Maurice Maeterlinck "The Blind": the plot of the play and its meaning. Poetics of the one-act symbolist drama by M. Maeterlinck (“The Blind,” “Uninvited”). Drama by M. Maeterlinck “The Blue Bird” as a philosophical allegory

An old northern forest under a high starry sky. Leaning against the trunk of an old hollow oak tree, the decrepit priest froze in deathly immobility. His blue lips are half-opened, his fixed eyes no longer look at this visible side eternity. Emaciated hands folded on knees. To his right, six blind old men sit on stones, stumps and dry leaves, and to his left, facing them, are six blind women. Three of them pray and lament all the time. The fourth is quite an old woman. The fifth, in quiet madness, holds a sleeping child on her lap. The sixth is strikingly young, her hair flowing down her shoulders. Both women and old people are dressed in wide, gloomy, monotonous clothes. All of them, with their hands on their knees and covering their faces with their hands, are waiting for something. Tall cemetery trees - yews, weeping willows, cypresses - extend their reliable canopy over them. Darkness.

The blind people talk to each other. They are concerned about the long absence of the priest. The oldest blind woman says that the priest has been uneasy for several days, that he began to be afraid of everything after the doctor died. The priest was worried that the winter might be long and cold. He was frightened by the sea, he wanted to look at the coastal cliffs. The young blind woman says that before leaving, the priest held her hands for a long time. He was shaking, as if from fear. Then he kissed the girl and left.

“When he left, he said “Good night!” - one of the blind people recalls. They listen to the roar of the sea. The sound of the waves is unpleasant to them. The blind people remember that the priest wanted to show them the island on which their shelter is located. That is why he brought them closer to the seashore. “You can’t wait forever for the sun under the arches of the dormitory,” he said. The blind are trying to determine the time of day. Some of them think that they feel the moonlight, feel the presence of stars. The least sensitive are those born blind (“I only hear our breathing […] I have never felt them,” notes one of them). The blind want to return to the shelter. The distant chime of a clock can be heard - twelve strikes, but the blind cannot understand whether it is midnight or noon. Night birds flap their wings maliciously above their heads. One of the blind people suggests that if the priest does not come, they should return to the shelter, guided by the noise of a large river flowing nearby. Others are going to wait without moving. The blind people tell each other where someone came to the island from, the young blind woman remembers her distant homeland, the sun, mountains, unusual flowers. (“I have no memories,” says the man born blind.) The wind blows. Leaves are falling in heaps. Blind people think that someone is touching them. They are overcome with fear. A young blind woman smells flowers. This is an asphodel - a symbol kingdom of the dead. One of the blind men manages to pick a few, and the young blind woman weaves them into her hair. You can hear the wind and the crash of waves against the coastal rocks. Through this noise, the blind hear the sound of someone's approaching steps. This is a shelter dog. She drags one of the blind men towards the motionless priest and stops. The blind realize that there is a dead man among them, but do not immediately find out who it is. The women, crying, kneel down and pray for the priest. The oldest blind woman reproaches those who complained and did not want to move forward with the fact that they tortured the priest. The dog does not leave the corpse. Blind people join hands. A whirlwind spins dry leaves. A young blind woman can discern someone's distant steps. Snow is falling in large flakes. Footsteps are approaching. The crazy child begins to cry. The young blind woman takes him in her arms and lifts him up so that he can see who is coming towards them. Footsteps are approaching, you can hear leaves rustling under someone’s feet, you can hear the rustle of a dress. Footsteps stop next to a group of blind people "Who are you?" - asks the young blind woman. No answer. “Oh, have mercy on us!” - exclaims the oldest. Silence again. Then a child's desperate cry is heard.

