New-York tribune., 1920-01-10
Philosophy of Maeterlinck
Adventures of the Belgian Mystic in
Realms of Fourth Dimension of Thought
Drawing by K. A. cnmuchian.

the Invisible. We are wiser than we
know, and our wisdom outruns the
centuries. Each man is an epitome of
all men: Every bottom is false bot
TOM What we call imitation is lack
OF perception, and when we say we are
pna 9naone ne we mean we have ,capitulated.
For the seer-for Maeterlinck-there
are no limitations, and capitulation
they do not know. They build the
world anew every day. Each night
they slough off limitation. Each day
they build a house, but they move
perpetually. They battle the best laid
plans of demons and gods by meeting
demon and god halfway. The sings
and arrows of fortune pierce their
souls, but the tips are anointed with
chrlsm of wisdom. They dice with
NE IN death, as does the grief crazed
mortal, but they play with loaded dice.
They have lived imaginatively all mems
lives and fear no disaster.
Maeterlinck would have us know we
cannot escape the predestined. To-
morrow is a curtained seduction. but it
stands sure. The last day shall reveal
what the first day purposed. The years
walk lockstep. Each thing breeds it's
own mannei of death. And the trump
Of doom shall reveal the meaning Of
the prelude in Chaos. The individual
is held in the rigid grooves of fate.
and what is to be will come. ANY
other doctrine is blasphemous, or,
worse, ridiculous. We are gibbeted on
Law. We arc spittcd on the Inevitable
and our souls dangle over Chaos.
1t is good that to most of US the
future is a sealed book. The past is
ever changing in the Kaleidoscope of
memory; the future alone is irrevoca-
BILE. The day of our death is ap-
pointed, and life itself is but an obla
ton to death. On the affairs of the
Hours we offer ourselves up. The soul
is but an eddy in the great world
stream, and the eddy has its appointed
end as surely as the stream. A mind
that could have grasped the links in
the chain of causation of which Lin
coin, the Civil War and Wilkes Booth
were but the shadows could have pre-
dicted at Lincoln's birth the tragedy in
Ford's Theatcr.
History is Force dressed up. The
curvetings of Law are beyond the in
dtvldual stay, and the manner of the
death Of nations is dependent on the
manner Of their birth We are pun
pets ON an unknown stage, infusoria
gyrating aimlessly in an unsounded
sea, mldges sporting our day in the
sun OF thought. atoms Of desire, notes
VI IhC GCeIIdi Energy. AND Man
bloweth where Law listeth. So Maeter
linck
The great problem Of human evil has
confronted Maeterlinck, as it has con-
lronted Tolstoy and Ibsen. But the
demands of the Sphinx cannot ruffle
the feathers of the Belgian as it has
that of the Norwegian and the Rus
sian. A mild but effulgcnt serenity
swims from the pages of his later
plays and from "Wisdom and Destiny"
and The Treasure of the Humble"
The misery, the evil the injustice of
trouble the sea. They NAV ms us lash h'itbe tbs
surface into huge, tumbling billows.
but in the dephths there reigns tense
placidity. Serenity is born of insight,
and insight must beget a contempt of
the temporal order-that order begun
IN desire. and which is destined to end
In despair.
"To-day misery is the disease of
mankind. as disease is the misery Of
mankind says Maeterlinck. Man
tosses around on his bed of pain and
his prayers are hurled back as echo
from the stars. He builds and he
builds and his work is swept away like
the beavers dam. His soul. i'm
pounded in clay, wriggles toward free
dom only to discover that it has been
"rlgglng out of straitjacket into q
winding sheet. He builds grandiose
tomorrow on the ruins of to-day. and
when tomorrow has come and zone
and turned ghost he builds again. His
Golden Age always lies in the future
ne builds altar and capitol and dedi-
Gates his soul to prayer. He sulks
and begs and defes and grovels, and
death circles like kite above his CLAW.
ne believes he is going straight to
his goal, straight to that far Off divine
event which Hope has bulded in the
azure future. But there is no for
ward or backward in life Nature has
no straight lines. Rhythm, undula-
tion, periodicity are the laws that
govern motion. The history Of one
day is the history Of all days, and he
who builds on the shifting sands of
the temporal builds futilely.
1t Is this Heraclitean vision Of
human life that has obsessed the mind
OF Maeterlinck. 1t Ia this Horla that
has gripped his soul In it's lean and
icy fingers. In those strange little
dramaS that he has given us, and which
are fitting introduction to his evils
dom and Destiny" we read the rendinp
conflicts that have cleft the soul Of
TINS transcriber of visions.
Are they human, thase peaked and
cmaciated figures that he has sill
nc nouetted on his background of night
Inc moral world is but a thin crust
that has formed over tho rollinp lava
streams of elemental passion. The
wan. drawn figures Of tho nYava snort