28 Facts About Maurice Maeterlinck

1.

Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, known as Count Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French.

2.

Maurice Maeterlinck 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".

3.

Maurice Maeterlinck was a leading member of La Jeune Belgique group and his plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement.

4.

Maurice Maeterlinck's father, Polydore, was a notary who enjoyed tending the greenhouses on their property.

5.

Maurice Maeterlinck had written poems and short novels while still studying, but his father wanted him to go into law.

6.

Maurice Maeterlinck 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.

7.

Maurice 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.

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8.

Maurice Maeterlinck had a relationship with the singer and actress Georgette Leblanc from 1895 until 1918.

9.

In 1903 Maurice Maeterlinck received the Triennial Prize for Dramatic Literature from the Belgian government.

10.

Maurice Maeterlinck donated money to many workers' unions and socialist groups.

11.

Maurice Maeterlinck's later plays, such as Marie-Victoire and Mary Magdalene, provided with lead roles for Leblanc, were notably inferior to their predecessors, and sometimes merely repeat an earlier formula.

12.

Maurice Maeterlinck began to study mysticism and lambasted the Catholic Church in his essays for misconstruing the history of the universe.

13.

When Germany invaded Belgium in 1914, Maurice Maeterlinck wished to join the French Foreign Legion, but his application was denied due to his age.

14.

Maurice Maeterlinck gave speeches on the bravery of the Belgian people and placed the blame upon all Germans for the war.

15.

Maurice Maeterlinck wrote The Betrothal, a sequel to The Blue Bird, in which the heroine of the play is clearly not a Leblanc archetype.

16.

Maurice Maeterlinck accepted an invitation to the United States, where Samuel Goldwyn asked him to produce a few scenarios for film.

17.

Maurice Maeterlinck had prepared one based on his The Life of the Bee.

18.

In 1926 Maurice Maeterlinck published La Vie des Termites, an entomological book that plagiarised the book The Soul of the Ant, by the Afrikaner poet and scientist Eugene Marais, David Bignell, in his inaugural address as Professor of Zoology at the University of London, called Maurice Maeterlinck's work "a classic example of academic plagiarism".

19.

Marais accused Maurice Maeterlinck of having appropriated Marais' concept of the "organic unity" of the termite nest in his book.

20.

Maurice Maeterlinck clearly desired his readers to infer that he had arrived at certain of my theories by his own unaided reason, although he admits that he never saw a termite in his life.

21.

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

22.

Maurice Maeterlinck had fled to Lisbon in order to escape the Nazi invasion of both Belgium and France.

23.

Maurice Maeterlinck returned to Nice after the war on 10 August 1947.

24.

Maurice Maeterlinck was President of PEN International, the worldwide association of writers, from 1947 until 1949.

25.

Maurice Maeterlinck died in Nice on 6 May 1949 after suffering a heart attack.

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26.

Maurice Maeterlinck believed that any actor, due to the hindrance of physical mannerisms and expressions, would inadequately portray the symbolic figures of his plays.

27.

Maurice Maeterlinck wrote Interior, The Death of Tintagiles, and Alladine and Palomides for marionette theatre.

28.

Maurice Maeterlinck explained his ideas on the static drama in his essay "The Tragic in Daily Life", which appeared in The Treasure of the Humble.