Page:Prophets of dissent essays on Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Nietzsche and Tolstoy (1918).djvu/72

Rh mystery. "The Unknown took chiefly the aspect of a power, itself but blindly groping in the dark, yet disposing with inexorable unfeelingness of the fates of men."

Evidently those same plays are passed once more in self-critical review in Ardiane et Barbe-Bleue ("Ardiane and Blue-Beard"), (1899), notwithstanding the fact that the author disclaims any philosophic purpose and presents his work as a mere libretto. We cannot regard it as purely accidental that of Blue-Beard's terror-stricken wives, four, — Selysette, Mélisande, Ygraine, Alladine, — bear the names of earlier heroines, and, besides, that each of these retains with the name also the character of her namesake. The symbolism is too transparent. The child-wives of the cruel knight, forever in a state of trembling fear, are too passive to extricate themselves from their fate, whereas Ardiane succeeds instantly in breaking her captivity, because she has the spirit and strength to shatter the window and let in the light and air. The contrast between her resolute personality and those five inert bundles of misery undoubtedly connotes the difference between the author's paralyzing fatalism in the past and his present dynamic optimism.