The Nobel Prize winners in literature

The prize of 1911 has been awarded:

Maeterlinck, Maurice, born 1862: “because of his many-sided literary activity and especially because of his dramatic creations which are marked by wealth of fancy and poetic idealism that sometimes, in the fairy play’s veiled form, reveals deep inspiration and, also, in a mysterious way, appeals to the reader’s feeling and imagination.”⁠[85]

The first decade of the Nobel prizes was over and a new group of candidates was coming into the literary limelight in 1911. There was hopeful speculation that the award might go to either Russia or America, the two larger countries that have not yet been included. There was, however, a new type of poetry and drama, and a writer of unique personality, that were attracting widespread interest—namely, the mystical and symbolic plays by Maurice Maeterlinck. The announcement that he was the winner for 1911 caused much pride to the little kingdom of Belgium. Maeterlinck wrote most of his plays in French so they gained readers more quickly than those of his Belgian predecessors and contemporaries. On the Scent, the drama by Charles Van Lerberghe, has been compared to Maeterlinck’s earlier work by Barrett H. Clark in A Study of the Modern Drama.⁠[86] Other Belgian playwrights commended by Mr. Clark are Henri Maubel and Edmond Picard.

Maeterlinck was not quite fifty years old when the Nobel honor came to him. He was born in Ghent, in 1862, of good ancestry. He recalled the surroundings of his early life—the gardens and the sea and the ships in sight. Especially was he interested in the Flemish peasants as they sat, in quiet, stolid attitudes, in the doorways of their cottages or by the smoking lamps. One group impressed his boyhood memory, as he saw them on his way from school—seven toothless brothers and a sister. Their lethargy and inert lives awakened him, in young manhood, to psychological curiosity; their strange traditions and unreasoning fears are reflected in some of his plays. His father was anxious to have him study law, so he read and practised for a little time in Ghent—long enough “to lose a case or two,” he said with humorous reminiscence. He spent seven years at a Jesuit College, and showed a mind of philosophical trend. He thought that in Paris he might come into contact with men of literary rank and scholars. Villiers was his especial influence there; another inspirational friend was Octave Mirabeau to whom Maeterlinck dedicated his first published plays, Princess Maleine and Pelléas and Mélisande. In too extravagant praise Mirabeau hailed Maeterlinck as “the Belgian Shakespeare” and Maeterlinck became the victim of flattery, on one hand, and ridicule on the other. He bore himself with calm dignity then as he has all his life; his serene manner and low voice, in contrast with his muscular physique, have been noted by many acquaintances.

Before the death of his father, in 1889, he returned to Belgium and lived there for seven years, continuing his studies of nature and metaphysics, writing marionette plays, and more serious dramas, and making translations from authors of other tongues, including English, that left impressions upon his mind. He declared that the three writers who exerted the strongest influence during these formative years were Emerson, Novalis, and Ruysbroeck, the medieval mystic whose writings were translated by Maeterlinck when he was a student at the Jesuit College. To visitors from America he delights to show his worn copy of Emerson. In his collected studies, On Emerson and Other Essays, translated by Montrose J. Moses, he summarizes the Concord philosopher’s thoughts about “the greatness of man’s spiritual nature, about the forces of the soul.” In conclusion of his vital influence, he writes: “Emerson has come to affirm simply this equal and secret grandeur of our life. He has encompassed us with silence and with wonder. He has placed a shaft of light beneath the feet of the workman as he leaves the workshop. He has shown us all the powers of heaven and earth, at the same time intent on sustaining the threshold on which two neighbors speak of the rain that falls or the wind that blows. And above these two passers-by who accost each other, he has made us see the countenance of God who smiles with the countenance of God. He is nearer than any other to our common life. He is the most attentive, the most assiduous, the most honest, the most scrupulous, and probably the most human of guides. He is the sage of commonplace days, and commonplace days are, in sum, the substance of our being.”⁠[87]

In 1896 Maeterlinck returned to Paris and there he has made his home. He refused to renounce his Belgian citizenship, however, that he might become a member of the French Academy; during the war he did valiant service in many ways for his native country. In his home town to-day, and at Brussels, the visitor is told of Belgian pride in Maeterlinck; the people say, “You know he has lived in Paris almost all his life but he is a true patriot, just the same.” To the years in Belgium, between 1889 and 1896, belong such plays as The Blind, The Intruder, The Seven Princesses, Alladine and Palomides and The Death of Tintagiles. It is a question whether he has surpassed, in dramatic vigor combined with mystic beauty, that play of earlier period, Pelléas and Mélisande. Like the story of Paolo and Francesca, which it resembles in theme, it has an appealing quality both on the stage and in the book. The tragic death of Mélisande, after the murder of her lover and the birth of her daughter, reflects a high-light of dramatic power. The lines are simple in diction, masterly in structure and suggestion.

One of the first translators of Maeterlinck into English was Richard Hovey, the brilliant American poet who died in his prime. In two decorative volumes, first issued in Chicago (Stone & Kimball) in 1894-1896, he interpreted, as well as translated, these earlier plays already cited. The Introduction in the first volume is informing for all students of modern drama. Mr. Hovey defined Symbolism, as distinguished from Realism and Expressionism; he joined with the name of Maeterlinck, such other exponents of Symbolism as Mallarmé, Gilbert Parker, and Bliss Carman. Two traits distinguished the Belgian from other symbolists of his day, according to this interpreter—“the peculiarity of his technique, and the limitation of his emotional range.” The use of reiteration is cited as a French characteristic for effective emphasis. “The danger-border between the tragic and the ridiculous” is a menace to Maeterlinck. More true of his earlier than his later plays is another restriction noted by Mr. Hovey: “His master-tone is always terror—terror, too, of one type—that of the churchyard.... He is the poet of the sepulchre, like Poe—as masterly in his own methods as Poe was in his, and destined, perhaps, to exert the same wide influence.”⁠[88] Premonition plays a large part in the plays of Maeterlinck from The Blind and Home to Joyzelle.

