Maurice Maeterlinck

Maurice Maeterlinck was born on August 29, 1862, in Ghent, into a wealthy bourgeois family of the city. In 1890, he published his first play, "Princess Maleine." This was one of eight plays he wrote by 1894, through which he created a theater of the soul, as advocated by symbolism in this new theatrical form. Three principles dominate: static drama (characters are motionless, passive, and receptive to the unknown), the high character (often identified with death, fate, or destiny, something perhaps harsher than death), and the everyday tragic (absence of heroism, the simple fact of living a tragedy). In the same year, he wrote the plays "The Intruder" and "The Blind," and in 1892, "Pelléas and Mélisande," which is considered the undisputed masterpiece of symbolic theater. In 1894, he wrote "Interior" and "The Death of Tintagiles." In 1902, he wrote the historical drama "Monna Vanna," after which he focused less on theater, and his writing, as it moved away from the influence of symbolism, became much more conventional, incorporating historical, psychological, and spectacular elements. In 1907, his work "Ariane and Bluebeard" was set to music by Paul Dukas. In 1908, he wrote "The Blue Bird" (a dramatic fairy tale for children), which was first staged by Stanislavski at the Moscow Art Theatre. In 1910, he refused to become a French citizen to be accepted into the French Academy, and in 1911, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His works were immediately translated. No other Belgian playwright achieved greater international acclaim than he did. He passed away in Nice on May 5, 1949.