Aesthetics and poetics are formed in the playwright’s works “ new drama”, which opposed itself to entertaining, melodramatic plays. The texts of the “new drama” are topical, bring out new social types, and emphasize drama human existence, an acute conflict between “lies” and “truth”, being and consciousness. M. Maeterlinck's plays “Uninvited” and “Blind” are aimed at depicting the tragedy of everyday life, the hidden horror of existence, which manifests itself in the static character of stage words and actions, and the pathos of “silence”. These plays are full of understatement, hints, almost devoid of dramatic action, their characters are characterized by a sense of confusion in the face of an unknowable fate. In the dialogue of Maeterlinck's plays, as happens in poetic speech, it is not so much the rational meaning of the word that becomes important, but the general rhythm of word combinations and hypnotic pauses.

In Maeterlinck's plays huge role pauses, silence, various sounds play that are heard only in silence - rustling, rustling, etc. Trying to get away from this silence, Maeterlinck’s heroes start the most stupid, meaningless conversations, people often speak just to say something, so as not to remain silent. These rambling dialogues are meant to give a sense of the absurdity, meaninglessness and horror of human existence. Behind the words you need to grasp something more significant, therefore, in Maeterlinck’s plays, subtext plays a large role, as in Chekhov’s.

The most pessimistic are the early plays of the 1890s. “The Blind” (1890) - several blind men and women are sitting in the forest and waiting for a guide who has gone somewhere, they live in a shelter for the blind and now they go for a walk. There is still no guide, the anxiety of the blind is growing, they talk to each other in order to drown out this anxiety and the feeling of complete loneliness that covers them in silence; in silence they completely lose touch with the world. They talk about their loneliness, that they do not understand what the world is, what they themselves are. In the end, horror overwhelms them: they were abandoned, they begin to fumble around with their hands in a panic, and one of them stumbles upon the cold corpse of the guide - an old priest, who, it turns out, died and was sitting between them all the time while they were waiting for him. Then they hear someone’s strange steps, among them there is one sighted child; when he sees someone, he desperately screams in fear: someone scary has come, apparently it’s Death.

The blind are a symbol of modern humanity, which has become blind, that is, having lost its guidelines, goals, meanings, and lost its religious faith (it is not for nothing that their deceased guide is a priest). And now humanity can only wander at random, but as a result it will die.

Drama "Blind"– symbolic image human life. The priest-guide brought blind men and women into the forest, now they are sitting opposite each other, not knowing that the guide has died, and his corpse is right there next to them. The darkness of the night is thickening, the sea is raging, the blind are all waiting for the priest to return. Freezing, hungry people gradually begin to lose hope of salvation. A dog that came running from the shelter leads them to the corpse, then the blind people are convinced that there is nowhere to wait for help. Mysterious rustles, steps, indistinct sounds are heard, a sighted baby bursts into tears in the arms of a blind mother.

The blind become a symbol of humanity, forever wandering in the dark; the dying guide is a religion that people no longer have. Among them is death, but they do not know and do not see it; only a few, the most sensitive, feel its proximity.

The play does not have a traditional dramatic plot, developing according to ordinary laws theatrical action. The characters are not “characters”, socio-psychological types, but types of worldview, attitude to life

Name This play is in tune with its content and characters: after all, they are all blind, except for the priest, and even he is dead throughout the entire action. Their blindness is spiritual in nature. The priest who went to fetch water and whom they are waiting for is the Messiah, without whom they cannot be saved. The blindness of society.

In total, 11 characters are involved in the play. Priest, a decrepit old man, a guide to the blind. This central image in the play, because the blind talk about him, talk about him, expect his arrival as deliverance from death. On the day the play takes place, he went for a walk with the inhabitants of the orphanage. During the rest, the Priest quietly gives his soul to God, leaving his blind charges alone in a forest clearing. In the play, the Priest plays the role of a guide and savior, the one on whose arrival the lives of abandoned people depend. Therefore, the blind eagerly await the return of their guide.

In addition, the play contains three born blind. They are dissatisfied with leaving the shelter, dissatisfied with the Priest, even with each other (“ Why did you wake me up?"). One can interpret their role as follows: these are spiritually blind people who do not want to change anything about themselves.

The play has essentially similar characters: The oldest blind man And The oldest blind woman. They are presented as bearers of wisdom and experience among the male and, accordingly, female half of the blind.

