Maurice Maeterlinck Belgian author

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

Biography

Count Maurice Maeterlinck was born in Ghent, Belgium, in a wealthy, French-speaking family. He wrote poems and short novels during his studies, which he destroyed later; only fragments are left.

After finishing his law studies, 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, 1909). 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).

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 1926 he published La Vie des Termites (The Life of the White Ant) plagiarising "The Soul of the White Ant" researched and written by the South African poet and scientist Eugene Marais (1871 - 1936). Marais's later suicide has been attributed to this act of plagiarism by some. 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 deadful 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.

Sadly, the name of Eugene Marais is conspicuous by its absence from 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."

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

Maeterlinck in Music

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
• The Seven Princesses: Bréville
• The Death of Tintagiles: Löffler, Santoliquido
• Aglavaine and Sélysette: Honegger
• Monna Vanna: Ábrányi Emil jr., Février, Rachmaninoff
• Les Aveugles (The Blind): Beat Furrer (as "Die Blinden")

Partial bibliography

Plays

• 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 (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)

Verse

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

Prose

• 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

Literature

• 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)

References

• In the anime Eureka Seven, the three orphans (Maurice, Maeter, and Linck) are named after him.
• In the Scylla and Charybdis chapter of his novel Ulysses, James Joyce references Maeterlinck's La sagesse et la destinée.
• In the P.G. Wodehouse short story "Company for Gertude", Lord Emsworth emerges from the telephone cupboard to find his niece looking lovelorn and miserable. "She suggested something symbolic out of Maeterlinck", is how Wodehouse describes her.