The esteemed 1911 Nobel
Prize winner for Literature, Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949), began to write
articles and to give speeches for the Allies after the 1914 German invasion of
Belgium, the country of his birth. He
spent the next three years trying to motivate other countries such as Italy to
join the allied forces. In 1917 he
returned to a villa near Nice, France and spent the rest of the war there;
however, it had been suggested to him that a propaganda play which could be
produced in countries where sympathy for Belgium was lacking would be a major
contribution to the war effort.
Maeterlinck wrote the
play The Burgomaster of Stilemonde,
in a three week period, during 1917. In the forward to the play, he states that
it is “only a war and propaganda drama.”
The script was quickly translated into English by Alexander Teixeira de
Mattos (1865-1921) a Dutch-English man of letters, who was famous as a
translator. He had been translating Maeterlinck’s writings since 1904. This
play was also rapidly translated into Spanish and Swedish. The play was
published in English during 1918 and labeled by reviewers in Great Britain and
the United States as “The Great War Play.”
“Burgomaster” is
different from Maeterlinck’s earlier plays. It is a realistic tragedy based on
political events that had occurred only a few years earlier. For Maeterlinck to write a play in the here
and now of time and memory was so very different from his earlier style based
on symbols and myth. After that phase, he wrote dramas relating to inward
conflicts as well as primordial experiences. He expressed moods as well as
subconscious and half-realized feelings.
Maeterlinck is credited with creating Static drama. His fame was based
on his most popular plays The Intruder (1890),
Pelleas and Melisande (1892) and The Blue Bird (1908).
There was an additional consideration
for Maeterlinck since his play was related to newsworthy events that had
recently occurred. Maeterlinck was also
using an event that other playwrights had used as the basis for their plays. I
have posted two other plays: The Sorrows of Belgium by Leonid Andreyev
(posted 10/3/15) and The Hate Breeders
by Ednah Aiken (posted 9/24/15) that address the general topic of the Belgium
invasion. At this time, there are five more plays based on the invasion of
Belgium by Germany that I may use for future posts. While each playwright
approached this invasion from a different perspective, Maeterlinck’s plot and
characters had to be especially rousing given that he was writing about the
country of his birth and a nation that held him in high esteem.
The
Burgomaster of Stilemonde is a play in three acts. The time is the end of August 1914 at
Stilemonde, a small town in Belgian Flanders. The time in this drama is tightly
held to a total of nine hours in a single day.
Act One commences at 10 AM and ends at noon; Act Two begins at 2 PM and
ends at 4 PM; Act Three begins at 5:30 PM and ends at 7 PM. One is frequently reminded of the clock’s time
throughout the course of the play.
The action of the play is
set in the Burgomaster’s (Mayor) study on the first floor of his home. The Burgomaster is an honorable man who lives
comfortably and enjoys the respect of his townsmen. The Burgomaster learns from
his male secretary that a battalion of German soldiers is rapidly advancing on
their small town and his German son-in-law, a Lieutenant in the German army, is
with the brigade. Lieutenant Otto Hilmer arrives with several German officers
and warns his father-in-law that he must act in a prudent manner. Hilmer’s wife, Isabel, who he has not seen
for several months, is in the house and she is expecting a baby. So it is clear that in addition to feelings
related to being invaded by another nation, this family must also struggle with
loyalty to it various members. The central
conflict of the play commences when a German soldier of rank is murdered on the
Burgomaster’s property. Someone must pay the penalty for this act and if the
actual murderer is not found, the Burgomaster will be shot at 7 PM precisely.
I found that I could not
read this play through in one sitting, as I usually do, since the injustice of
both the familial and nationalistic situations became very immediate and
disturbing. This type of reaction may
happen when viewing the staged version of a play, but it is unusual when it
happens to me during a reading of the script.
The characters are so clearly drawn and they dominate as well as determine
the action. The Burgomaster pops off the
page as a real and convincing person. He
realizes the significance of every situation and the logical development of the
course of every action. One understands the fate of the Burgomaster’s family
represents the suffering of the nation.
This play is worth one’s
time to read it. I will discuss in my
next post the production history of the play, one actor who played the role of
the Burgomaster for twenty years and the reception of the reviewers to the play
in production, as well as to its publication in book form.
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