The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1903-04-12


fathers murderer. It Is not q happy
habitation. The old King Is senile. and
debauched by Anne. Queen Of Jutland.
This miscreant. hideous combination OF
Lady Macbsth, Messaline and Phodre, has
a daughter bearing the pretty name OF
Uolvdns. Poor upiyane! She Ia beautiful.
unloved. The ono designation OF her life Ia
defeated by Moieine, who plays a cruel trick
upon her. Going to the fountain-hter
we shall find that fountains assume i'm
portant roles in these plays-Mdlsine meets
II idlndr. Then we get the true Maeter-
linck atmosphere. And this 10 where 1t all
comes from:
Il looked upon the scene before me
upon the mere house, and the simple land
scape-features Of the domain, upon the
bleak walls, upon the vacant eye-like win
dows. upon few rank sedges, and upon
few white trunks Of decayed trees.
] refined my horse TO the precipitous brink
Of a black and lurid tarn that lay In I'M
rufiled lustre by the dwelling and gazed
down. About the whole mansion
and domain there hung an atmosphere
peculiar TO themselves and their imne-
diate vicinity: an atmosphere which had
no affinity with the air Of heaven, but which
had reeked up from the decayed trees.
and the gray wall, and the silent tarn; a
pestilent and mystic vapor. dull, sluggish.
family descernible and leaden-hued.
Pestilent and mystic is the atmosphere
OF Princess Maleine.' The foregoing
quotation Is from The Fall Of the House OF
Usher There is much Of Poe's dark
tarn. Of Auber and the misty lmid-region
OF Weir in the early Maeterlinck.
The dsnouement Is horrible, Maleine
Is strangled by the queen, who also loves
Hjdlmor. and to the accompaniment OF
q lunar eclipse. thunderbolts. terrific
cyclone, meteors that explode. wounded
swans that fall from stormy skies, this
night Of strange portents comes to an end
after the prince avenges N dleine by stabbing
the queen and killing himself. There Ia
q dog that shifts. scratches and howls
at the locked door Of the murdered princess.
It's name Is Pluto. There are chanting
and spectral nuns. lewd beggars, an old
Shakespearian nurse, @ freakiah boy, and
the usual scared oourtiers. The scenes
do not hang together at all-there Il no
sequence Of action. only Of moods; or rather
the same mood persists throughout. Yet
the lines bite at times and there are great
assures OF silence. pauses as deep and a.
sinister as murky midnight pools.
These pauses are always pregnant-hke
the pauses In strange pages Of Schumann
or those mysterious empty bars at the be-
ginning Of q Chopin tragedy In tone
empty. forbidding vesibules to woful
edifices.
There La q little kitchen maids soul at
the bottom Of her green eyes, 4 am alex
10 die Of 1t one Of these twenty thousand
nights We have to live How dark? how
darkf Is forest Lit up like . ball room7'
. The poor never know anything will
she not have q little silence in her hearth
she Is as cold as an earthworm;" oh!
look. look at their eyes They will leap out
upon me like frogs my Godl Ny God! She
Is waiting now on the wharves Of HE'LL
How unhappy the dead lookl' These
and many more, with gasps and calculations,
make up dialogue that is at least original.
though bizarre. Naturally 1t is all the
fruit Of green. immature genius.
The ideas, hystericL and few az they are.
begin to assume some Conference IL COM
pared with the emotional and disconnected
experiments Of the poems
NAoctoA huOA hoo ucAAAiOu hio S7otHotAC IA
his prose essays. He played queer pranks
upon the nerves with these shadows. these
spiritual marionettes. which arc pure alb
stractions typifying various qualities Of
the temperament. The iteration OF his
speech Is like the dripping Of water upon
the heads Of the condemned. 1t is irri-
tating, It finally stuns the consciousness.
and then, like . performer upon some fan
tastio instrument with one string. this vir-
tuoso executes variations Boosting . soil
tary theme-Fear.
Speech, says Maeterlinck. Il never the
medium Of communication OF real and in
most thoughts. Silence alone can trans
NIT them from soul to soul. We talk to Ali
up the blanks Of life. Silence Is 30 truth
telling, 90 illuminative that few have the
courage to face 1t. Mankind fears silence
more than the dark. (Poe again; silence.
The most illuminating silence Of all. the
most irresistible. 10 the Silence Of Death.
It is the unspoken word that reveals our
inner self. We do not know each other
we have not yet dared to be silent together
Modern thought and literature lack this
mystic element. lack the atmosphere Of
the spiritual, perfect as Ii its technique
and it's Intellectual equipment. The hus-
SLAMS have It In their fiction, q fiction Of
epilepsy and burning spiritual crises. The
Middle Ages had II. Men stood nearer to
nature, to God. They understood children.
women, animals. plants. inanimate objects
with greater tenderness and greater depth.
"The statues and paintings they have
left US may not be perfect, but q mysterious
power and secret charm that cannot de-
fine are imprisoned within them. and be-
stow upon them perpetual youth. Hamlet.
King Lear. Maebeth are filed with the mys-
FERROUS chant Of the infinite, the threaten
ing silence Of souls and Of gods, eternity
laundering on the horizon, fate and fatality
perceived interiorly without any one being
able to say by what signs they have been
recognized
Here We recognize the true mystic. the
feeder upon the writings Of Emerson, No
walls. Admirable Ruysbroeck: Plato. Plo-
tinus. St. Bernard. Jacob Boehme and
Coleridge. And while he achieves aston
ishing flights into the blue. he always re-
turns to mother earth. There Ii spiritual
lift In his words, lift and oft times intoxica-