Maurice Maeterlinck - The Wrack of the Storm
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Maurice Maeterlinck >> The Wrack of the Storm
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Our cause is her cause; she owes us her support. When a work of beauty
is destroyed, her own genius and her own eternal gods are outraged. As
for America, she more than any other country stands for the future.
She should think of the days that will follow after this war. When the
great peace descends upon the earth, let not the earth be found desert
and robbed of all its jewels. The places at which the earth is
beautiful because of centuries of effort, because of the successful
zeal and patience and genius of a race, are not so many. This corner
of Flanders, over which death now hovers, is one of those consecrated
spots. Were it to perish, men as yet unborn, men who at last, perhaps,
will achieve happiness, would lack memories and examples which nothing
could replace.
* * * * *
PRO PATRIA: I
V
PRO PATRIA: I[2]
1
I need not here recall the events that hurled Belgium into the depths
of distress most glorious where she is struggling to-day. She has been
punished as never nation was punished for doing her duty as never
nation did before. She saved the world while knowing that she could
not be saved. She saved it by flinging herself in the path of the
oncoming barbarians, by allowing herself to be trampled to death in
order to give the defenders of justice time, not to rescue her, for
she was well aware that rescue could not come in time, but to collect
the forces needed to save our Latin civilization from the greatest
danger that has ever threatened it. She has thus done this
civilization, which is the only one whereunder the majority of men are
willing or able to live, a service exactly similar to that which
Greece, at the time of the great Asiatic invasions, rendered to the
mother of this civilization. But, while the service is similar, the
act surpasses all comparison. We may ransack history in vain for aught
to approach it in grandeur. The magnificent sacrifice at Thermopylae,
which is perhaps the noblest action in the annals of war, is illumined
with an equally heroic but less ideal light, for it was less
disinterested and more material. Leonidas and his three hundred
Spartans were in fact defending their homes, their wives, their
children, all the realities which they had left behind them. King
Albert and his Belgians, on the other hand, knew full well that, in
barring the invader's road, they were inevitably sacrificing their
homes, their wives and their children. Unlike the heroes of Sparta,
instead of possessing an imperative and vital interest in fighting,
they had everything to gain by not fighting and nothing to lose--save
honour. In the one scale were fire and the sword, ruin, massacre, the
infinite disaster which we see; in the other was that little word
honour, which also represents infinite things, but things which we do
not see, or which we must be very pure and very great to see quite
clearly. It has happened now and again in history that a man standing
higher than his fellows perceives what this word represents and
sacrifices his life and the life of those whom he loves to what he
perceives; and we have not without reason devoted to such men a sort
of cult that places them almost on a level with the gods. But what had
never yet happened--and I say this without fear of contradiction from
whosoever cares to search the memory of man--is that a whole people,
great and small, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, deliberately
immolated itself thus for the sake of an unseen thing.
2
And observe that we are not discussing one of those heroic resolutions
which are taken in a moment of enthusiasm, when man easily surpasses
himself, and which have not to be maintained when, forgetting his
intoxication, he lapses on the morrow to the dead level of his
everyday life. We are concerned with a resolution that has had to be
taken and maintained every morning, for now nearly four months, in the
midst of daily increasing distress and disaster. And not only has this
resolution not wavered by a hair's breadth, but it grows as steadily
as the national misfortune; and to-day, when this misfortune is
reaching its full, the national resolution is likewise attaining its
zenith. I have seen many of my refugee fellow-countrymen: some used to
be rich and had lost their all; others were poor before the war and
now no longer owned even what the poorest own. I have received many
letters from every part of Europe where duty's exiles had sought a
brief instant of repose. In them there was lamentation, as was only
too natural, but not a reproach, not a regret, not a word of
recrimination. I did not once come upon that hopeless but excusable
cry which, one would think, might so easily have sprung from
despairing lips:
"If our king had not done what he did, we should not be suffering what
we are suffering to-day."
