ACT VI. shows the children in their little cots, where they were when

the play opened; it has all been a dream.

For _The Blue Bird_ Maeterlinck was in 1912 awarded, for the third time in succession, the Belgian "Triennial prize for dramatic literature."

In 1910 appeared his translation of _Macbeth_, and the English translation of another play of his, _Mary Magdalene_. _Macbeth_ was performed (a sensational event, and a triumph for Mme Maeterlinck) at the Abbey of Saint Wandrille, the Benedictine cloister which Maeterlinck saved from being turned into a chemical factory,[2] and which is now his home. _Mary Magdalene_ was first performed at Leipsic and Hamburg; in Great Britain it shares with _Monna Vanna_ the honour of being refused an acting licence (because the voice of Jesus is heard in it!)

For _Mary Magdalene_ Maeterlinck borrowed two situations from a German play, _Maria von Magdala_, by Paul Heyse--"namely, at the end of the first act, the intervention of Christ, Who stops the crowd raging against Mary Magdalene with these words, spoken behind the scenes: 'He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone'; and, in the third, the dilemma in which the great sinner finds herself, of saving or destroying the Son of God, according as she consents or refuses to give herself to a Roman." Paul Heyse refused Maeterlinck his authorisation to develop these two situations; whereupon Maeterlinck decided that "the words of the gospel, quoted above, are common property; and that the dilemma ... is one of those which occur pretty frequently in dramatic literature." It was the very situation, Maeterlinck claims, which he had himself imagined in the final trial of Joyzelle.

The death of Christ is a tragedy which is waiting for a great dramatist to master. Both Grillparzer and Hebbel pondered it. Maeterlinck has not done what they left undone; he was not dramatist enough to do it. Grillparzer would have spun his play round Judas as a type of an envious man; Maeterlinck places Mary Magdalene in the centre, not the sinner, but the convert--and this convert is the same character as Aglavaine, as Monna Vanna--Maeterlinck's strong, wise woman. This tragedy is again in the nature of a dramatised essay--another essay on wisdom. The idea is that the wise, who are certain of their knowledge, cannot yield to what is wrong. Joyzelle, we remember, would not sacrifice to save one man (it is true she pretended to be willing to, but her pretence was foolish, for she should have known it would be vain, seeing that Merlin was a magician) what Monna Vanna was willing to sacrifice to save a multitude. Mary Magdalene refuses to make the same sacrifice to save Christ: for Christ has made her a wise and therefore a good woman, and she would be untrue to Him in her if she were to rescue Him from Death--in other words His teaching, the essence of His Soul, must not be soiled, whatever torture be inflicted on His poor, human body. There would be tense tragedy in the situation when she hears Him being led to crucifixion, if we did not feel that she is no character but a wise idea; and if, too, the Roman who has it in his power to save Christ were not such a vulgar, melodramatic villain. Maeterlinck has been singularly unsuccessful in this drama. As a courtesan Mary Magdalene is a bore; as a convert she is still a bore.

It is not a human drama. If Jesus has the power to awaken the dead, and to summon the living so that they walk as in sleep (Mary comes to Him in this way), there is no human conflict. One might suspect sexual attraction in Mary's conversion, but she gives one the impression of being a sexless blue-stocking; we are forced to the conclusion that she is mesmerised. Jesus is a mesmerist;[3] from a dramatic point of view. He is no more convincing than Svengali. Maeterlinck's play is on a level with those of Hall Caine; his Roman villain especially might have been conceived by Hall Caine.

In 1911 appeared, in an English translation (the French original was not published till 1913), another book of essays under the title of _Death_. Maeterlinck takes up the thread of what he had said about death in his previous writings, especially in the noble essay on Immortality in _Life and Flowers_:

"For us, death is the one event that counts in our life or 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 battens but on our fears lie who seeks to forget it burdens his memory with it; he who tries to shun it meets naught else. But though we think of death incessantly, we do so unconsciously without learning to know death."

The book shocked many of its critics, who found one of Maeterlinck's ideas repugnant--his plea that it is to no purpose to prolong the agonies of the sick-bed.

