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Maurice Maeterlinck

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Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard, Count 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.

Biography

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.

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.

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).

He had a relationship with the singer and actress Georgette Leblanc from 1895 till 1918. Leblanc influenced his work for the following two decades. With the play Aglavaine et Sélysette Maeterlinck began to create characters, especially female characters, more in control of their destinies. Leblanc performed these female characters on stage. Even though mysticism and metaphysics influenced his work throughout his career, he slowly replaced his Symbolism with a more existential style.

In 1895, with his parents frowning upon his open relationship with an actress, Maeterlinck and Leblanc moved to the district of Passy in Paris. The Catholic Church was unwilling to grant her a divorce from her Spanish husband. They frequently entertained guests, including Mirbeau, Jean Lorraine, and Paul Fort. They spent their summers in Normandy. During this period, Maeterlinck published his Douze Chansons (1896), Treasure of the Humble (1896), The Life of the Bee (1901), and Ariane et Barbe-Bleue ("Ariadne and Bluebeard," 1902).

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

In 1906, Maeterlinck and Leblanc moved to a villa in Grasse. He spent his hours meditating and walking. During this time, he wrote his essay L'Intelligence des fleurs ("The Intelligence of Flowers," 1906), in which he discussed politics and championed socialist ideas. He donated money to many workers' unions and socialist groups. At this time he conceived his greatest contemporary success: the fairy play L'Oiseau Bleu (The Blue Bird, 1908). During this period he also wrote Marie-Victoire (1907) and Mary Magdalene (1908) with lead roles for Leblanc.

As he emotionally pulled away from Leblanc, he entered a state of depression. In 1910 he met the eighteen-year-old Renée Dahon and left Grasse for a villa near Nice. In 1919 he married Dahon and they moved to the United States in 1940.

By a decree of 26 January 1914, his opera omnia was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum by the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1926 he published La Vie des Termites, plagiarising "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. 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 after the war and died there in 1949.

The Static Drama

Maeterlinck, an avid reader of Arthur Schopenhauer, considered man powerless against the forces of fate. He believed that any actor, due to the hindrance of physical mannerisms and expressions, would inadequately portray the symbolic figures of his plays. He concluded that marionettes were an excellent alternative. Being guided by strings, which are operated by a puppeteer, marionettes are an excellent representation of fate's complete control over man. He wrote Intérieur, La Mort de Tintagiles, and Alladine and Palomides for marionette theatre.

From this, he gradually developed his notion of the static drama. He felt that it was the artist's responsibility to create something that expressed nothing of human emotions but rather of the external forces that compel people. Materlinck once said: "The stage is a place where works of art are extinguished. [...] Poems die when living people get into them.

He explained his ideas on the static drama in his essay "The Tragedies of Daily Life," which appeared in The Treasure of the Humble. The actors were to speak and move as if pushed and pulled by an external force, fate as puppeteer. They were not to allow the stress of their inner emotions to compel their movements. Maeterlinck would often continue to refer to his cast of characters as "marionettes.

Maeterlinck in Music

Pelléas et Mélisande inspired four major musical compositions at the turn of the twentieth century, 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 musical works based on Maeterlinck's plays include:

Ariadne and Bluebeard opera in 3 acts by Paul Dukas
Princess Maleine overtures by Pierre de Bréville and Cyril Scott
an unfinished opera be Lili Boulanger
The Seven Princesses incidental music by Bréville
The Death of Tintagiles symphonic poem by Charles Martin Loeffler
incidental music by Ralph Vaughan Williams
Aglavaine and Sélysette orchestral prelude by Arthur Honegger
Monna Vanna an opera in 3 acts by Emil Ábrányi
opera in 4 acts by Henry Février
and an unfinished opera by Sergei Rachmaninoff
The Blind an opera by Beat Furrer

List of works

  • The Blue Bird: a Fairy Play in Six Acts
  • The Buried Temple
  • The Life of the Bee
  • Mehilaisten elama (Finnish)
  • Our Friend the Dog
  • Pelleas and Melisande
  • La sagesse et la destinee (French)
  • The Unknown Guest
  • Wisdom and Destiny
  • The Wrack of the Storm

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)

See also

External links

References





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