Maurice Maeterlinck

Maurice Maeterlinck , 1862-1949, Belgian author who wrote in French. After practicing law unsuccessfully for several years, he went to Paris in 1897. He had already been touched by the influence of the symbolists and the mystical thought of Novalis and Emerson; his eventual 60-odd volumes can be read as a symbolist manifesto. Their suggestion of universal mystery, their insistence on ennui and impending doom affected the mood of a whole generation before World War I. Maeterlinck was awarded the 1911 Nobel Prize in Literature, but after 1920 his creative powers declined. His works include the short story "Le Massacre des innocents" (1886); the plays Les Aveugles (1891, tr. The Blind ), Pelléas et Mélisande (1892), which inspired Debussy's opera (1902), Monna Vanna (1902), and L'Oiseau bleu (1909, tr. The Blue Bird ), an allegorical fantasy for children that denies the reality of death; the essays La Vie des abeilles (1901, tr. The Life of the Bee ) and L'Intelligence des fleurs (1907, tr. Life and Flowers ); and poems.

Bibliography: See studies by A. Bailly (tr. 1974) and L. B. Konrad (1986).

Maeterlinck, Maurice (1862–1949) Belgian playwright. His plays include The Princess Maleine (1889), Pelléas and Mélisande (1892), and The Blue Bird (1908), first produced in Moscow by Stanislavsky. Maeterlinck received the 1911 Nobel Prize in literature.

Maeterlinck, Maurice (1862–1949), Belgian poet and dramatist, who in 1911 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. A Symbolist, and a forerunner of the Theatre of Silence, he wrote a number of plays which proved immensely popular in his lifetime, among them Pelléas et Mélisande (1893), in which Mrs Patrick Campbell played in French opposite Sarah Bernhardt in London. It originally had incidental music by Fauré, but was later used as a basis for an opera by Debussy. Well received in London also was Le Bourgmestre de Stilmonde (1918), which provided an excellent part for Martin-Harvey, who frequently revived it. In America in 1922 Eva Le Gallienne appeared as Aglavaine in Aglavaine and Seylsette, the part originally written for Georgette Leblanc (1867–1941), who created most of Maeterlinck's heroines between 1896 and 1910. The universal favourite among Maeterlinck's plays was L'Oiseau bleu (1909), first directed in Moscow by Stanislavsky, and only then in Paris and (as The Blue Bird) in London; a sequel, Les Fiançailles (1911), seen in London as The Betrothal in 1921, was only a modified success. Among other works were Les Aveugles (1891), Intérieur (1895), and Ariane et Barbe-Bleu (1901), used as the libretto of an opera by Dukas.