The idea does not even occur to them. It is as though this thought
were not of those which can live in that atmosphere purified by
misfortune. They are not resigned, for to be resigned means to
renounce the strife, no longer to keep up one's courage. They are
proud and happy in their distress. They have a vague feeling that this
distress will regenerate them after the manner of a baptism of faith
and glory and ennoble them for all time in the remembrance of men. An
unexpected breath, coming from the secret reserves of the human race
and from the summits of the human heart, has suddenly passed over
their lives and given them a single soul, formed of the same heroic
substance as that of their great king.
3
They have done what had never before been done; and it is to be hoped
for the happiness of mankind that no nation will ever again be called
upon for a like sacrifice. But this wonderful example will not be
lost, even though there be no longer any occasion to imitate it. At a
time when the universal conscience seemed about to bend under the
weight of long prosperity and selfish materialism, suddenly it raised
by several degrees what we may term the political morality of the
world and lifted it all at once to a height which it had not yet
reached and from which it will never again be able to descend, for
there are actions so glorious, actions which fill so great a place in
our memory, that they found a sort of new religion and definitely fix
the limits of the human conscience and of human loyalty and courage.
They have really, as I have already said and as history will one day
establish with greater eloquence and authority than mine, they have
really saved Latin civilization. They had stood for centuries at the
junction of two powerful and hostile forms of culture. They had to
choose and they did not hesitate. Their choice was all the more
significant, all the more instructive, inasmuch as none was so well
qualified as they to choose with a full knowledge of what they were
doing. You are all aware that more than half of Belgium is of Teutonic
stock. She was therefore, thanks to her racial affinities, better able
than any other to understand the culture that was being offered her,
together with the imputation of dishonour which it included. She
understood it so well that she rejected it with an outbreak of horror
and disgust unparalleled in violence, spontaneous, unanimous and
irresistible, thus pronouncing a verdict from which there was no
appeal and giving the world a peremptory lesson sealed with every drop
of her blood.
4
But to-day she is at the end of her resources. She has exhausted not
her courage but her strength. She has paid with all that she possesses
for the immense service which she has rendered to mankind. Thousands
and thousands of her children are dead; all her riches have perished;
almost all her historic memories, which were her pride and her
delight, almost all her artistic treasures, which were numbered among
the fairest in this world, are destroyed for ever. She is nothing more
than a desert whence stand out, more or less intact, four great towns
alone, four towns which the Rhenish hordes, for whom the epithet of
barbarians is in point of fact too honourable, appear to have spared
only so that they may keep back one last and monstrous revenge for the
day of the inevitable rout. It is certain that Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges
and Brussels are doomed beyond recall. In particular, the admirable
Grand'Place, the Hotel de Ville and the Cathedral at Brussels are, I
know, undermined: I repeat, I know it from private and trustworthy
testimony against which no denial can prevail. A spark will be enough
to turn one of the recognized marvels of Europe into a heap of ruins
like those of Ypres, Malines and Louvain. Soon after--for, short of
immediate intervention, the disaster is as certain as though it were
already accomplished--Bruges, Antwerp and Ghent will suffer the same
fate; and in a moment, as I was saying the other day, there will
vanish from sight one of the corners of this earth in which the
greatest store of memories, of historic matter and artistic beauties
had been accumulated.
5
The time has come to end this foolery! The time has come for
everything that draws breath to rise up against these systematic,
insane and stupid acts of destruction, perpetrated without any
military excuse or strategic object. The reason why we are at last
uttering a great cry of distress, we who are above all a silent
people, the reason why we turn to your mighty and noble country is
that Italy is to-day the only European power that is still in a
position to stop the unchained brute on the brink of his crime. You
are ready. You have but to stretch out a hand to save us. We have not
come to beg for our lives: these no longer count with us and we have
already offered them up. But, in the name of the last beautiful things
that the barbarians have left us, we come with our prayers to the land
of all beautiful things. It must not be, it shall not be that, on the
day when at last we return, not to our homes, for most of these are
destroyed, but to our native soil, that soil is so laid waste as to
have become an unrecognizable desert. You know better than any others
what memories mean, what masterpieces mean to a nation, for your
country is covered with memories and masterpieces. It is also the
land of justice and the cradle of the law, which is simply justice
that has taken cognizance of itself. On this account, Italy owes us
justice. And she owes it to herself to put a stop to the greatest
iniquity in the annals of history, for not to put a stop to it when
one has the power is almost tantamount to taking part in it. It is for
Italy as much as for France that we have suffered. She is the source,
she is the very mother of the ideal for which we have fought and for
which the last of our soldiers are still fighting in the last of our
trenches.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: Delivered at the Scala Theatre, Milan, 30 November,
1914.]
