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Updated: June 29, 2025
In Maeterlinck's earlier plays, in "Les Aveugles," "Intérieur," and even "Pelléas et Mélisande," he is dramatic after a new, experimental fashion of his own; "Monna Vanna" is dramatic in the obvious sense of the word. The action moves, and moves always in an interesting, even in a telling, way. But at the same time I cannot but feel that something has been lost.
Vanna was three and twenty, no more round but no less blooming in face and figure; still a reedy, golden-haired girl. But Baldassare was fifty-seven, and there was no sign of issue. The neighbours, who had nudged each other at one season, whose heads had wagged as their winks flew about, now accepted the sterile mating as of the order of things.
And again I could hear nothing, but she said it was sounding from the trees at the base of the hill. Later when we climbed down I found she was right that a peasant lad, dark and amazingly beautiful as these Kashmiris often are, was playing on the flute to a girl at his feet looking up at him with rapt eyes. He flung Vanna a flower as we passed. She caught it and put it in her bosom.
SECOND PART Early in the pure dawn the men came and our boat was towed up into the Dal Lake through crystal waterways and flowery banks, the men on the path keeping step and straining at the rope until the bronze muscles stood out on their legs and backs, shouting strong rhythmic phrases to mark the pull. "They shout the Wondrous Names of God as they are called," said Vanna when I asked.
"Eh, you little fool, don't you know that it is you and your brat have set all Verona by the ears?" Vanna had never thought of the ears of Verona, and knew not how to think of them now; but she saw that her friend was in a fever of suppressed knowledge. Therefore she shawled her head and her baby in her sea-blue cloak, locked the shop-door, and followed La Testolina.
I shall be twenty-nine my next birthday. Sincerely yours, VANNA LORING. P.S. But I still think you would be wiser not to come. I hope to hear you will not. I replied only this: Dear Miss Loring, I think I understand the position fully. I will be there. I thank you with all my heart. Gratefully yours, STEPHEN CLIFDEN. Three days later I met Lady Meryon, and was swept in to tea.
I could hear nothing of it, but she insisted and we followed the music, inaudible to me, up the slopes of the garden that is the foot-hill of the mighty mountain of Mahadeo, and still I could hear nothing. And Vanna told me strange stories of the Apollo of India whom all hearts must adore, even as the herd-girls adored him in his golden youth by Jumna river and in the pastures of Brindaban.
I saw she counted on my knowing nothing of the real reason of Vanna's going and left it, of course, at that. The talk drifted away under my guidance. Vanna evidently puzzled her. She half feared, and wholly misunderstood her. No message came to me, as time went by, and for the time she had vanished completely, but I held fast to her promise and lived on that only.
"How all the Mogul Emperors loved running water," said Vanna. "I can see them leaning over it in their carved pavilions with delicate dark faces and pensive eyes beneath their turbans, lost in the endless reverie of the East while liquid melody passes into their dream. It was the music they best loved."
Here in these gardens she had lived had seen the snow mountains change from the silver of dawn to the illimitable rose of sunset. The life, the colour beat insistently upon my brain. They built a world of magic where every moment was pure gold. Surely surely to Vanna it must be the same. I believed in my very soul that she who gave and shared such joy could not be utterly apart from me?
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