Читать книгу Dramatis Personæ онлайн

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And, with this spiritualizing of the very substance of what had always been so fully a drama of things unseen, there comes, as we have said, a freer abandonment to the instinctive desire of the artist to write beautifully. Having realized that one need not be afraid of beauty, he is not afraid to let soul speak to soul in language worthy of both. And, curiously, at the same time he becomes more familiar, more human. Sélysette is quite the most natural character that Maeterlinck has ever drawn, as Aglavaine is the most noble. Méléandre is, perhaps, more shadowy than ever, but that is because he is deliberately subordinated in the composition, which is concerned only with the action upon one another of the two women. He suffers the action of these forces, does not himself act; standing between them as man stands between the calling of the intellectual and the emotional life, between the simplicity of daily existence, in which he is good, affectionate, happy, and the perhaps "immoral" heightening of that existence which is somewhat disastrously possible in the achievement of his dreams. In this play, which touches so beautifully and so profoundly on so many questions, this eternal question is restated; of course, not answered. To answer it would be to find the missing word in the great enigma; and to Maeterlinck, who can believe in nothing which is not mystery, it is of the essence of his philosophy not to answer his own question.