Another actor – Young Blind – « amazingly young, her flowing hair covers her waist" She is the bearer of bright hope, tolerance, mercy and condescension towards her comrades. All the other blind people are drawn to her, as if to the light. Young blind woman with crazy child blind people participate in final scene plays.

In the play, “blindness” is interpreted as a symbol of humanity’s self-awareness. Physically blind people are blind in soul, they cannot change anything on their own, they are forced to passively wait for change. This, in my opinion, is the problem revealed in the work. In other words, the people are shown as a crowd of blind people - they are helpless, blind and in need of guidance.

The play has an open the final. It remains unclear whose appearance the child in the arms of the young blind woman greeted with a cry. In my opinion, at the end of the play, Death itself comes to the lost people, lying in wait for everyone. The blind heard precisely her rustling dress about “ dead leaves" This is evidenced by the desperate cry of a child and the cry of the oldest blind woman: “ Oh, have mercy on us!»

Firstly, Maeterlinck’s tragedy is expressed in the tragedy of everyday human existence. The blind eke out a miserable and very difficult existence on a lonely island, in an orphanage. They are surrounded by old people just like themselves. The blind themselves realize their hopeless situation, the inevitability of suffering and death. So, for example, the oldest blind man exclaims: “Now it’s our turn!” Secondly, the concepts of subtext and mood come to the fore. The action of the play is essentially static and takes place in only one place. The characters repeatedly declare their moods, feelings, and experiences:

The oldest blind person. Yes, yes, we are scared!

Young blind woman. We've been scared for a long time!

Thirdly, the play has an open ending, which ends with the cry of a child in the dark. We can only guess who visited the lost people.

"Uninvited"

Uninvited is death that comes to the family of a woman in labor. In the evening the whole family was expecting the Sister of Mercy, but Death came instead:

“Suddenly the clang of a scythe being sharpened is heard,”

"Father.<…>Don't push the door! You know it squeaks.

Maid. Yes, I don’t touch her, sir.

Father. No, you’re pushing her, it’s like you want to enter the room!”

Grandfather is blind- the father of a woman in labor who is lying in another room. He is blind, but he is sensitive to what is happening around him: he senses the state of those present (“ I'm sure my daughter is worse off», « I hear you're scared"), able to predict what will happen soon: " I probably don't have long to live..." In addition, among his sighted relatives, Grandfather is the only one capable of “seeing” the presence of Death with his soul: “ It seemed to me that someone else was sitting with us...”

Father- husband of a woman in labor. He is more gentle than his brother (" Indeed, for the first time after her painful birth I feel that I am at home, that I am among my own people."), treats Grandfather's quirks with respect and respect (" At his age this is forgivable"). Oh economical (“ In the morning I ordered it to be filled") and worries about his wife's health (" my wife really wants to see her»).

Uncle- Father's brother. More decisive than his brother, he is not afraid to evaluate people (“This is not good on her part”). He treats Grandfather less respectfully (“You’re delusional!”).

Three daughters(Ursula, Genevieve, Gertrude) are friendly sisters (they leave the room together, holding hands, kissing). Ursula is the most courteous with Grandfather, she is more friends with him than her sisters. Grandfather trusts her more than anyone else.

Sister of Mercy– does not utter a single word in the play. This character is only the herald of his wife's death. Dressed in all black.

Briefly formulate the problem addressed in the work: Not all people can feel the presence of death, but only those who themselves are not far from it. Death is inevitable, no matter how hard a person tries to avoid it.

M. Maeterlinck left the ending of the play open: we will never know what will happen to Grandfather, whether Death left or was left alone with Grandfather. At the end of the play, Grandfather clearly felt that death was sitting with his relatives at the same table. The fact that he “saw” her, but the others did not, and his words about a possible imminent death prove that Death, in addition to the woman in labor, will also take Grandfather. At the end of the play, Grandfather became worried, he became scared, he did not want to be alone with Death, but it happened anyway: in the confusion, all the relatives run away, and Grandfather is left alone. So, the meeting between death and man inevitably took place in private.

