Maurice Maeterlinck Papers

Maurice Maeterlinck was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote primarily in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911, and according to the Nobel committee at that time, Maeterlinck was given this award "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.”

Though today his literary reputation rests primarily upon his plays, which are considered part of the “Symbolist” literary movement, Maeterlinck spent the later years of his life focusing mainly on philosophical essays dealing with issues of life, death, and afterlife. In 1932 Maeterlinck was given the title of Count of Belgium. He died on May 6, 1949.