Thoughts from MaeterlinckDodd, Mead, 1903 - 283 pages |
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admirable ALFRED SUTRO apiary beautiful become believe Buried Temple Calchas cerned consciousness craving creature crimes death deed depths desire divine dom and Destiny drama duty Emily Brontë endeavour eternal event existence eyes fatality feel flower force gladness happiness heart heights hero hive honey hour human Humble infinite injustice instant instinct intellect justice kiss larvæ laws less life.-Wisdom and Destiny light lives loftier lofty Macbeth Marcus Aurelius ment midst misfortune moral motionless myste mystery nature nearer ness never ourselves pass passions past peace perhaps Phèdre pity poet reason sacrifice sage secret seek Selysette shadow silence smile soar sorrow soul soul.-Wisdom and Destiny spirit strange tears tell things thought thousand tiny tion to-day Treasure true truly truth U. C. BERKELEY virtue wherein white clover wings Wisdom and Destiny wise words Wuthering Heights
Popular passages
Page 255 - Hilda and Solness are, I believe, the first characters in drama who feel, for an instant, that they are living in the atmosphere of the soul; and the discovery of this essential life that exists in them, beyond the life of every day, comes fraught with terror.
Page 93 - Memling; but from the moment that we have something to say to each other, we are compelled to hold our peace : and if at such times we do not listen to the urgent commands of silence, invisible though they be, we shall have suffered an eternal loss that all the treasures of human wisdom cannot make good; for we shall have let slip the opportunity of listening to another soul, and of giving existence, be it only for an instant, to our own ; and many lives there are in which such opportunities do not...
Page 251 - Indeed, it is not in the actions but in the words that are found the beauty and greatness of tragedies that are truly beautiful and great; and this not solely in the words that accompany and explain the action, for there must perforce be another dialogue besides the one which is superficially necessary. And indeed the only words that count in the play are those that at first seemed useless, for it is therein that the essence lies.
Page 85 - There is great truth in this assertion of Maeterlinck: "It is the way in which our hours of freedom are spent that determines, as much as war or as labor, the moral worth of a nation.
Page 249 - ... of the being and the immensities does indeed raise its curtain on the stage ? Is it while I flee before a naked sword that my existence touches its most interesting point ? Is life always at its sublimest in a kiss ? Are there not other moments, when one hears purer voices that do not fade away so soon ? Does the soul only flower on nights of storm ? Hitherto, doubtless, this belief has prevailed.
Page 242 - One may even affirm that a poem draws the nearer to beauty and loftier truth in the measure that it eliminates words that merely explain the action, and substitutes for them others that reveal, not the so-called ''soulstate," but I know not what intangible and unceasing striving of the soul towards its own beauty and truth.
Page 227 - She, drunk with her wings, obeying the magnificent law of the race that chooses her lover, and enacts that the strongest alone shall attain her in the solitude of the ether, she rises still; and, for the first time in her life, the blue morning air rushes into her stigmata, singing its song, like the blood of heaven, in the myriad tubes of the tracheal sacs, nourished on space, that fill the center of her body.
Page 252 - Indeed, when I go to a theatre, I feel as though I were spending a few hours with my ancestors, who conceived life as something that was primitive, arid, and brutal; but this conception of theirs scarcely even lingers in my memory, and surely it is not one that I can share. I am shown a deceived husband killing his wife, a woman poisoning her lover, a son avenging his father, a father slaughtering his children, children putting their father to death, murdered kings, ravished virgins, imprisoned citizens...
Page 252 - And indeed the only words that count in the play are those that at first seemed useless, for it is therein that the essence lies. Side by side with the necessary dialogue will you almost always find another dialogue that seems superfluous; but examine it carefully, and it will be borne home to you that this is the only one that the soul can listen to profoundly, for here alone is it the soul that is being addressed.
Page 25 - To those round about us there happen incessant and countless adventures, whereof every one, it would seem, contains a germ of heroism ; but the adventure passes away, and heroic deed, is there none. But when Jesus Christ met the Samaritan, met a few children, an adulterous woman, then did humanity rise three times in succession to the level of God.