Shaw knows, does not
move by clockwork, and the ultimate justice will have to take count of
more exceptions and irregularities than Mr. Shaw takes count of. There
is a great living writer who has brought to bear on human problems as
consistent a logic as Mr. Shaw's, together with something which Mr. Shaw
disdains. Mr. Shaw's logic is sterile, because it is without sense of
touch, sense of sight, or sense of hearing; once set going it is
warranted to go straight, and to go through every obstacle. Tolstoi's
logic is fruitful, because it allows for human weakness, because it
understands, and because to understand is, among other things, to
pardon. In a word, the difference between the spirit of Tolstoi and the
spirit of Mr. Shaw is the difference between the spirit of Christ and
the spirit of Euclid.
"MONNA, VANNA"
In his earlier plays Maeterlinck invented a world of his own, which was
a sort of projection into space of the world of nursery legends and of
childish romances. It was at once very abstract and very local. There
was a castle by the sea, a "well at the world's end," a pool in a
forest; princesses with names out of the "Morte d'Arthur" lost crowns of
gold; and blind beggars without a name wandered in the darkness of
eternal terror.
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