Features of the “new drama”:

Symbolism

Contrasting tradition (one-act play, open ending, static time and place)

Setting for “life-likeness” (an exact description of the life of that time, down to the smallest detail: you need to add oil to the lamp, you need to invite a carpenter, a gardener)

+ “fourth wall”: the actors never address auditorium, completely abstract from it

Dialogue prevails over action (there are almost no stage directions in the play, it is built on conversation)

Indicate which features of the direction you think are decisive in this work:

Symbolism:

In the foreground are the inner experiences of the characters.

Dual world - Grandfather stops perceiving surrounding reality the way family members see her. He feels in his soul another world, a mystical one.

Symbolism of light: the play takes place in evening time days. This is the time when mystical dark forces awaken. Twilight, which follows day, is like a black streak in life. So here, the joy of the birth of a baby is replaced by the grief of the death of the woman in labor. Besides this, sometimes green color(the color of the window glass in the background) symbolizes death.

Mystical world - in everyday life people are invaded by death - a representative of the mystical world.

"Uninvited”reproduces the waiting outside the laboring woman’s room. Everyone is waiting for news from the doctor, and only the blind old man feels the approach of Death. Maeterlinck creates a world of people living their everyday lives, and a world outside them, which is incomprehensible and threatening to man. Therefore, the very existence of a doomed person is tragic sudden death, sudden suffering, grief, loss.

Truly key work became for the work of M. Maeterlinck Blue bird(1908). A fascinating fairy tale for children and at the same time philosophical tale for adults, filled with symbols and allegory, it is largely conducive to different interpretations.

In contrast to the “theater of silence” with its deathly immobility, everything here comes in search, daring, movement. The forces of nature, brought to life by the will of the playwright, stage a performance designed to explain the meaning of life.

On the scale of boundless time, the past corresponds to the time of universal naive vision, the present is the kingdom of blindness, from which humanity emerges slowly but inevitably, and, finally, the future is the hour of the union of the Soul of light and three high joys. In this sense, Maeterlinck's best work can be called a play of hope.

The play begins and ends in a woodcutter's hut. This means that now Maeterlinck turns our gaze not to the foggy Unknown, but to real people with their needs, fears and wants.

Tyltil and Mytil are the children of a poor man. Accompanied by the souls of animals (Cat, Dog) and the most essential things (Water, Bread, Sugar, Milk, Fire), they experience many adventures, wandering in search of the Blue Bird, who must heal a sick girl. After a long search, Tyltil and Mytil find the Blue Bird at home, recognize its blueness in the blue of an inconspicuous turtle dove, but it flies away from the hands of the children.

The symbol of the Blue Bird has many faces and many meanings, but it is undoubtedly an image of flight, height and inaccessibility, whose fabulous blue is nevertheless suggested by the color of the native sky, which extends over all people.

1. Symbolism of light . The first in a fairy tale symbolic detail we watch at the very beginning, before the children even wake up. The light in the room mysteriously changes: “The stage is immersed in darkness for some time, then gradually increasing light begins to break through the cracks of the shutters. The lamp on the table lights up by itself". This action symbolizes the concept of “seeing in its true light.” In the light in which Tyltil and Mytil will see the world after the diamond on their cap turns. In the light in which any person can see the world, looking at it with a pure heart. In this scene, the familiar contradiction between blindness and vision comes to the surface, passes from deep philosophical subtext into a dramatic plot. It is this motif that runs like a line through the entire work and is central. 2. Diamond symbolism . Let us pay attention to the mechanism of action of the magic diamond. And here we find the symbol: the traditional touch magic wand For Maeterlinck, the subject became the touch of a diamond to the “special lump” on Tyltil’s head . The hero's consciousness changes - and then the world around him is transformed according to the laws of the fairy tale. "Big diamond, it restores sight."

3. Symbolism of images of children. Also, the central symbols of the play include the images of the children themselves and their poor relatives. They were typical representatives of Belgian, and indeed European society in general. At the beginning of the play, in the fairy palace, Tyltil and Mytil dress up as characters from fairy tales popular among the people. It is precisely because of their everydayness as a guarantee of universality that they turned out to be a symbol of humanity.

