works.[Footnote: To the front tank of such seers of the decadence
belongs also Alfred Kubin. With irresistible force both Kubin's
drawings and also his novel "Die Andere Seite" seem to engulf us
in the terrible atmosphere of empty desolation.]

This atmosphere Maeterlinck creates principally by purely
artistic means. His material machinery (gloomy mountains,
moonlight, marshes, wind, the cries of owls, etc.) plays really a
symbolic role and helps to give the inner note. [Footnote: When
one of Maeterlinck's plays was produced in St. Petersburg under
his own guidance, he himself at one of the rehearsals had a tower
represented by a plain piece of hanging linen. It was of no
importance to him to have elaborate scenery prepared. He did as
children, the greatest imaginers of all time, always do in their
games; for they use a stick for a horse or create entire
regiments of cavalry out of chalks. And in the same way a chalk
with a notch in it is changed from a knight into a horse. On
similar lines the imagination of the spectator plays in the
modern theatre, and especially in that of Russia, an important
part. And this is a notable element in the transition from the
material to the spiritual in the theatre of the future.]
Maeterlinck's principal technical weapon is his use of words. The
word may express an inner harmony. This inner harmony springs
partly, perhaps principally, from the object which it names. But
if the object is not itself seen, but only its name heard, the
mind of the hearer receives an abstract impression only, that is
to say as of the object dematerialized, and a corresponding
vibration is immediately set up in the HEART.

The apt use of a word (in its poetical meaning), repetition of