Page:Prophets of dissent essays on Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Nietzsche and Tolstoy (1918).djvu/42

Rh idealist, Friedrich Schiller, describes in magnificent metaphor as

In the labyrinth of the subliminal consciousness there lurks, however, a great danger for the seeker after the hidden treasures: the paralyzing effect of fatalism upon the normal energies. Maeterlinck was seriously threatened by this danger during his earlier period. How he eventually contrived his liberation from the clutch of fatalism is not made entirely clear by the progress of his thought. At all events, an era of greater intellectual freedom, which ultimately was to create him the undisputed captain of his soul and master of his fate, was soon to arrive for him. It is heralded by another book of essays: "Wisdom and Destiny." But, as has been stated, we may in his case hardly hope to trace the precise route traveled by the mind between the points of departure and arrival.

So closely are the vital convictions in this truthful writer linked with the artistic traits of his work that without some grasp of his metaphysics even the technical peculiarities of his plays cannot be