His purpose, then, is to reveal the working of hidden forces in their intricate and inseparable connection with external events; and in order that the _vie intérieure_ might have the right of way, drama in his practice emancipates itself very far from the traditional realistic methods. "Poetry," he maintains, "has no other purpose than to keep open the great roads that lead from the visible to the invisible." To be sure, this definition postulates, rather audaciously, a widespread spiritual susceptibility. But in Maeterlinck's optimistic anthropology no human being is spiritually so deadened as to be forever out of all communication with the things that are divine and infinite. He fully realizes, withal, that for the great mass of men there exists no intellectual approach to the truly significant problems of life. It is rather through our emotional capacity that our spiritual experience brings us into touch with the final verities. Anyway, the poet of mysticism appeals from the _impasse_ of pure reasoning to the voice of the inner oracles. But how to detect in the deepest recesses of the soul the echoes of universal life and give outward resonance to their faint reverberations? That is the artistic, and largely technical, side of the problem. Obvious it is that if the beholder's collaboration in the difficult enterprise is to be secured, his imagination has to be stirred to a super-normal degree. Once a dramatist has succeeded in stimulating the imaginative activity, he can dispense with a mass of descriptive detail. But he must comply with two irremissible technical demands. In the first place, the "_vie intérieure_" calls forth a _dialogue intérieur_; an esoteric language, I would say, contrived predominantly for the "expressional" functions of speech, as differenced from its "impressional" purposes. Under Swedenborg's fanciful theory of "correspondences" the literal meaning of a word is merely a sort of protective husk for its secret spiritual kernel. It is this inner, essential meaning that Maeterlinck's dialogue attempts to set free. By a fairly simple and consistent code of intimations the underlying meaning of the colloquy is laid bare and a basis created for a more fundamental understanding of the dramatic transactions. Maeterlinck going, at first, to undue lengths in this endeavor, exposed the diction of his dramas to much cheap ridicule. The extravagant use of repetition, in particular, made him a mark for facile burlesque. The words of the Queen in _Princesse Maleine_: "_Mais ne répetez pas toujours ce que l'on dit_," were sarcastically turned against the poet himself. As a result of the extreme simplicity of his dialogue, Maeterlinck was reproached with having invented the "monosyllabic theatre," the "theatre without words," and with having perpetrated a surrogate sort of drama, a hybrid between libretto and pantomime.