Page:Prophets of dissent essays on Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Nietzsche and Tolstoy (1918).djvu/73

Rh A like contrast between dejection and resilience would be brought to light by a comparison of the twelve lyric poems, Douze Chansons, (1897), with the Serres Chaudes. The mood is still greatly subdued; the new poetry is by no means free from sadness and a strain of resignation. But the half-stifled despair that cries out from the older book returns no dissonant echo in the new.

Even his dramatic technique comes under the sway of Maeterlinck's altered view of the world. The far freer use of exciting and eventful action testifies to increased elasticity and force. This is a marked feature of Sœur Beatrice ("Sister Beatrice"), (1900), a miracle play founded on the old story about the recreant nun who, broken from sin and misery, returns to the cloister and finds that during the many years of her absence her part and person have been carried out by the Holy Virgin herself.

Equally, the three other dramas of this epoch — Aglavaine et Selysette, Monna Fanna, and Joyzelle —are highly available for scenic enactment. Of the three, Monna Vanna, (1902), in particular is conspicuous for a wholly unexpected aptitude of characterization, and for the unsurpassed intensity of its situations, which in this isolated