From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck
Born	August 29, 1862 Ghent, Belgium
Died	May 6, 1949 Nice, France
Nationality	Belgian

Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (August 29, 1862 - May 6, 1949) was a Belgian poet, playwright, and essayist writing in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Maeterlinck in Music 3 Partial bibliography 3.1 Plays 3.2 Verse 3.3 Prose 4 Literature 5 See also 6 External links 7 References

Count Maurice Maeterlinck was born in Ghent, Belgium to a wealthy, French-speaking family. His father, Polydore, was a notary, who enjoyed tending the hothouses on their property. His mother, Mathilde, came from a wealthy family.^[1]

In September, 1874 he was sent to the Jesuit College of Sainte-Barbe, where works of the French Romantics were scorned. Only plays on religious subjects were permitted. His experiences at this school undoubtedly influenced his distaste for the Catholic Church and organized religion.^[2]

He had written poems and short novels during his studies, but his father wanted him to go into law. After finishing his law studies at the University of Ghent in 1885, he spent a few months in Paris, France. He met there some members of the then new Symbolism movement, Villiers de l'Isle Adam in particular. The latter would have a big influence on the work of Maeterlinck.

In 1889, he became famous overnight after his first play, La Princesse Maleine, had received enthusiastic praise from Octave Mirbeau, the literary critic of Le Figaro (August 1890). In the following years, he wrote a series of symbolist plays characterized by fatalism and mysticism, most importantly L'Intruse (The Intruder, 1890), Les Aveugles (The Blind, 1890) and Pelléas et Mélisande (1892, this last of which received several well-known musical treatments (see below).

His greatest contemporary success, however, was the fairy play L'Oiseau Bleu (The Blue Bird, 1908). This play has been made into several films, including one made in 1940 in Technicolor, starring Shirley Temple (her first unsuccessful film), and the joint United States/Soviet Union production The Blue Bird (Russian: Sinyaya Ptitsa) (1976), starring Elizabeth Taylor (this version was also not a box office success, and was savaged by the critics). By a decree of 26 January 1914, his opera omnia was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum by the Roman Catholic Church.

He had a relationship with the singer Georgette Leblanc from 1895 till 1918. In 1919 he married Renée Dahon; together they went to the United States in 1940.

In 1926 he published La Vie des Termites (The Life of the White Ant) plagiarising ('Die Huisgenoot', Nasionale Pers, 6 January 1928, cover story) "The Soul of the White Ant" researched and written by the South African poet and scientist Eugene Marais (1871 - 1936). Marais' later suicide has been attributed to this act of plagiarism by some ('The Dark Stream', Leon Rousseau, Jonathan Ball Publishers, Cape Town, 1982). Maeterlinck's own words in La Vie de Termites indicate that the possible discovery or accusation of plagiarism worried him:

It would have been easy, in regard to every statement, to allow the text to bristle with footnotes and references. In some chapters there is not a sentence but would have clamoured for these; and the letterpress would have been swallowed up by vast masses of comment, like one of those dreadful books we hated so much at school. There is a short bibliography at the end of the volume which will no doubt serve the same purpose.

Despite these misgivings, there is no reference to Eugene Marais in the bibliography.

In 1930 he bought a château in Nice, France, and named it Orlamonde, a name occurring in his work Quinze Chansons.

He was made a count by Albert I, King of the Belgians in 1932.

According to an article published in the New York Times in 1940, he arrived in the United States from Lisbon on the Greek Liner Nea Hellas. He had fled to Lisbon in order to escape the Nazi invasion of both Belgium and France. The Times quoted him as saying, "I knew that if I was captured by the Germans I would be shot at once, since I have always been counted as an enemy of Germany because of my play, 'Le Bourgmestre de Stillemonde,' which dealt with the conditions in Belgium during the German Occupation of 1918."

Alva Johnston in his book The Great Goldwyn describes how Maeterlinck during his time in the United States was brought to Hollywood by Samuel Goldwyn, tickled to have a Nobel Prize winner among his stable of writers at MGM. When invited to write a scenario based on his best work, he prepared one based on his 1901 book The Life of a Bee. After reading the first few pages Goldwyn burst out of his office, exclaiming: "My God! The hero is a bee!"

He returned to Nice, France after the war and died there in 1949.

Pelléas et Mélisande served as the inspiration for four major turn-of-the-century musical compositions, an opera by Claude Debussy, (L 88, Paris, 1902), incidental music to the play composed by Jean Sibelius (opus 46, 1905), an orchestral suite by Gabriel Fauré (opus 80, 1898), and a symphonic poem by Arnold Schoenberg (opus 5, 1902/03).

