MAETERLINCK ON EGYPT.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 25, 30 January 1926, Page 22

MAETERLINCK ON EGYPT.

The civilisation of ancient Egypt, with its nimbus of age and mystery, naturally appeals strongly to the mystical, poetical temperament of Maurice Maeterlinck, and his admirers will welcome the little book he has written about it. In less than a hundred pages Maeterlinck describes life in Egypt, and the spirit of its , civilisation. He tries to find the secret of Egyptian art, now beautiful, now "hideous, stupid, childish, and bewildering"; to explain the gigantic monuments which at first appear hostile and malignant, but after a while strike the observer as containing something human. Religion meant a great deal in those days, and Maeterlinck finds this a subject admirably suited to his colourful and languorous style. The real life of Egypt, he says, has gone, the life that we find it co difficult to understand. For it was the life of death. Ancient Egypt was a tomb. "The idea of death absorbed, overwhelmed her; nor was it an idea that, as with the Christians, offered hopes of eternal felicity to the true believer, but a death behind which lurked grim shapes, grim ordeals, a death that held one poor comfort, and was at the best a pale replica of life, prolonged as far as could be underneath the ground and then finally absorbed into nothingness. The only matters of serious interest were mummies, sarcophagi, and the passing away of one's frknds. Funerary, industries crowded the towns and the banks of the river. Everyone, dovrn to the poorest fellah, had himself embalmed. The country waa overrun with corpses. The essential thing was not to be happy in the world, but to have the assured possession of an inviolable tomb that should be very comfortably furnished. The cities of the living were as nothing compared with those of the dead. No trace of them remains." Maeterlinck thinks, however, that it is possible that the Egyptians of t old did not allow all this organisation of death to depress them unduly. We do not to-day, "who have not even the assurance of that faint survival." They enjoyed life as we did. And beneath the religious and moral edifice was the great agnostic pantheism of those who knew, or believed they knew, the truth." There ■was to be found "the secret pessimism of all great religions." Maeterlinck, considering the Chinese with the Egyptians, says that "the two civilisations that endured the longest, that were the most stable and tranquil of all that are known to us, had the same ideal—a eqflJTi. Can this be the ideal that best humankind?" Afr sombre book t&A£ the work of an agnostic mystic. The English of Mr. Alfred Sutro is so fine that if you did not know the book had been translated you would not think co. "Ancient Egypt" is published by Allen and Unwla.

Another of Humbert Wolfe'a "Lampoons:" H. Q. WELLS. After having given birth To a new heaven, and a new earth. Thinking out new sorts of Hells Here lies Mr. H. Q. Wells. It seems that Mr. Arnold Bennett must be numbered among those prophets who have no honour in their own countries, for municipal leaders in the Potteries have been declaring that the Five Towns classics "are more of a libel on the district than anything else" (says a writer in the "Manchester Guardian"). This seems rather hard on Mr. Bennett, for has not his object all through his books been that of showing us the uniqueness of the Five Towns, the superior running of the Five Towns, the noble refusal of the Five Towns to feel abashed in any company? It is possible to understand why there was a period (about the time of "Jude the Obscure") when Mr. Hardy and hie books were a good deal less popular in Wessex than they are now; one can believe that Mr. J. S. Fletcher will never have a monument in the original of his "Town of Crooked Ways"; one can forgive Sussex for being a little weary of the "Sussex novelists"; but Mr. Bennett has more reason for complaining of the ingratitude of mankind. Would the Londoner, for instance, have thought of the Five Towns at all except as a murky and rather barbarous province had not Mr. Bennett made them his own 1 A district which resents "Clayhanger" and "The Old Wives' Tale" must be hard to please, for it has been Arnold Bennett's feat to link its grim background with the eternal and ironic comedy of life itself.

From crumbs to kitchen pokers, and corns to cornucopias—there is probably no subject, no single thing under the sun, upon which a learned thesis may not be written by a patient, plodding writer, having patience, observation and imagination. "The Psychology of Handwriting," as a title is, we think, a group of words to catch the fashion of the moment. For can handwriting have a "psychology?" It would be better to omit the first three words of this title and substitute (or leave) simply "Handwriting." Mr. Eobert Soudek has produced a volume of 285 large and closelyprinted pages in which he dissects the subject of manuscript. The publishers (Allen and Unwin) call it an "exposition." No two men make any given motion in exactly the same manner. Writing is almost as distinctive as finger prints. Ergo, it is well that it should be closely studied. But the analysis of ♦very curl and twist and "garland" of a penman's work, not made with one writing instrument only, but with many, is a truly inexhaustible task. Extend this to handwriting generally and you have material for the formation of a library. In fact, 285 pages may be eaid to represent a' short, condensed treatise. In courts of law and to graphologists everywhere this massive volume should be a work of reference, and to writers of detective stories it is an inspiration.

"Why do living things die?" Why do living things die when they do T What factors determine the'duration of life? Natural death (as apart from accident) is a phenomenon peculiar to multicellular animals and plants. Death does not occur among unicellular organisms. Several thousand generations of protozoa have been -watched without the occurrence of a single natural death. Some species maintain perpetual growth. In. apples a cutting may be taken from a' dying tree and grafted upon a hew tree, where it promptly revives, feeds, and grows and produces fruit according to its kind, and not' according to the kind of the butt upon which it is grafted, showing that the trunk supplies no more than nourishment, for lack of which the original tree was dying. The cause,of death is found to be not any cellular change, but lack of nourishment. That !is the assumption. We quote from "In Search of Reality," by J. E. Williams (Duckworth), a work on biology (organic evolution). Mr. Williams has the gift of placing scientific subjects before the non-scientific reader in easily assimilated form, and provides stimulating thought for those who like to wing their way beyond proved facts into theoretical and speculative realms. The probleme of life are" ever problems and the charm of pursuing semi-solutions is an occupation without limit.

This is how a writer in the "New Statesman" deals with "Modern Love" in terms of complexes:— I. You have upset my endocrine balance: I have exhausted all my adrenalin Because of you. I can no longer assimilate proteids Xor play bridge. My thyroid gland is enlarged Because of you. 11. You have upset my psychic balance also! (Curse you!) I can no longer control my solar plexus. Sly subconscious Is full of you, And all night I dream of you Symbolically. Last night I dreamt I was hunting for champignons, And I know, by referring to Dr. Kraut^ kopf's book Exactly what that means. My endopsychlc censor refuses to function Because of you.