4. Symbolism of other characters. Other characters in the extravaganza are also symbolic. Among all stands highlight the cat . Tiletta symbolizes evil, betrayal, hypocrisy. An insidious and dangerous enemy for children - this is her unexpected essence, her mysterious idea. The Cat is friends with the Night: both of them guard the secrets of life. She is also at peace with death; her old friends are Misfortunes. It is she, in secret from the soul of Light, who brings children into the forest to be torn apart by trees and animals. And here’s what’s important: children don’t see the Cat in the “true light”; they don’t see her the way they see their other companions. Mytil loves Tiletta and protects her from Tilo's attacks. The cat is the only one of the travelers whose soul, free under the rays of the diamond, did not combine with its visible appearance.

Bread, Fire, Milk, Sugar, Water and Dog did not conceal anything alien within themselves; they were direct proof of the identity of appearance and essence. The idea did not contradict the phenomenon; it only revealed and developed its invisible (“silent”) possibilities. So Bread symbolizes cowardice and compromise. He has negative bourgeois qualities. Sugar Sweet, the compliments he makes do not come from the heart, his manner of communication is theatrical. Perhaps it symbolizes people from high society, close to power, trying in every possible way to please the rulers, just to “sit” in a good position. However, both Bread and Sugar have positive features. They selflessly accompany children. Moreover, Bread also carries a cage, and Sugar breaks off his candy fingers and gives them to Mytyl, who so rarely eats sweets in ordinary life. Dog embodies exclusively positive sides character. He is devoted, ready to die to save children. However, the owners do not fully understand this. They constantly reprimand the dog, driving him away even when he tries to tell them the truth about the cat’s betrayal.

5. Symbolism of the Soul of Light . It is worth paying special attention to central character plays - Soul of Light. Let us note that in “The Blue Bird” there is only one Soul of Light among the travelers – an allegorical image. But the Soul of Light is an exception. This is not just a companion for children, it is their “leader”; he is personified in her figure symbol of light - guide of the blind .

The remaining allegorical characters of the play are encountered by the children on their way to the Blue Bird: each of them, in a naively naked form, carries his own morality - or rather, his part of the general morality - each of them presents his own special concrete lesson. Meetings with these characters form the stages of spiritual and mental education of children: Night and Time, Beatitudes, the most fat of which symbolize wealth, property, greed, and Joys, symbolizing the everyday life of the simple honest people, Ghosts and Diseases teach Tyltil and Mytyl either in the form of direct verbal edification, or by their own silent example, or by creating instructive situations for children from which they can draw an everyday lesson.

The Soul of Light moves the internal action of the play, since, obeying the fairy, it leads the children from stage to stage of their path. Its task is to unwind the tangle of events that move from one time to another, changing space. But the role of a guide is also to instill hope and not let faith fade.

6. Symbolism of time. Sleep and Dreaming - this is the external, objective, and internal, subjective time of “travel” of children. In a dream, with the help of memory and imagination, the quality of time as a special category of reality - the unity and continuity of its flow - is symbolically recreated. Maeterlinck writes a lot about the fact that the present contains both the past and the future, and that its “composition” is the composition” of the personality itself in his philosophical studies at the beginning of the century. The dialectical relationship between the three sides of time is realized in the physical, mental and spiritual existence of a person: Meterliik strives to prove this idea both on the pages of his philosophical prose and with the help poetic images and the Blue Bird symbols.

7. Blue Bird Symbol . Finally, it should be said about the main symbol of the extravaganza - the Blue Bird itself. The play says that the heroes need the blue bird “in order to become happy in the future”... Here the symbol of the bird intersects with the image of time, with the Kingdom of the future. The bird always flies away and cannot be caught. What else flies away like a bird? Happiness flies away. The bird is a symbol of happiness; and, as you know, it has long been no longer customary to talk about happiness; adults talk about business, about organizing life on a positive basis; but they never talk about happiness, miracles and similar things; it's even quite indecent; after all, happiness flies away like a bird; and it’s unpleasant for adults to chase the constantly flying Bird and try to pour salt on its tail. Another thing is for a child; children can have fun with this; Seriousness and decency are not asked of them.” We can immediately conclude that children also symbolize hope for future happiness. Although they never found the bird during the journey, and the turtledove flew away at the end, they do not despair and are going to continue the search for the blue bird, that is, happiness.

