Stumbling Upon Words from Maeterlinck in a Book about Chesterton

As I was reading a selection ("Destiny's Pursuit") from David Fagerberg's Chesterton is Everywhere (which I bought at Eighth Day Books of course) I was surprised to see a quotation from the Symbolist playwright Maurice Maeterlinck about happiness.(Well, he did write The Blue Bird about happiness but that's not what I think of first when I see the name Maeterlinck.)

Fagerberg is discussing Chesterton and happiness and suggests that "happiness is not so passive; perhaps happiness even has the power to influence destiny." Then he suggests that Maeterlinck offers an insight: "that wise persons know in advance" . . .

how events will be received in their soul. The event itself is pure water that flows from the pitcher of fate, and seldom has it either savour or perfume or color. (from Wisdom and Destiny by Maeterlinck)

Maeterlinck cites the examples of Oedipus and Hamlet: they are not wise enough to respond well to events and yet remain happy: other wiser characters could, but "Hamlet is unhappy because he moves in unnatural darkness." (p. 24)

Immediately I thought one of the unhappiest characters on any stage: Maeterlinck's Mélisande in his play Pelléas et Mélisande and in Debussy's opera of the same name. Her key phrase is some variation on "I am not happy":

Melisande
Je suis...
Je suis malade ici...

Golaud
Tu es malade?
(pause)
Qu'as-tu donc, qu'as-tu donc, Mélisande?

Melisande
Je ne sais pas...
Je suis malade ici.
Je préfére vous le dire aujourd'hui;
Seigneur, je ne suis pas heureuse ici...

And the kingdom of Allemonde is very dark as her husband Golaud admits: so many forests, famine in the land, dark caverns and deep wells, storms off the coast of the dark sea that obscure the beacon lights . . .

Golaud
Qu'est-ce donc?
Ne peux-tu pas te faire à la vie qu'on mêne ici?
Il est vrai que ce château est très vieux et très sombre...
Il est très froid et très profond.
Et tous ceux qui l'habitent sont déjà vieux.
Et la campagne peut sembler triste aussi,
avec toutes ces forêts, toutes ces vieilles forêts sans lumière.
Mais on peut égayer tout cela si l'on veut.
Et puis, la joie, la joie, on n'en a pas tous les jours:
Mais dis-moi quelque chose;
n'importe quoi, je ferai tout ce que tu voudras...

Melisande
Oui, c'est vrai...on ne voit jamais le ciel ici.
Je lai vu la première fois ce matin...

She's just been able to see the sky that day. And when she leaves Golaud on a fruitless errand, she repeats "Oh! Oh! Je ne suis pas heureuse, Je ne suis pas heureuse" and weeps.

There are lots of opinions about Melisande and Debussy's opera is an acquired taste: one either loves it or leaves it (after a couple of acts in the opera house). 

It's one of my favorite operas from listening to recordings and opera broadcasts. It's not going to be in a regional or local opera company's repertoire: too risky. Not even the Met in Manhattan stages it that often (119 performances between 1925 and 2019; compare that to another French opera, Gounod's Faust: 752 from 1883-2013. The most performed opera at the Met: La Boheme, 1,440 times from 1900 to 2025.) Yes, there's an online database! (It's not even performed that often at the Paris Opera; it debuted at the Opera-Comique.)

Melisande is not wise (she never knows anything and she'll lie without reason), she lives in darkness, the darkness of Maeterlinck's symbolist world, and she's not happy. Instead of "Hamlet is unhappy because he moves in unnatural darkness" would Maeterlinck say that Melisande is unhappy for the same reason?

At the end of the opera, she wants the windows opened so she can see, see the sun:

Melisande
Ouvrez la fenêtre...ouvrez la fenêtre...

Arkel
Veux-tu que j'ouvre celle-ci, Mélisande?

Melisande
Non, non, la grande fenêtre...c'est pour voir...

Arkel
Est-ce que l'air de la mer n'est pas trop froid ce soir?

Le medecin
Faites, faites...

Melisande
Merci...
Est-ce le soleil qui se couche?

Arkel
Oui; c'est le soleil qui se couche sur la mer; il est tard.
Comment te trouves-tu, Mélisande?

But of course the sun is setting. And it gets in her eyes so she can't see Golaud.

Can you imagine G.K. Chesterton at a performance of Pelléas et Mélisande? It was performed at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden in 1909. If he had seen and heard it, would he have agreed with Arkel in an earlier scene, “si j’étais Dieu, j’aurais pitié du coeur des hommes”. (If I were God, I would pity the hearts of men.)*? Or would he have left at the first intermission?

*Which makes one think of “Behold this Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to consuming itself to witness its love."

Image Source (Public Domain): Photograph of Act 5 of the original 1902 production of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, published in Le Théâte, June 1902