Other operas, suites, symphonies based on Maeterlinck's plays include:

• Ariane et Barbe-bleue: opera in 3 acts by Paul Dukas (1899-1907; f.p. Paris, Opera-Comique, 1907)
• Princess Maleine: Bréville, Lili Boulanger, Cyril Scott
• The Seven Princesses: Bréville
• The Death of Tintagiles: Löffler, Santoliquido, Vaughan Williams
• Aglavaine and Sélysette: Honegger
• Monna Vanna: Ábrányi Emil jr., Henry Février, Rachmaninoff
• Les Aveugles (The Blind): Beat Furrer (as "Die Blinden")

• La Princesse Maleine (1889)
• L'Intruse (The Intruder) (1890)
• Les aveugles (The Blind) (1890)
• Intérieur (Interior) (1891)
• Pelléas et Mélisande (1892) - his most famous Symbolist drama, made into an opera in 1902 by Claude Debussy
• La Mort de Tintagiles (The Death of Tintagiles) (1894)
• Annabella (Translation of John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore)(1894)
• Aglavaine et Sélysette (1896)
• The Plays of Maurice Maeterlinck (1899)
  • Princess Maleine
  • The Intruder
  • The Blind
  • The seven Princesses
  • Alladine and Palomides
  • Pelléas and Mélisande
  • Home
  • The Death of Tintagiles
• Sister Beatrice (1901)
• Ariane et Barbe-Bleue (Ariane and Bluebeard) (1901), made into an opera by Paul Dukas
• Monna Vanna [1] (1902)
• Joyzelle (1903)
• L'Oiseau Bleu (The Blue Bird) (1908)
• Mary Magdalene (1910)
• Le Bourgmestre de Stilmonde (The Mayor of Stilmonde) (1918)
• La miracle de Saint-Antoine (The Miracle of St. Anthony) (1919)
• Berniquel (1929)

• Serres chaudes (1889; Hot House Blooms)
• Douze chansons (1896, in 1900 re-issued as Quinze chansons)

• Le Trésor des Humbles (1896; The Treasure of the Humble)
• La Sagesse et la destinée (1898; Wisdom and Destiny)
• La Vie des abeilles (1901; The Life of the Bee)
• L'Intelligence des fleurs (1907; The Intelligence of Flowers)
• La vie des termites (1926)
• Bulles bleues (1948), autobiography

• W. L. Courtney, The Development of M. Maeterlinck (London, 1904)
• M. J. Moses, Maurice Maeterlinck: A Study (New York, 1911)
• E. Thomas, Maurice Maeterlinck, (New York, 1911)
• J. Bethell, The life and Works of Maurice Maeterlinck (New York, 1913)
• Archibald Henderson, European Dramatists (Cincinnati, 1913)
• E. E. Slosson, Major Prophets of To-Day (Boston, 1914)
• G. F. Sturgis, The Psychology of Maeterlinck as Shown in his Dramas (Boston, 1914)

• Belgian literature

• The Social Significance of Modern Drama; Monna Vanna, Analysis of the play by Maurice Maeterlinck
• Works by Maurice Maeterlinck at Project Gutenberg
• List of works by Maurice Maeterlinck at the Online Books Page
• a transcript of the Nobel prize presentation speech

	The works of Maurice Maeterlinck
Plays	Princesse Maleine | The Intruder | The Blind | The Seven Princesses | Pelleas and Melisande | Alladine and Palomides | Interior |The Death of Tintagiles | Aglavaine and Sélysette | Ariane and Bluebeard | Sister Beatrice | Monna Vanna | Joyzelle | The Blue Bird | Mary Magdelene | The Miracle of St. Anthony | The Mayor of Stilmonde | The Betrothal | The Cloud That Lifted | The Power of the Dead | Berniquel | Marie-Victoire | Joan of Arc | Father Setubal | The Three Justiciaries | The Last Judgment
Poems	Hothouses | Twelve Songs
Short Stories	The Massacre of the Innocents | Onirology
Ballet	The Dance of the Stars
Essays, Prose	The Treasure of the Humble | Wisdom and Destiny | The Life of the Bee | The Intelligence of Flowers | The Life of the Termite | Blue Bubbles

v • d • e Nobel Laureates in Literature
Sully Prudhomme (1901) • Theodor Mommsen (1902) • Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1903) • Frédéric Mistral / José Echegaray (1904) • Henryk Sienkiewicz (1905) • Giosuè Carducci (1906) • Rudyard Kipling (1907) • Rudolf Eucken (1908) • Selma Lagerlöf (1909) • Paul von Heyse (1910) • Maurice Maeterlinck (1911) • Gerhart Hauptmann (1912) • Rabindranath Tagore (1913) • Romain Rolland (1915) • Verner von Heidenstam (1916) • Karl Gjellerup / Henrik Pontoppidan (1917) • Carl Spitteler (1919) • Knut Hamsun (1920) • Anatole France (1921) • Jacinto Benavente (1922) • William Yeats (1923) • Władysław Reymont (1924) • George Bernard Shaw (1925)
Complete roster | (1901–1925) | (1926–1950) | (1951–1975) | (1976-2000) | (2001–2025)