Maurice Polydor Marie Bernard Maeterlinck

"Blind"

Old northern forest under high starry sky. Leaning against the trunk of an old hollow oak tree, the decrepit priest froze in deathly immobility. His blue lips are half-open, his fixed eyes no longer look at this visible side of eternity. Emaciated hands folded on knees. To his right, six blind old men are sitting on stones, stumps and dry leaves, and to his left, facing them, are six blind women. Three of them pray and lament all the time. The fourth is quite an old woman. The fifth, in quiet insanity, holds a sleeping child on her lap. The sixth is strikingly young, her hair flowing down her shoulders. Both women and old people are dressed in wide, gloomy, monotonous clothes. All of them, with their hands on their knees and covering their faces with their hands, are waiting for something. Tall cemetery trees - yews, weeping willows, cypresses - extend their reliable canopy over them. Darkness.

“When he left, he said “Good night!” - recalls one of the blind people. They listen to the roar of the sea. The sound of the waves is unpleasant to them. The blind people remember that the priest wanted to show them the island on which their shelter is located. That is why he brought them closer to the seashore. “You can’t wait forever for the sun under the arches of the dormitory,” he said. The blind are trying to determine the time of day. Some of them think that they feel the moonlight, feel the presence of stars. Those born blind are the least sensitive (“I only hear our breathing<…>I’ve never felt them,” notes one of them). The blind want to return to the shelter. The distant chime of a clock can be heard - twelve strikes, but the blind cannot understand whether it is midnight or noon. Night birds flap their wings maliciously above their heads. One of the blind men suggests that if the priest does not come, they return to the shelter, guided by the noise of a large river flowing nearby. Others are going to wait without moving. The blind people tell each other where someone came to the island from, the young blind woman remembers her distant homeland, the sun, mountains, unusual flowers. (“I have no memories,” says the man born blind.) The wind blows. Leaves are falling in heaps. Blind people think that someone is touching them. They are overcome with fear. A young blind woman smells flowers. These are asphodels - a symbol of the kingdom of the dead. One of the blind men manages to pluck a few, and the young blind woman weaves them into her hair. You can hear the wind and the crash of waves against the coastal rocks. Through this noise, the blind hear the sound of someone's approaching steps. This is a shelter dog. She drags one of the blind men towards the motionless priest and stops. The blind realize that there is a dead man among them, but do not immediately find out who it is. The women, crying, kneel down and pray for the priest. The oldest blind woman reproaches those who complained and did not want to move forward with the fact that they tortured the priest. The dog does not leave the corpse. Blind people join hands. A whirlwind spins dry leaves. A young blind woman can discern someone's distant steps. Snow is falling in large flakes. Footsteps are approaching. The crazy child begins to cry. The young blind woman takes him in her arms and lifts him up so that he can see who is coming towards them. Footsteps are approaching, you can hear leaves rustling under someone’s feet, you can hear the rustle of a dress. Footsteps stop next to a group of blind people "Who are you?" - asks the young blind woman. No answer. “Oh, have mercy on us!” - exclaims the oldest. Silence again. Then a child's desperate cry is heard.

A dead priest sits under an old oak tree. Northern forest, high cold sky. Nearby the blind were located on dry leaves and stumps. The priest brought them here to show them the island where they would live. They hear the roar of the nearby sea and worry about the long absence of their companion.

The whole group is dressed the same: gloomy, wide clothes identify them as residents of the shelter. A doctor died there recently. This worried the priest, so he took several men and women away from there. But he did not have time to complete his mission - he fell into an eternal sleep on the rocky seashore under an old oak tree.

