THE WRACK OF THE STORM

THE WORKS OF MAURICE MAETERLINCK

ESSAYS

• The Treasure of the Humble
• Wisdom and Destiny
• The Life of the Bee
• The Buried Temple
• The Double Garden
• The Measure of the Hours
• On Emerson, and Other Essays
• Our Eternity
• The Unknown Guest
• The Wrack of the Storm

PLAYS

• Sister Beatrice, and Ardiane and Barbe Bleue
• Joyzelle, and Monna Vanna
• The Blue Bird, A Fairy Play
• Mary Magdalene
• Pélléas and Mélisande, and Other Plays
• Princess Maleine
• The Intruder, and Other Plays
• Aglavaine and Selysette

HOLIDAY EDITIONS

• Our Friend the Dog
• The Swarm
• The Intelligence of the Flowers
• Death
• Thoughts from Maeterlinck
• The Blue Bird
• The Life of the Bee
• News of Spring and Other Nature Studies
• Poems

The
Wrack of the Storm

BY

MAURICE MAETERLINCK

Translated by

ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1916

Copyright, 1916

By Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc.

[Pg 5]

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

The reader taking up this volume will, for the first time in the workof one who hitherto had cursed no man, find words of hatred andmalediction. I would gladly have avoided them, for I hold that he whotakes upon himself to write pledges himself to say nothing that canderogate from the respect and love which we owe to all men. I have hadto utter these words; and I am as much surprised as saddened at what Ihave been constrained to say by the force of events and of truth. Iloved Germany and numbered friends there, who now, dead or living, arealike dead to me. I thought her great and upright and generous; and tome she was ever kindly and hospitable. But there are crimes thatobliterate the past and close the future. In [Pg 6]rejecting hatred Ishould have shown myself a traitor to love.

I tried to lift myself above the fray; but, the higher I rose, themore I saw of the madness and the horror of it, of the justice of onecause and the infamy of the other. It is possible that one day, whentime has wearied remembrance and restored the ruins, wise men willtell us that we were mistaken and that our standpoint was not loftyenough; but they will say it because they will no longer know what weknow, nor will they have seen what we have seen.

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