* * * * *
HEROISM
VI
HEROISM
1
One of the consoling surprises of this war is the unlooked-for and, so
to speak, universal heroism which it has revealed among all the
nations taking part in it.
We were rather inclined to believe that courage, physical and moral
fortitude, self-denial, stoicism, the renunciation of every sort of
comfort, the faculty of self-sacrifice and the power of facing death
belonged only to the more primitive, the less happy, the less
intelligent nations, to the nations least capable of reasoning, of
appreciating danger and of picturing in their imagination the dreadful
abyss that separates this life from the life unknown. We were even
almost persuaded that war would one day cease for lack of soldiers,
that is to say, of men foolish enough or unhappy enough to risk the
only absolute realities--health, physical comfort, an unimpaired body
and, above all, life, the greatest of earthly possessions--for the
sake of an ideal which, like all ideals, is more or less invisible.
And this argument seemed the more natural and convincing because, as
existence grew gentler and men's nerves more sensitive, the means of
destruction by war showed themselves more cruel, ruthless and
irresistible. It seemed more and more probable that no man would ever
again endure the infernal horrors of a battlefield and that, after the
first slaughter, the opposing armies, officers and men alike, all
seized with insuppressible panic, would turn their backs upon one
another, in simultaneous, supernatural affright, and flee from
unearthly terrors exceeding the most monstrous anticipations of those
who had let them loose.
2
To our great astonishment the very opposite is now proclaimed.
We realize with amazement that until to-day we had but an incomplete
and inaccurate conception of man's courage. We looked upon it as an
exceptional virtue and one which is the more admired as being also the
rarer the farther we go back in history. Remember, for instance,
Homer's heroes, the ancestors of all the heroes of our day. Study them
closely. These models of antiquity, the first professors, the first
masters of bravery, are not really very brave. They have a wholesome
dread of being hit or wounded and an ingenuous and manifest fear of
death. Their mighty conflicts are declamatory and decorative but not
so very bloody; they inflict more noise than pain upon their
adversaries, they deliver many more words than blows. Their defensive
weapons--and this is characteristic--are greatly superior to their
arms of offence; and death is an unusual, unforeseen and almost
indecorous event which throws the ranks into disorder and most often
puts a stop to the combat or provokes a headlong flight that seems
quite natural. As for the wounds, these are enumerated and described,
sung and deplored as so many remarkable phenomena. On the other hand,
the most discreditable routs, the most shameful panics are frequent;
and the old poet relates them, without condemning them, as ordinary
incidents to be ascribed to the gods and inevitable in any warfare.
This kind of courage is that of all antiquity, more or less. We will
not linger over it, nor delay to consider the battles of the Middle
Ages or the Renascence, in which the fiercest hand-to-hand encounters
of the mercenaries often left not more than half-a-dozen victims on
the field. Let us rather come straight to the great wars of the
Empire. Here the courage displayed begins to resemble our own, but
with notable differences. In the first place, those concerned were
solely professionals. We see not a whole nation fighting, but a
delegation, a martial selection, which, it is true, becomes gradually
more extensive, but never, as in our time, embraces every man between
eighteen and fifty years of age capable of shouldering a weapon.
Again--and above all--every war was reduced to two or three pitched
battles, that is to say, two or three culminating moments; immense
efforts, but efforts of a few hours, or a day at most, towards which
the combatants directed all the vigour and all the heroism accumulated
during long weeks or months of preparation and waiting. Afterwards,
whether the result was victory or defeat, the fighting was over;
relaxation, respite and rest followed; men went back to their homes.
