Page:Prophets of dissent essays on Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Nietzsche and Tolstoy (1918).djvu/61

Rh be sure he makes a temporary stand against the might of Fate, but his resistance is meek and futile, and his wisdom culminates in the same old fatalistic formula: "Je sais qu'on ne fait pas ce que l'on voudrait faire."

L'Intérieur ("Home") handles a theme almost identical with that of L'Intruse: Life and Death separated only by a thin pane of glass,—the sudden advent of affliction from a cloudless sky. In this little tragedy a family scene, enacted in "dumb show," is watched from the outside. The play is without suspense in the customary use of the term, since after the first whispered conversation between the bringers of the fateful tidings the audience is fully aware of the whole story:—the daughter of the house, for whose return the little group is waiting, has been found dead in the river. The quiescent mood is sustained to the end; no great outburst of lamentation; the curtain drops the instant the news has been conveyed. But the poignancy of the tragic strain is only enhanced by the repression of an exciting climax.

"The Death of Tintagiles" repeats in a still more harrowing form the fearful predicament of a helpless child treated with so much dramatic tension in Maeterlinck's first tragedy. Again, as