The Wrack of the Storm

The Wrack of the Storm

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wrack of the Storm, by Maurice
Maeterlinck This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost
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Title: The Wrack of the Storm
Author: Maurice Maeterlinck
Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
Release Date: February 26, 2006 [EBook #17861]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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WRACK OF THE STORM ***

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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.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE
The reader taking up this volume will, for the first time in the work of
one who hitherto had cursed no man, find words of hatred and
malediction. I would gladly have avoided them, for I hold that he who

takes upon himself to write pledges himself to say nothing that can
derogate from the respect and love which we owe to all men. I have had
to utter these words; and I am as much surprised as saddened at what I
have been constrained to say by the force of events and of truth. I loved
Germany and numbered friends there, who now, dead or living, are
alike dead to me. I thought her great and upright and generous; and to
me she was ever kindly and hospitable. But there are crimes that
obliterate the past and close the future. In rejecting hatred I should have
shown myself a traitor to love.
I tried to lift myself above the fray; but, the higher I rose, the more I
saw of the madness and the horror of it, of the justice of one cause and
the infamy of the other. It is possible that one day, when time has
wearied remembrance and restored the ruins, wise men will tell us that
we were mistaken and that our standpoint was not lofty enough; but
they will say it because they will no longer know what we know, nor
will they have seen what we have seen.
MAURICE MAETERLINCK.
NICE, 1916.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
The present volume contains, in the chronological order in which they
were produced, all the essays published and all the speeches delivered
by M. Maeterlinck since the beginning of the war, upon which, as will
be perceived, each one of them has a direct bearing. They are printed as
written; and they throw an interesting light upon the successive phases
of the author's psychology during the Titanic and hideous struggle that
has affected the mental attitude of us all.
In Italy forms the preface to M. Jules Destrée's book, _En Italie avant la
guerre, 1914-15_. Of the remaining essays, some have appeared in
various English and American periodicals; others are now printed in
translation for the first time.

I have also had M. Maeterlinck's leave to include in this volume his
first published work, The Massacre of the Innocents. This powerful
sketch in the Flemish manner saw the light originally in the Pléïade, in
1886, and may at the present time, to use the author's own words in a
note to myself, be regarded as "a sort of vague symbolic prophecy." An
English version by Mrs. Edith Wingate Rinder was printed in the Dome
in 1899; another has since been issued