In Paris, under the stimulus of literary associates and the comradeship of Georgette Le Blanc (the actress who became his wife), Maeterlinck wrote three plays that register his dramatic climax—Joyzelle, Monna Vanna (1903) and The Blue Bird (1908). Probably, the last symbolic drama was the primal cause of the Nobel award. The idealism, the delicate fancy, the imaginative charm, the fascinating characters in every scene, real or fantastic, and the pervasive message for every age and land, give to this play a perennial appeal. As Maeterlinck affirmed, this play, like others of the type, may lose some of its “mystic transparency” and symbolism on the stage but it has been alluring both as acted play and as a film. Why there should have been “a sequel” to such a perfect, complete play as The Blue Bird is a question that has troubled many a critic. Resentment against The Betrothal, the continuance of this fairy-tale play, however, gives way before appreciation of its fine passages and strong message. At the same time, the impression lingers that Tyltyl, like Peter Pan, should “never have grown up.” Alexander Teixeira de Mattos has made a fine translation of The Betrothal and Edith Wynne Mattison was a charming “Fairy Berylune,” when the play was given in New York. Here Maeterlinck ventured almost too near the borderland between fantasy and farce, especially in Act II, where the girls, who would marry Tyltyl, reveal their lower natures.

The versatility of Maeterlinck is evidenced by comparing such plays, within ten years, as Joyzelle and The Blue Bird, Monna Vanna and Mary Magdalene. Joyzelle has elements of dramatic ecstasy with a tragic undertone. Professor William Lyon Phelps has summarized well the salient qualities of this play and its heroine in Essays on Modern Dramatists (New York, 1921). Monna Vanna, written especially for Maeterlinck’s wife, is a rare blend of intense emotionalism and convincing characters with a crisis which challenges the reason. Giovanna, or Monna Vanna, wife of Guido Colonna, commander of the garrison at Pisa, will remain as Maeterlinck’s most vital heroine. Prinzivalle, general of the Florentines and her boyhood lover, is an idealized hero for his age but convincing in his chivalry. Medieval atmosphere and dramatic action accentuate the strong dialogue of this play. Ten years later, in 1913, appeared Mary Magdalene. In his Introduction, Maeterlinck relates, with some feeling, his effort to win cordial response from Paul Heyse, who had written a play on the same theme and with certain situations that the Belgian wished to use. Meeting with a refusal, “none too courteous I regret to say,” he decided to take his privilege of using Biblical words and his previously conceived situation. He gives to Mary Magdalene a few masterly lines; to Joseph of Arimathea, she says, “We save those whom we love; we listen to them afterwards.” To the Roman Verus, who would have her save Jesus by yielding herself to him, she replies: “I should perhaps sin against all that he loves, to save what I love. I could save him in spite of himself; but no longer in spite of myself. If I bought his life at the price which you offer, all that he wished, all that he loved, would be dead. I cannot plunge the flame into the mire to save the lamp.”⁠[89]

The war left deep scars upon Maeterlinck’s spirit; they are reflected in such essays and plays as The Wrack of the Storm, Belgium at War, The Burgomaster at Stilemonde, The Cloud that Lifted, and The Power of the Dead. Some of the essays, or chapters, in the book first mentioned, deal with psychometry, the interest which is expanded in other books like The Great Secret, Our Eternity, The Unknown Guest, and The Light Beyond. That man is the product of unseen forces, that he is molded by “hidden powers,” that humanity and nature are always closely linked, were tenets that underlay such books as Treasure of the Humble, Life and Flowers, and The Life of the Bee. He became a beekeeper that he might study at first-hand the traits of these workers and apply their analogy to humanity—much as Dallas Lore Sharp has done more recently in The Spirit of the Hive. In the beehives and the garden, Maeterlinck finds the same complications and conflicts, the same “domination of the spirit of the race,” as among men. In an essay in his earlier book, Treasure of the Humble, he expressed a surety which has been verified with the passing of the years: “A time may come perhaps—and many things herald its approach—a time will come, perhaps, when our souls will know each other without the intermediary of the senses.”

To penetrate beyond the tangible things of life requires courage but brings light to the spirit. In his plays, Ariadne and Blue Beard and Sister Beatrice, translated by Bernard Miall into English verse (1916), and The Miracle of Saint Anthony, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (1918), Maeterlinck has suggested the neglected but magic “key” which may gain for us new adventures into “the prohibitions of the tangible world.” The premonition of his earlier plays has become the intuition which penetrates the unknown and supernatural. Life has been symbolized by him as “a garden,” as an “inner temple,” as analogous to the world of plants and “the swarm” of the bees. He seldom reveals passionate feeling in his writings, but he exemplifies search for truth, “care for moral stoic beauty.”⁠[90] Intuition, as interpreted by Bergson, he has expanded into the “raison mystique” by which one may penetrate the unknown and the mystic. There are shades of gloom and sadness in many of his plays; his characters are sometimes weak in conflict with the forces about them; there are hints of fatalism in plays like The Intruder, The Death of Tintagiles, and Interior, but the keynote of Maeterlinck, in his maturity, has been that of spiritual progress and mystic idealism.