There were few blind people. Six women and six old men. One of them has a child sleeping on her lap, another has an ancient old woman, and the third has a very young woman. Three women lament and pray, the rest talk quietly.

The young woman smells the scent of cemetery flowers, the flowers of the kingdom of the dead. Some of the men suggest going back to the shelter, others want to wait for the priest to return. The wind throws dry leaves at them. Blind people are scared. It seems to them that someone is touching them and scares them.

Blind people hear a rustling sound - a dog from a shelter has found them. She dragged one of the men by his clothes to the dead priest. Blind people do not immediately understand that their guide is dead. Someone begins to pray, someone reproaches others for tormenting the priest with their demands and stupid doubts.

Suddenly the child begins to cry. The blind hear footsteps, but cannot understand who it is. The person who approaches does not answer their questions. Blind people are scared. Snow is falling in flakes. Requests and pleas from the blind for mercy and mercy are heard. Then a child's desperate cry was heard. And dead silence was restored.

Maurice Maeterlinck- famous Belgian writer, one of the largest representatives of symbolism in Europe. A poet of the era of decay of capitalism, he embodied in his poetry the anxious state of mind of the ruling class, its fear, uncertainty, premonition of its death, misunderstanding of newly emerging social relations, flabbiness, exhaustion and satiety. Maeterlinck was completely unaffected by the proletarian movement that was unfolding in his hometown Ghent in his youth. He received his education first at the Ghent Jesuit College, from where he transferred to the Catholic University.

His favorite thinkers were Novalis, Ruisbroeck, and Emerson. The first collection of his poems, Serres chaudes (1889), was influenced by Mallarmé and Baudelaire. Among the European symbolists, M. was the main, almost the only major playwright

Maeterlinck became popular thanks to his early plays, written between 1889 and 1894. The heroes of these plays do not have limited understanding of one's nature and the world in which they live.

As a supporter of Schopenhauer's ideas, Maeterlinck believed that man powerless against fate. He believed that actors could easily be replaced by puppets and even wrote plays such as “There Inside” (1894) and “The Death of Tentagille” (1894) for puppet theater. Calls on actors to depersonalization , to the renunciation of one's individuality. The actor must become like a puppet.

Early dramaturgy

1. Blind 1890

2. Uninvited 1890

3. There, inside 1894

4. Death of Tentagille 1894

These plays are considered as a cycle, a totality. General artistic laws apply to them. They are called " Puppet theater", "Static theater", "Waiting Theater", "Theater of Silence"

1896 treatise" Treasure of the Humble ". In it he will explain what is discernible in his plays. Maeterlinck expresses his own position.

A typical idea of drama: dynamics, structure, dialogue, conflict...

Maeterlinck destroys all these canons. He did not intend his works for the theater. " Dreams don't need a director, theater kills the imagination".

The symbol is created with a special focus on polysemy. It is important to preserve this polysemy, not to kill it. He creates a conditional, often impersonal world. No place, no time. A universal myth about the tragedy of the human universe.

There is an external world that can be comprehended. But behind this accessibility there is something higher. The soul carries on a continuous conversation with fate, with these forces. We are immersed in everyday life and do not notice much.

The true ideal state of man is silence. Souls truly touch only in silence. The essence of things and phenomena is comprehended in silence. You can only know Maeterlinck within yourself. In his plays, sometimes the sounds are more meaningful than the lines. The more the heroes talk, the more flawed they are; conversation as a way to suppress feelings of loneliness.

In the play Blind There are no dynamics at all. Everyone just sat and still sits. They sit and wait. What are they waiting for? - It’s unclear. Everything external is reoriented to the internal. All conditions have been created for a person to deepen into himself. But somehow they don’t go deeper. The tragedy is that they have no spiritual search.

The same strange situation is with the conflict. He is not here as such either. Humanity VS Unknown(dog, steps, splashing waves - hints of someone’s presence).

