Others doubtless have or have had a richer language, a more fertile imagination, a clearer gift of observation, more fancy, faculties better fitted to trumpet the music of words. Granted; but with a timid and poor language, childish dramatic combinations, an almost enervating system of repetition in phraseology, with these awkwardnesses, with all his awkwardnesses, Maurice Maeterlinck works at books and booklets that have a certain originality, a novelty so truly new that it will long disconcert the lamentable troop of people who pardon audacity if there be a precedent--as in the protocol--but who hold in scorn genius, which is the perpetual audacity. ÉMILE VERHAEREN Of all the poets of today, narcissi along the river, Verhaeren is the least obliging in allowing himself to be admired. He is rude, violent, unskillful. Busied for twenty years in forging a strange and magical tool, he remains in a mountain cavern, hammering the reddened irons, radiant in the fire's reflection, haloed with sparks. Thus it is we should picture him, a forger who, Comme s'il travaillait l'acier des âmes, Martèle à grands coups pleins, les lames Immenses de la patience et du silence. (Tr. 3) If we discover his dwelling and question him, he replies with a parable whose every word seems scanned on the forge, and, to conclude, he delivers a tremendous blow of his heavy hammer. When he is not laboring at his forge, he goes forth through the fields, head and arms bare, and the Flemish fields tell him secrets they have not yet told anyone. He beholds miraculous things and is not astonished at them. Singular beings pass before him, beings whom everybody jostles without being aware, visible alone to him. He has met the November Wind: Le vent sauvage de novembre. Le vent, L'avez-vous rencontré, le vent Au carrefour des trois cents routes...? (Tr. 4) He has seen Death, and more than once; he has seen Fear; he has seen Silence S'asseoir immensément du côté de la nuit. (Tr. 5)