Page:Prophets of dissent essays on Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Nietzsche and Tolstoy (1918).djvu/60

Rh very purpose to which the so-called Futurists think they must sacrifice all traditional conceptions of Art; and achieves it without any brutal stripping and skinning of the poetic subject, without the hideous exhibition of its disjecta membra, and above all, without that implied disqualification for the higher artistic mission which alone could induce a man to limit his service to the dishing-up of chunks and collops, "cubic" or amorphous.

In recognition of a certain tendency towards mannerism that lay in his technique, Maeterlinck, in a spirit of self-persiflage, labeled the book of one-act plays which he next published, (1894), Trots Petits Drames pour Marionettes ("Three Little Puppet Plays"). They are entitled, severally: Alladine et Palomides, Interieur, and La Mort de Tintagiles. While in motifs and materials as well as in the principal points of style these playlets present a sort of epitome of his artistic progression up to date, they also display some new and significant qualities. Of the three the first named is most replete with suggestive symbolism and at the same time most remindful of the older plays, especially of "Pélléas and Mélisande." King Ablamore is in character and demeanor clearly a counterpart of King Arkel. To