Cobwebs of Thought | Page 9

as writing to and arguing with the King, who has said:
"My life...... Dies altogether with my brain, and arm,...... ....triumph
Thou, who dost not go."
And Cleon says if Sappho and Æschylus survive because we sing her
songs, and read his plays, let them come, "drink from thy cup, speak in
my place."
Instead of rejoicing in his works surviving he feels the horror of the
contrast, the life within his works, the decay within his heart. He
compares his sense of joy growing more acute and his soul's power and
insight more enlarged and keen, while his bodily powers decay. His
hairs fall more and more, his hand shakes, and the heavy years increase.
He realises:--
"The horror quickening.... The consummation coming past escape,
When I shall know most, and yet least enjoy-- When all my works
wherein I prove my worth, Being present still to mock me in men's
mouths, Alive still, in the phrase of such as thou, I, I, the feeling,
thinking, acting man, The man who loved his life so over much, Shall
sleep in my Urn. . . It is so horrible."
He imagines in his need some future state may be revealed by Zeus.
"Unlimited in capability For joy, as this is in desire for joy, To seek
which the joy hunger forces us:"
He speculates that this life may have been made straight, "to make
sweet the life at large."
And that we are: "freed by the throbbing impulse we call Death." But
he ends by fearing that were it possible Zeus must have revealed it.
This passionate pathetic longing for joy, and life beyond death finds an
echo in many hearts, which yet can admire the grand altruism of "The
Pilgrims" and the selfless spirit of the Impersonal Martyr. After
considering all this clash of thought, it seems as if it all resolved itself
into the individual temperament which settles and modifies and adapts

to itself the forms of our philosophies and religions, our Hopes and
Faiths, and Despairs.
For from whence comes the real power thinkers possess over us? It is
not in their forms of thought, as Matthew Arnold said most truly, but in
the tendencies, in the spirit which led them to adopt those formulas.
Every thinker has some secret, an exact object at which he aims, which
is "the cause of all his work, and the reason of his attraction" to some
readers, and his repulsion to others.
What was the secret aim then in George Eliot which made her believe
so firmly in the permanent influence of Humanity, and in the
annihilation of personal existence? Was the tendency of temperament
developed by her life and circumstances?
What was it that developed so strong an Individualism in Carlyle and
Browning and awoke in Browning such unlimited hope, and in Carlyle
such "unending sadness?"
Why did the darkness and the storm of his life give Mazzini so
passionate a belief in Humanity, and such an intimate faith in God?
These and such-like are the problems we should have in our minds as
we study the works of Great Writers, if we would penetrate into the
innermost core of their nature, in short, if we would really understand
them.

III.

MAETERLINCK ON HAMLET.
Maeterlinck, in his first essay, "The Treasure of the Humble," is,
undoubtedly, mystical. He does not argue, or define, or explain, he
asserts, but even in that book and far more so in his second, "Wisdom
and Destiny," it is real life which absorbs him as Alfred de Sutro his
translator points out. In this book "he endeavours in all simplicity to tell
what he sees." He is a Seer.
Maeterlinck's aim is to show that contrary to the usual idea, what we
call Fate, Destiny, is not something apart from ourselves, which
exercises power over us, but is the product of our own souls.
He takes many examples to prove this, of which Hamlet is one. Man,
said Maeterlinck, is his own Fate in an inner sense; he is superior to all
circumstances, when he refuses to be conquered by them. When his

soul is wise and has initiative power, it cannot be conquered by
external events, and happiness is inevitable to such a soul. Maeterlinck
asks: Where do we find the fatality in Hamlet? Would the evil of
Claudius and Queen Gertrude have spread its influence if a wise man
had been in the Palace? If a dominant, all powerful soul--a Jesus--had
been in Hamlet's palace at Elsinore, would the tragedy of four deaths
have happened? Can you conceive any wise man living in the unnatural
gloom that overhung Elsinore? Is not every action of Hamlet induced
by a fanatical impulse, which tells him that duty consists in revenge
alone? And revenge never