“In appreciation of his many-sided literary activities and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy which reveal, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers’ own feelings and stimulate imaginations”
As I started reading The Blue Bird it struck me I was looking at The Nutcracker in reverse. The play opens in the cottage of a woodcutter. They are not poverty stricken but far from rich. It is Christmas Eve and Mummy Tyl has just tucked her son, Tyltyl, and daughter, Mytyl, in for the night. Of course, as soon as she leaves the room the children start to talk about Christmas. They are drawn to the window where they can look across the street into the home of some rich children at a lush Christmas party. Maurice Maeterlinck writes it so well you can see the magnificent Christmas tree gleaming in their eyes and feel their mouths water over the sweets and cakes. Clara and Councilor Drosselmeyer could easily be across the street. Obviously, I was on my way into another fairy tale. It then occurred that I had been encountering a lot of fairy tale type fantasies recently. Kipling’s Jungle Book fits as does Selma Lagerlöf’s The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. In alternating years (1907 Kipling, 1909 Lagerlöf, and 1911 Maeterlinck) the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to spinners of fantasy yarns. In the United States one of our greatest story tellers, Mark Twain, gave us A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court (1889), The Prince and the Pauper (1882), and The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896). Why?
The history of the period may hold a clue. In 1909 Albert Einstein was invited by the University of Zurich to the newly created Chair of Theoretical Physics. His 1905 Special Theory of Relativity along with Max Planck’s introduction of quantum theory shook Newtonian physics and introduced randomness. With modern art, Darwin and Freud uncertainly, probability and mystery were introduced to the people of the early 20th Century. The Wright Brothers and German Zeppelins were active; the idea of humankind soaring above the ground had moved from fantasy to reality. In 1909 the Vatican beautified Joan of Arc setting her on her way to sainthood. The next year they imposed a compulsory oath against “modernism” on all priests. And to top all of that in 1910 the Earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet. The horizon for humankind was moved to infinity. It was a time to glory in imagination. In his plays Maurice Maeterlinck delighted in taking us to enchanted places.
Born to a middle class family on August 29, 1862, he was sent off to be educated as a lawyer. Having a weak voice and ascetic bent he was unsuited for the bar and soon went to Paris to write poems. His mysterious drama Princess Maleine, which made his name on the Paris stage, was followed by a string of mystical dramas. So popular was his work Claude Debussy composed music to fit the magic. The Blue Bird (1911) is regarded as the peak of his career. With its performance in Paris, Maeterlinck was mentioned as the Francophone Shakespeare.
The Blue Bird is a morality play. While the children are delighting in their imaginings of the Christmas party across the way a fairy enters and asks for a blue bird which she needs to cure her daughter. Mytyl tells her that her brother has a turtle dove in a cage. Tyltyl objects and becomes possessive. The fairy refuses the bird as not sufficiently blue. She puts a little green hat with a diamond in the cockade on Tyltyl’s head. She instructs him to turn the diamond so he can see the past or the future. In the world they enter inanimate objects come alive and their pets are humanized. It is easy to see that Maurice Maeterlinck was a dog lover; his characterization of the family bulldog is absolutely delightful. I am sure if a dog could talk this would be what it would say. The cat is a sly and conniving sneak; my opinion of all cats. The children’s guide is Light who takes them into a shadow world in search of the Blue Bird which the fairy demands. Along with Dog and Cat they are accompanied by Bread, Sugar, Fire, Water, and Milk all humanized and with the characteristics animate forms of these substances might take. On their quest they meet their deceased grandparents, Trees (each specie with a different personality, all resenting them as the children of a woodcutter), Animals (again with specific personalities), The Luxuries (actually the vices), The Happinesses (the virtues), and Children preparing to be born (they are required to prepare their own destiny). All the while they are subject to the machinations of the various characters, usually with the cat as the primary schemer. Maeterlinck gives very detailed costuming and stage directions. The sets are very vivid and should be executed by Marc Chagall or Salvador Dali. At the end of the play Tyltyl and Mytyl are back in reality and the fairy is their neighbor Berlingot whose daughter is sick. All of the birds they gathered on their quest either died or turned the wrong color so Tyltyl offers his captive turtle dove. This bird turns a bit bluer and the girl experiences a miraculous cure. Everybody lives happily ever after.
I thoroughly enjoyed this play. There is a 1918 silent and a 1940 Shirley Temple film version of the play available on Netflix. I have them both on my list and am looking forward to watching them. I imagine the 1918 film will be closer to the real thing. And yes, it is from this play that the expression “Blue Bird of Happiness” emanates.
As Maurice Maeterlinck aged he came to prefer nature to the company of his fellowman. He fled Paris for the countryside where he took a keen interest in birds, insects and flowers. These inspired some of his most beautiful pieces. In 1900 he published The Life of the Bee. This was followed by The Intelligence of Flowers (1907), The Life of the Termite (1927), and The Life of the Ant (1930). I remember well my father’s uncle who kept bee hives in the yard adjacent to the house where I now live. My sixth grade teacher was an avid apiarist. When my brother proposed keeping bees I enthusiastically joined in. After several years the rest of my life got in the way. My brother remains committed; I feel guilty. With that background I enjoyed every minute of The Life of the Bee. I liked it so much I bought a better copy which I gave to my brother as a Christmas present. Maeterlinck makes it clear that he is not writing a “how-to” book. To his mind those have been written. He is writing a philosophy of the life of the bee. In an awestruck voice he describes the complex community of the honey bee. He speaks of “the spirit of the hive” and “the spirit of initiative” to be found among these vital insects. After presenting two theories on the queen’s role in controlling the gender of the larva he says, “… Though I do not for a moment pretend to decide which is the more correct; for indeed, the further we go and the more closely we study, the plainly is it brought home to us that we merely are waifs shipwrecked on the ocean of nature; and ever and anon, from sudden wave that shall be more transparent than others, there leaps forth a fact that in an instant confounds all we imagined we knew.” Such humility speaks to the nobility of the man. Maurice Maeterlinck is on my list of writers to which I will return.
Get out the beer, sausages and Beethoven; we are back in Germany with Gerhart Hauptmann, playwright and novelist.
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