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

Here Is the Little Door, Again

So yesterday I was on the Son Rise Morning Show talking with Matt Swaim about the Chestertons and Christmas. In my preview to the interview I mentioned that one of Frances Chesterton's poems, "Here is the Little Door" had been set to music by Herbert Howells.

Now he's not the only one. BBC Music commissions a new carol every year. This year, composer Owain Park chose to set Frances Chesterton's poem:

Here is the little door, lift up the latch, oh lift! 
We need not wander more but enter with our gift; 
Our gift of finest gold, 
Gold that was never bought nor sold; 
Myrrh to be strewn about his bed; 
Incense in clouds about his head; 
All for the child that stirs not in his sleep, 
But holy slumber holds with ass and sheep. 

Bend low about his bed, for each he has a gift; 
See how his eyes awake, lift up your hand, O lift! 
For gold, he gives a keen-edged sword 
(Defend with it thy little Lord!) 
For incense, smoke of battle red, 
Myrrh for the honoured happy dead; 
Gifts for his children, terrible and sweet, 
Touched by such tiny hands, and Oh such tiny feet.

Park comments:

One of my favourite carols [as a chorister at St Mary Redcliffe Church in Bristol] was Howells’s 1918 setting of Frances Chesterton’s poem Here is the little door. Howells’s music allows the words to resonate with both choir and congregation – at St Mary’s there was always an extra few seconds of quiet after we’d finished singing it. The poem consists of two stanzas: the first is reflective and subdued while the second is more colourful and lively.

Most lines seem to end strongly after a more questioning start, and so I’ve tried to express this using tension and release in the harmony. A lot of my choral music has been in many parts and is quite difficult to sing, so I wanted to sustain a simple idea over two verses without any divided parts. My hope is that I have captured something of the wonder I felt as a young singer.

The words are key to my setting of Here is the little door. I would encourage singers to be as expressive as possible with the text, even when everyone moves together. I’ve kept one set of words throughout to keep the score as uncluttered as possible, which sometimes means that the words aren’t vertically aligned with your part. Always move with your note, and with confidence. It would be a good idea for everyone to read through the poem together, to develop a collective interpretation.

The score is available here. A preview the Christmas 2019 issue is here.

As David Faberberg said in his 2013 book's title: Chesterton is everywhere!! Both of them!

By the way: David Faberberg may not be everywhere, but he is scheduled to be here in Wichita for the 10th annual Eighth Day Institute Symposium!