Page:Prophets of dissent essays on Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Nietzsche and Tolstoy (1918).djvu/34

Rh flesh and blood; they impress us as surpassingly strange mainly because somehow they are instinct with a life fundamentally more real than the superficial reality we know. For they are the "mediums and oracles of the fateful powers that stir human beings into action.

The poet of mysticism, then, delves into the mystic sources of our deeds, and makes us stand reverent with him before the unknowable forces by which we are controlled. Naturally he is obliged to shape his visions in dim outline. His aim is to shadow forth that which no naked eye can see, and it may be said in passing that he attains this aim with a mastery and completeness incomparably beyond the dubious skill displayed more recently by the grotesque gropings of the so-called futurist school. Perhaps one true secret of the perturbing strangeness of Maeterlinck's figures lies in the fact that the basic principle of their life, the one thoroughly vital element in them, if it does not sound too paradoxical to say so, is the idea of death. Maeterlinck's mood and temper are fully in keeping with the religious dogma that life is but a short dream—with Goethe he believes that "all things transitory but as symbols are sent," and apparently concurs in the creed voiced by one of