"Why should the doctors," asks the essayist, "consider it their duty to protract even the most excruciating convulsions of the most hopeless agony? Who has not, at a bedside, twenty times wished and not once dared to throw himself at their feet and implore them to show mercy?... One day this prejudice will strike us as barbarian. Its roots go down to the unacknowledged fears left in the heart by religions which have long since died out in the mind 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.... The day will come when science will turn against this error, and no longer hesitate to shorten our misfortunes."

Why should we fear death? It is not the nightmare which superstition has made it out to be. It is not the arrival of death, but the departure of life which is appalling.

"Here begins the open sea. Here begins the glorious adventure, the only one abreast with human curiosity, the only one that soars as high as its highest longing. Let us accustom ourselves to regard death as a form of life which we do not yet understand; let us learn to look upon it with the same eye that looks upon birth; and soon our mind will be accompanied to the steps of the tomb with the same glad expectation that greets a birth."

It may be doubted whether men will ever grow so wise that they will look forward to death as they look forward to a birth; in the meantime, as Mr Basil de Sélincourt pointed out in the _Manchester Guardian_, they will be getting toothless, bald, and blind, and "the logic of the mystics may wish to assure us that these are processes of life and not of death; we shall continue to think such an assurance rather sophistical and insipid.... The fear of the moment of death and a passionate protest of the soul against the idea of its finality are probably as normal in the highest types of men as in the lowest."[4] And there is another consideration, subtly suggested by Charles Bernard in an article in _Le Masque_, Série ii, Nos. 7 and 8: the fear of the physical agony of death and the decomposition that follows it intensifies the raptures of health, and even all the moments of pleasure an ageing man can snatch from his decay.

But the importance of the book does not lie in this discussion of the physical facts of death. It lies in its investigation of ideas concerning the immortality of our soul. Whatever the soul be--whether it be that mysterious thing which cannot be definitely located, but which we carry about with us like a mirror in a world whose phenomena only take shape in so far as they are reflected in it,[5] or whether it be the sum total of our intellectual and moral qualities fortified by those of instinct and sub-consciousness[6]--Maeterlinck's suggestions, in his various essays, of a solution brings us to something which strengthens the spiritual, or if you like the intellectual, part of our nature.

"Is it not possible" he asks, "that the enjoyment of art for its own sake, the calm and full satisfaction we are plunged into by the contemplation of a beautiful statue or of a perfect monument, things that do not belong to us and that we shall never see again, which excite no sensual desire, which can profit us nothing--is it not possible that this satisfaction may be the pale gleam of a different consciousness filtering through a fissure of that consciousness of ours which is built up of memories?"[7]

_Death_ appeared almost simultaneously with the news that Maeterlinck had been awarded the Nobel prize for literature. The occasion was celebrated by a public banquet offered to the poet by the City of Brussels; official Belgium had at last awakened to the fact that its poets were more honoured in the world than its rulers. As to the one hundred and ninety thousand francs, he had no need of the money for himself, and it was announced that his intention was to found a "Maeterlinck prize with it," to be given every two years to the writer of the most remarkable book published in that period in the French language.

[1] He does not mention the soft mouth of the old English sheep-dog.

[2] The Abbé Dimnet, in an article in _The Nineteenth Century_ for January, 1912, charges Maeterlinck with indelicacy for having occupied the abbey so soon after its confiscation! The abbé does not mention the chemical project.

[3]

LAZARUS: Come. The Master calls you.

[MAGDALENE _leaves the column against which she is leaning and takes four or five steps towards_ LAZARUS _as though walking in her sleep_.]

* * * * *

MAGDALENE: He fixed his eyes for but a moment on mine; and that will be enough for the rest of my life.

--(p. 72).

[4] I have re-translated from the French in which Mr de Sélincourt's article was reproduced in _Le Thyrse_ for January, 1912.

[5] "L'Immortalité" (in _L'Intelligence des Fleurs_) p. 282.

[6] _Ibid._, p. 295.

[7] _Ibid._, p. 307.