Jethro Bithell - Life and Writings of Maurice Maeterlinck

The Massacre of the Innocents and other Tales by Belgian Writers.

Verhaeren's first vers libres appeared in book form in January, 1891 (printed in December, 1890) in Les Flambeaux noirs . But in May, 1890, he had published, in La Wallonie , a poem in vers libres ; and this is dated 1889.

Poèmes anciens et romanesques , his first book of acknowledged symbolism, did not appear till 1890, but the poems which compose it were written between 1887 and 1888.

It was in 1886, too, that Gustave Kahn with the collaboration of Jean Moréas and Paul Adam, founded the review Le Symboliste .

A translation of Whitman's Enfants d'Adam , by Jules Laforgue, appeared in La Vogue in 1886. Stuart Merrill personally handed this translation to Whitman, who was delighted. (See Le Masque , Série ii, Nos. 9 and 10, 1912). Vielé-Griffin's first translation of Whitman appeared in November, 1888, in. La Revue indépendante ; another translation of his appeared afterwards in La Cravache . A translation of Whitman had appeared in the Revue des deux Mondes in the reign of Napoleon III.

He himself told Huret that La Princesse Maleine was written in vers libres concealed typographically as prose.

The famous Wagner tenor.

The Brussels publisher.

The first number is dated Saturday, the 18th October, 1879, and begins with "rimes d'avant poste" by "Rodolphe" (=Verhaeren).

Iwan Gilkin, Quinze années de littérature .

Albert Giraud, Hors du Siècle .

In the thirteenth century in Germany, "Fleming" was synonymous with "verray parfit, gentil knight." The Bavarian Sir Neidhart von Reuental, for instance, refers to himself as a "Fleming."

Cf. Rodenbach's;

with Maeterlinck's:

"On en a mis plusieurs sur d'anciens clairs de lune."

– Serres Chaudes , "Cloches de verre."

G. van Hamel, Het Letterkundige Leven van Frankrijk , pp. 127-8.

Cf. Rodenbach, Le Règne du Silence , p. 1:

Gérard Harry, p. 19. Le Masque , Série ii, No. 5: "jeune encore, il avait sollicité les fonctions de juge de paix, mais le gouvernement belge, prévoyant son destin de poète, les lui avait généreusement refusées, et pour reconnaître ce service, Maeterlinck ne lui rend que mépris et dédain et refuse même les distinctions honorifiques les plus hautes, celles qu'on n'accorde généralement qu'aux très grands industriels ou aux très vieux militaires ou politiciens."

They make one think of what Novalis wrote: "poems unconnected, yet with associations, like dreams; poems, melodious merely and full of beautiful words, but absolutely without sense or connection – at most individual sentences intelligible – nothing but fragments, so to speak, of the most varied things."

See Schlaf's Maeterlinck , p. 12; ibid. , p. 30; and Monty Jacobs' Maeterlinck , p. 39. But Maeterlinck's brain was always as healthy as his body. At the time he wrote Serres Chaudes disease was fashionable, that is all; and, beside the main influence of Baudelaire, there was the fear of death instilled by the Jesuits.

Verhaeren, in his monograph on Rembrandt (1905), has suggested that the man of genius may, "in specially favourable conditions, create a new race, thanks to the happy deformation of his brain fixing itself first, by a propitious crossing, in his direct descendants, to be transmitted afterwards to a whole posterity."

See Tancrède de Visan's interpretation in L'Attitude du Lyrisme contemporain , pp. 119 ff.

Maeterlinck told Huret that he had been influenced by Schopenhauer "qui arrive jusqu'à vous consoler de la mort."

Figaro, 24th August, 1890.

Pronounced in German like the French Maleine .

Preface to Théâtre , p. 2.

In Swedenborg's mysticism, the literal meanings of words are only protecting veils which hide their inner meanings. See "Le Tragique Quotidien" (in Le Trésor des Humbles ) pp. 173-4. That Maeterlinck was meditating the famous chapter on "Silence" in The Treasure of the Humble when he wrote Princess Maleine may be inferred from Act ii. sc. 6: "I want to see her at last in presence of the evening… I want to see if the night will make her think. May it not be that there is a little silence in her heart?"

Schlaf's Maeterlinck , p. 31.

Suggested, perhaps, by the strangling of Little Snow-white in Grimm's story.

Preface to Théâtre , pp. 4-5.

"Les Avertis" (in Le Trésor des Humbles ), p. 53.

Cf. also "L'Evolution du Mystère" (in Le Temple Enseveli ) Chapters V., XXI., and XXII.

See Chapter XXVIII. of L'Intelligence des Fleurs .

In a letter inserted in the programme when Les Flaireurs was staged by Paul Fort at the Théâtre d'Art (after The Intruder had gone over the same boards). This statement of Maeterlinck's is a noble defence of his friend, and, as such, not to be trusted.

But Death, in The Intruder , is understood to have made some noise while coming upstairs.

Is. van Dijk, Maurice Maeterlinck , pp. 81-82.