escape. No matter: if that chance exist which, in the majority of cases, will give but a few days, or, at the utmost, a few months of a life that will not be the real life, but much rather, as the Romans called it, “an extended death,” those hundred thousand useless torments will not have been in vain. A single hour snatched from death outweighs a whole existence of tortures.

Here we have, face to face, two values that cannot be compared; and, if we mean to weigh them in the same balance, we must heap the scale which we see with all that remains to us, that is to say, with every imaginable pain, for at the decisive hour this is the only weight which counts and which is heavy enough to raise by a hair’s-breadth the other scale that dips into what we do not see and is loaded with the thick darkness of another world.

Swollen by so many adventitious horrors, the horror of death becomes such that, without reasoning, we accept the doctors’ reasons. And yet there is one point on which they are beginning to yield and to agree. They are slowly consenting, when there is no hope left, if not to deaden, at least to dull the last agonies. Formerly, none of them would have dared to do so; and, even to-day, many of them hesitate and, like misers, measure out niggardly drops of the clemency and peace which they ought to lavish and which they grudge in their dread of weakening the last resistance, that is to say, the most useless and painful quiverings of reluctant life refusing to give place to on-coming rest.