Destiny must not be defied more than once; and they knew that in the
most terrible affray the chances of escaping death were as twenty to
one.
3
Nowadays, everything is changed; and death itself is no longer what it
was. Formerly, you looked it in the face, you knew whence it came and
who sent it to you. It had a dreadful aspect, but one that remained
human. Its ways were not unknown: its long spells of sleep, its brief
awakenings, its bad days and dangerous hours. At present, to all these
horrors it adds the great, intolerable fear of mystery. It no longer
has any aspect, no longer has habits or spells of sleep and it is
never still. It is always ready, always on the watch, everywhere
present, scattered, intangible and dense, stealthy and cowardly,
diffuse, all-encompassing, innumerous, looming at every point of the
horizon, rising from the waters and falling from the skies,
indefatigable, inevitable, filling the whole of space and time for
days, weeks and months without a minute's lull, without a second's
intermission. Men live, move and sleep in the meshes of its fatal web.
They know that the least step to the right or left, a head bowed or
lifted, a body bent or upright is seen by its eyes and draws its
thunder.
Hitherto we had no example of this preponderance of the destructive
forces. We should never have believed that man's nerves could resist
so great a trial. The nerves of the bravest man are tempered to face
death for the space of a second, but not to live in the hourly
expectation of death and nothing else. Heroism was once a sharp and
rugged peak, reached for a moment but soon quitted, for
mountain-peaks are not inhabitable. To-day it is a boundless plain, as
uninhabitable as the peaks; but we are not permitted to descend from
it. And so, at the very moment when man appeared most exhausted and
enervated by the comforts and vices of civilization, at the moment
when he was happiest and therefore most selfish, when, possessing the
minimum of faith and vainly seeking a new ideal, he seemed least
capable of sacrificing himself for an idea of any kind, he finds
himself suddenly confronted with an unprecedented danger, which he is
almost certain that the most heroic nations of history would not have
faced nor even dreamed of facing, whereas he does not even dream that
it is possible to do aught but face it. And let it not be said that we
had no choice, that the danger and the struggle were thrust upon us,
that we had to defend ourselves or die and that in such cases there
are no cowards. It is not true: there was, there always has been,
there still is a choice.
4
It is not man's life that is at stake, but the idea which he forms of
the honour, the happiness and the duties of his life. To save his life
he had but to submit to the enemy; the invader would not have
exterminated him. You cannot exterminate a great people; it is not
even possible to enslave it seriously or to inflict great sorrow upon
it for long. He had nothing to be afraid of except disgrace. He did
not so much as see the infamous temptation appear above the horizon of
his most instinctive fears; he does not even suspect that it is able
to exist; and he will never perceive it, whatever sacrifices may yet
await him. We are not, therefore, speaking of a heroism that would be
but the last resource of despair, the heroism of the animal driven to
bay and fighting blindly to delay death's coming for a moment. No, it
is heroism freely donned, deliberately and unanimously hailed, heroism
on behalf of an idea and a sentiment, in other words, heroism in its
clearest, purest and most virginal form, a disinterested and
whole-hearted sacrifice for that which men regard as their duty to
themselves, to their kith and kin, to mankind and to the future. If
life and personal safety were more precious than the idea of honour,
of patriotism and of fidelity to tradition and the race, there was, I
repeat, and there is still a choice to be made; and never perhaps in
any war was the choice easier, for never did men feel more free, never
indeed were they more free to choose.
But this choice, as I have said, did not dare show its faintest shadow
on the lowest horizons of even the most ignoble consciences. Are you
quite sure that, in other times which we think better and more
virtuous than our own, men would not have seen it, would not have
spoken of it? Can you find a nation, even among the greatest, which,
after six months of a war compared with which all other wars seem
child's-play, of a war which threatens and uses up all that nation's
life and all its possessions, can you find, I say, in history, not an
instance--for there is no instance--but some similar case which allows
you to presume that the nation would not have faltered, would not at
least, were it but for a second, have looked down and cast its eyes
upon an inglorious peace?