Blind. Starts with two remarks. The first describes a chilly atmosphere, flowers of death, conifers, stars as a guide, pristine nature. There's still a dead priest sitting there. The eyes are bloodshot from the suffering they have seen. He is no longer on this side of reality. He kind of went to the lighthouse|to the light. A hint that there is another reality. He died and regained his sight, and somewhere there something was revealed to him. Conclusion: There is physical blindness and spiritual blindness.

12 blind priests and a child who never cried out, which is essentially impossible. That means he didn’t inhale, that means he wasn’t born. The umbilical cord is connected to the universe. Feels what others don't feel. Then he screams and that means he breaks this ideal connection. He shouted at the steps. So he was frightened by what he saw.

Allusion to Christ and the apostles. Two interpretations of the ending

1. Verdict on Christianity. The priest (Christ) came and left everything...

2. There is a part of the path that you need to go through yourself. They lived there somewhere in isolation, within the four walls of a shelter. This is a false space. The priest led them out of this space to the sea, to something unknown. I tried to lead me to the light, to happiness, to spiritual rebirth. To do this, you need to go deeper into yourself. The problem of internal inertia. The dog, the silent part of the universe, leads to the dead priest, to the line. This was supposed to lead them to spiritual truth, to the secret of the universe. And for them this is a dead end.

What could possibly frighten a child? 1. People came from the shelter - return to that one past life, spiritual death, lesson not learned. 2. The unknown has come and the child is screaming because humanity is not yet ready for it. He is horrified - death?

1890 – play “The Blind” (Les Aveugles). The one-act drama reproduces the expectation of the blind for their guide and their reflections on what they perceive, the horror of feeling their helplessness and inability to recognize what is happening in the world. Humanity here appears blind, helpless, narrow-minded, selfish, unable to understand the world and doomed to suffer.

Action is reduced to a process of waiting. It is no coincidence that critics called it a “drama of suspense” - it so precisely corresponded to the programmatic requirements of the theory of “static theater”. In both plays, Death becomes the “uninvited guest” - one of the transformations of inevitable fate in Maeterlinck’s theater.

The motif of passive, “blind” waiting, where “blindness” is interpreted as a symbol of the self-awareness of humanity, sounds in the play “The Blind,” which evokes distant associations with famous painting P. Bruegel. Several blind old men and women, forming a semicircle, are sitting in the forest and waiting for their guide, an old half-blind priest, who took them out of the shelter for a walk and, leaving them alone, went off to bring bread and water. He doesn't return for a long time, and they don't know what happened to him. A shelter dog comes running to the blind, leading them to the place where a dead priest sits, frozen in motion. All their attempts to bring him back to life lead nowhere: the priest has been dead for a long time. The sound of footsteps is heard. A child, the son of one of the blind women, who was sleeping on her lap, wakes up crying. They raise him above their heads so that he can see whose steps are heard nearby. The child's voice breaks into a scream. The blind cry out for mercy, but no one answers them.

Despite the uncertainty of the final scene, which leaves open question, whose appearance was announced by the cry of a frightened child, the meaning of the play is clear enough. It expresses a pessimistic view of humanity, wandering in search of a higher goal, like a crowd of blind men and women in a forest at night, and finding nothing but Death, which lies in wait for everyone.

Philosophical basis Maeterlinck's artistic views consisted of idealism in its mystical version. Maeterlinck replaced God with the faceless and fatal Unknown, ruler of the world and hostile to man. In the face of the omnipotent Unknown people- only weak creatures. Being the receptacle of the Unknown, they must live “without deed, without thought, without light” and without words, for the inexpressible cannot be expressed in words: “ True life is created in silence." The play "The Blind" reproduces the "tragedy of every day" - the invasion of the Unknown into everyday life: the priest who took the blind for a walk suddenly dies, now they will not be able to find their way back to the orphanage. But the purpose of the play is not to tell about The tragedy of the helpless blind has everything here. symbolic meaning. The blind are the lost moral guidelines humanity; a dead priest is a church no longer able to console human suffering; the ocean is an image of death. Each of the blind people symbolizes a certain aspect of human life: the young blind woman - art and beauty; crazy - inspiration; a sighted child is a new, emerging mystical worldview; lighthouse on the ocean - science.