Maurice Maeterlinck Popular Books

Maurice Maeterlinck Biography & Facts

Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (29 August 1862 – 6 May 1949), also known as Count (or Comte) Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911 "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations". The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. He was a leading member of La Jeune Belgique group and his plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement. In later life, Maeterlinck faced credible accusations of plagiarism. Biography Early life Maeterlinck was born in Ghent, Belgium, to a wealthy, French-speaking family. His mother, Mathilde Colette Françoise (née Van den Bossche), came from a wealthy family. His father, Polydore, was a notary who enjoyed tending the greenhouses on their property. In September 1874, he was sent to the Jesuit College of Sainte-Barbe, where works of the French Romantics were scorned and only plays on religious subjects were permitted. His experiences at this school influenced his distaste for the Catholic Church and organized religion. One of his companions at that time was the writer Charles van Lerberghe, the poems and plays of whom went on to act as mutual influences on each other at the start of the Symbolist period. Maeterlinck had written poems and short novels while still studying, but his father wanted him to go into law. After gaining a law degree at the University of Ghent in 1885, he spent a few months in Paris, France. He met members of the new Symbolist movement; Villiers de l'Isle Adam in particular, who would have a great influence on Maeterlinck's subsequent work. Career Maeterlinck instantly became a public figure when his first play, Princess Maleine, received enthusiastic praise from Octave Mirbeau, the literary critic of Le Figaro, in August 1890. In the following years he wrote a series of symbolist plays characterized by fatalism and mysticism, most importantly Intruder (1890), The Blind (1890) and Pelléas and Mélisande (1892). He had a relationship with the singer and actress Georgette Leblanc from 1895 until 1918. Leblanc influenced his work for the following two decades. With the play Aglavaine and Sélysette (1896) Maeterlinck began to create characters, especially female characters, who were more in control of their destinies. Leblanc performed these female characters on stage. Even though mysticism and metaphysics influenced his work throughout his career, Maeterlinck slowly replaced his Symbolism with a more existential style. In 1895, with his parents frowning upon his open relationship with an actress, Maeterlinck and Leblanc moved to the district of Passy in Paris. The Catholic Church was unwilling to grant her a divorce from her Spanish husband. The couple frequently entertained guests, including Mirbeau, Jean Lorrain, and Paul Fort. They spent their summers in Normandy. During this period, Maeterlinck published his Twelve Songs (1896), The Treasure of the Humble (1896), The Life of the Bee (1901), and Ariadne and Bluebeard (1902). In 1903, Maeterlinck received the Triennial Prize for Dramatic Literature from the Belgian government. During this period, and up until the Great War of 1914-1918, he was widely looked up to, throughout Europe, as a great sage, and the embodiment of the higher thought of the time. In 1906, Maeterlinck and Leblanc moved to a villa in Grasse in the south of France. He spent his hours meditating and walking. As he emotionally pulled away from Leblanc, he entered a state of depression. Diagnosed with neurasthenia, he rented the Benedictine Abbey of St. Wandrille in Normandy to help him relax. By renting the abbey he rescued it from the desecration of being sold and used as a chemical factory and thus he received a blessing from the Pope. Leblanc would often walk around in the garb of an abbess; he would wear roller skates as he moved about the house. During this time, he wrote his essay "The Intelligence of Flowers" (1906), in which he expressed sympathy with socialist ideas. He donated money to many workers' unions and socialist groups. At this time he conceived his greatest contemporary success: the fairy play The Blue Bird (1908, but largely written in 1906). Stanislavsky's 1908 Moscow production, of extraordinary visual beauty, is still over a century later regularly performed in Moscow, in a shortened version as a children's matinee. After the writing of "The Intelligence of Flowers", he suffered from a period of depression and writer's block. Although he recovered from this after a year or two, he never became so inventive as a writer again. His later plays, such as Marie-Victoire (1907) and Mary Magdalene (1910), provided with lead roles for Leblanc, were notably inferior to their predecessors, and sometimes merely repeat an earlier formula. Even though alfresco performances of some of his plays at St. Wandrille had been successful, Maeterlinck felt that he was losing his privacy. The death of his mother on 11 June 1910 added to his depression. In 1910 he met the 18-year-old actress Renée Dahon during a rehearsal of The Blue Bird. She became his lighthearted companion. After having been nominated by Carl Bildt, a member of the Swedish Academy, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911, which served to lighten his spirits. By 1913, he had become more openly socialist and sided with the Belgian trade unions against the Catholic party during a strike. He began to study mysticism and lambasted the Catholic Church in his essays for misconstruing the history of the universe. By a decree of 26 January 1914, the Roman Catholic Church placed his opera omnia on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. When Germany invaded Belgium in 1914, Maeterlinck wished to join the French Foreign Legion, but his application was denied due to his age. He and Leblanc decided to leave Grasse for a villa near Nice, where he spent the next decade of his life. He gave speeches on the bravery of the Belgian people and placed the blame upon all Germans for the war. Although his patriotism and his indifference to the harm he was doing to his standing in Germany do him credit, his reputation as a great sage who stood above current affairs was damaged by his political involvement. While in Nice, he wrote The Mayor of Stilmonde (1918), which the American press quickly labeled a "Great War Play", and which became a British film in 1929. He also wrote The Betrothal (French: Les Fiançailles, 1922), a sequel to The Blue Bird, in which the heroine of the play is clearly not a Leblanc archetype. On 15 February 1919, Maeterlinck married Dahon. He accepted an invitation to the Un.... Discover the Maurice Maeterlinck popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Maurice Maeterlinck books.