5
Nevertheless, they seemed much stronger than we are, all those who
came before us. They were rude, austere, much closer to nature, poor
and often unhappy. They had a simpler and a more rigid code of
thought; they had the habit of physical suffering, of hardship and of
death. But I do not believe that any one dares contend that these men
would have done what our soldiers are now doing, that they would have
endured what is being endured all around us. Are we not entitled to
conclude from this that civilization, contrary to what was feared, so
far from enervating, depraving, weakening, lowering and dwarfing man,
elevates him, purifies him, strengthens him, ennobles him, makes him
capable of acts of sacrifice, generosity and courage which he did not
know before? The fact is that civilization, even when it seems to
entail corruption, brings intelligence with it and that intelligence,
in days of trial, stands for potential pride, nobility and heroism.
That, as I said in the beginning, is the unexpected and consoling
revelation of this horrible war: we can rely on man implicitly, place
the greatest trust in him, nor fear lest, in laying aside his
primitive brutality, he should lose his manly qualities. The greater
his progress in the conquest of nature and the greater his apparent
attachment to material welfare, the more does he become capable,
nevertheless, unconsciously, deep down in the best part of him, of
self-detachment and of self-sacrifice for the common safety and the
more does he understand that he is nothing when he compares himself
with the eternal life of his forbears and his children.
It was so great a trial that we dared not, before this war, have
contemplated it. The future of the human race was at stake; and the
magnificent response that comes to us from every side reassures us
fully as to the issue of other struggles, more formidable still, which
no doubt await us when it will be a question no longer of fighting our
fellow-men, but rather of facing the more powerful and cruel of the
great mysterious enemies that nature holds in reserve against us. If
it be true, as I believe, that humanity is worth just as much as the
sum total of latent heroism which it contains, then we may declare
that humanity was never stronger nor more exemplary than now and that
it is at this moment reaching one of its highest points and capable of
braving everything and hoping everything. And it is for this reason
that, despite our present sadness, we are entitled to congratulate
ourselves and to rejoice.
* * * * *
PRO PATRIA: II
VII
PRO PATRIA: II[3]
1
More than three months ago, I was in one of the grandest of your
cities, a city that welcomed in a manner which I shall never forget
the cause which I had come among you to represent. I was there, as I
told my hearers at the time, in the name of the last remnants of
beauty that the barbarians had left us, to plead with the land of
every kind of beauty. Those threatened beauties, our only cities yet
intact, the treasures and sanctuaries of our whole past and of all our
race, are still reeling on the brink of the same abyss and, failing a
miracle which we dare not hope for, they will suffer the fate of
Ypres, Louvain, Malines, Termonde, Dixmude and so many other less
illustrious victims. The danger in which they stand has no doubt
aroused the indignation of the civilized world; but not a hand has
armed itself to defend them. I blame no one; I reproach no one; the
morality of the nations is a virtue that has not yet emerged from the
state of infancy; and fortunately, by the hazard of war, it is not yet
too late to save four innocent cities.
To-day I have not come to speak of monuments, of historical relics,
nor even of the wrongs committed, of the violation of all the rights
and laws of warfare and every international convention, of
incendiarism, pillage and massacre; I have come simply to utter before
you the last distressful cry of a dying nation.
At this moment a tragedy is being enacted in Belgium such as has no
precedent in the history of civilized peoples, nor even in that of
the barbarians, for the barbarians, when committing their most
stupendous crimes, lacked the infernal deliberation and the
scientific, all-powerful means of working evil which to-day are in the
hands of those who profit by the resources and benefits of
civilization only to turn them against it and to seek the annihilation
of all its noblest and most generous characteristics. The despairing
rumours of this tragedy come to us only through the chinks of that
ensanguined well which isolates it from the rest of the world. Nothing
reaches our ears but the lies of the enemy. In reality, the whole of
Belgium is one huge Prussian prison, where every cry is cruelly and
methodically stifled and where no voices are heard save those of the
gaolers. Only now and again, after a thousand adventures, despite a
thousand perils, a letter from some kinsman or captive friend arrives
from the depths of that great living cemetery, bringing us a gleam of
authentic truth.
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