Maurice Maeterlinck

Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck is a Belgian writer , French-speaking person of Flanders (“fransquillon”), born with Ghent, on August 29th, 1862 in literature and died in Nice, on May 5th, 1949 in literature.

Biography

After its studies in the college of Jesuits Holy-Bores ( Sint-Barbara ) of Ghent, Maeterlinck publishes, as of 1885, of the poems of inspiration parnassienne in the Young person Belgium . It leaves to Paris where it meets several writers who will influence it, of which Stephan Mallarmé and Villiers of Isle-Adam. This last makes him discover the richnesses of the German idealism (Hegel, Schopenhauer). At the same time, Maeterlinck discovers Ruysbroeck Admirable the, a Flemish mystic of the 14th century of which it represents the writings ( Ornement of the spiritual weddings ). Thus it turns to the intuitive richnesses of the Germanic world while moving away from the Rationalisme French. In this spirit, it is devoted to Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg, known as) and comes into contact with the Romantisme of Iéna (Germany, 1787 - 1831, around August and Friedrich Schlegel and of the review the Athenäum ), precursor in right-hand side line of the symbolism. Works which publishes Maeterlinck between 1889 and 1896 are impregnated of this Germanic influence.

It is in August 1890 that it becomes famous, of the day at the following day, thanks to a resounding article of Octave Mirbeau on the Princess Maleine in Le Figaro . In 1902, he writes Monna Vanna that the actress sails about it Georgette Leblanc will play, met in 1895 and who will be his partner until 1919 when he marries the young person Renee Dahon. It obtains the Nobel Prize of literature in 1911. In 1935, at the time of a stay in Portugal, it prefaces the political discourses of the president Salazar: a revolution in peace . In 1940, it gains the United States for the duration of the war. In 1949, he dies in Nice.

Distinctions

Large Cord of the Order of Léopold (January 12th, 1920) Nobel Prize of Literature (1911) for the whole of its work

Work

; Poet Its poetic collection hot Serres appears in 1889 in Leon Vanier, the editor of Paul Verlaine. These worms conform to the pattern of the “depersonalization of the writing” and carry out the ideal mallarméen partly: the suggestion, like gasoline of “all bouquets”, becomes the generating principle of the act of “pure” creation. By the repetition of the word, Maeterlinck reaches a spiritual vibration, “an interior resonance”.
They celebrate a great festival at the enemies!
There are stags in a besieged city!
And a menagerie in the middle of the lilies! The worms is dérythmé, released of conventions. Guillaume Apollinaire will remember it. Maeterlinck refuses naturalism and Parnassus to engage on the way of allegorical poetry where the image points out the medieval iconography, the painting of Bruegel or of Jerome Bosch.

In 1895, it meets Georgette Leblanc, a professional singer, the sister of Maurice Leblanc. With it, it will hold towards 1897, in the Villa Dupont, a Parisian living room extremely run: one crosses there, inter alia, Oscar Wilde, Paul Fort, Stephan Mallarmé, Camille Saint-Saëns, Anatole France, Auguste Rodin.

Maeterlinck forms also part of the large playwrights (Henrik Ibsen, Anton Tchekhov, August Strindberg and Hauptmann) who, towards 1880, contributed to transform the design of the drama. Of 1889 with 1894, it publishes eight parts where it creates a theater of the heart, as symbolism dreamed it. In this new form, three concepts are to be retained: the static drama (motionless, passive and receptive characters with the unknown); the sublime character (compare often to death, it is the Destiny or Fate, something of crueler perhaps than death); daily tragedy (not of heroism, the simple fact of living is tragic). The action, by the stylized play of the actors, must suggest the attitudes of the heart vis-a-vis the destiny, the slow awakening with fate.

; Essay writer This theater a work of Essayiste succeeds which was success near the general public. Maeterlinck leaves then to the philosophical discovery the vegetable world ( Intelligence of the flowers , (1907)) and of the social insects ( Life of the bees (1901), Life of the termites (1927), Life of the ants (1930).

; World success In 1908, Constantin Stanislavski creates his part the blue Bird with the Théâtre of art of Moscow. She will be played then with an immense success in the whole world.

It receives the Nobel Prize in 1911 and is anobli by the king Albert in 1932. It passes the Second world war to the the United States, then returns to settle in Nice. One year before its death, it publishes blue Bulles where it evokes the memories of its childhood.

Quotations

The dramatic poet is obliged to reduce in the real life, in the life of the every day, the idea that it is made unknown. One needs that it shows us how, in which form, under which conditions, according to which laws, at which end act on our destiny the higher powers, the inintelligibles influences, the infinite principles, of which, as a poet, it is persuaded that the universe is full.

Maeterlinck was tempted to give the life to forms, in states of the pure thought. Pelléas, Tintagiles, Mélisande are like the visible figures such specious feelings. A philosophy emerges from these meetings to which Maeterlinck will try later to give a verb, a form in the central theory of the daily tragedy. Here the destiny unchains its whims; the rate/rhythm is rarefied, spiritual, we are with the source even of the storm, the motionless circles like the life. Maeterlinck introduced the first into the literature the multiple richness of subconsciousness. (...) It appeared in the literature at the time that it was to come. Symbolist it was it by nature, by definition. Its poems, its tests, its theater, are like the states, the various figures of an identical thought. The intense feeling which it had of the significance symbolic system of the things, their secret exchanges, their interferences, gave him the taste thereafter to make them live again by systematizing them. Thus Maeterlinck is commented with the same images which are used to him as food.

The scene, at Maeterlinck, never holds in the field of a spyglass. It remains broad, and, with a strange fraternity, the tower and the tree must act beside the hero, and each accessory and each noise must preserve and achieve their significance. It is a question for each actor of giving contours, of underlining the limits of its character, and not what he contains. It does not have the right to draw the attention, to insulate itself by its individual play, it must play like the veiled, humble face in the fray of the characters and their anxious meetings.

Selective bibliography

Related article

  • Palate Maeterlinck in Nice

External bond

  • Works of Maurice Maeterlinck on Ebooks Free & Free

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