Life and Writings of Maurice Maeterlinck

It is known that his family was settled at Renaix in East Flanders as early as the fourteenth

ge during a year of famine, and that he in that capacity distributed corn among the poor. Maeterlinck's father was a notary by profession; being in comfortable circumstances, however, he did not practise, but lived in a country villa at Oostacker, near Ghe

s have woven into them; they may see in them thriving commercial towns; but poets and painters have loved their legendary gloom. "Black, suspicious watch-towers," this is Ghent seen by an artist's eyes, "dark canals on whose weary waters swans are swimming, mediaeval gateways, convents hidden by walls, churches in whose dusk women in wide, dark cloaks and ruche caps cower on the floor like a flight of frightened winter bi

be[6] their narrow tyranny.... I have often heard him say that he would not begin life again if he had to pay for it by his seven years at school.

reputation. Emile Verhaeren (who may be called the national poet of Flanders, the most international of French poets after Victor Hugo) and Georges Rodenbach had been schoolboys together at Sainte-Barbe; and on its benches three other poets, Maeterlinck, Grégoire Le Roy, and Charles van Lerberghe, formed friendships for life. These three boys p

in history to be priests, but who are constrained by the force of their convictions to preach a new gospel. It was the religion inborn in him, as well as his monastic training, which made him a reader and interpreter of such mystics as Ru

l regret to my last day that I obeyed that tradition, and consecrated my most precious years to the vainest of the sciences. All my instincts, all my inclina

s of jurisprudence. He was twenty-four when, according to his parents' wish, he settled in Ghent as an avocat; to lose, as Gérard Harry puts it, "with triumphant facility the first and last causes which were confided to

stay in Paris was that they came into contact with men of letters. In the Brasserie Pousset at the heart of the Quartier Latin they heard Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, "that evangelist of dream and irony," reciting his short stories before writing them down. "I saw Villiers de L'Isle-Adam very often during the seven months I spent at Paris," Maeterlinck told Huret. "All I have done I owe to V

fered to him by the city of Brussels on the occasion of his receiving the Nobel prize, wrote despondently, expressing the good omen, seeing that men of real genius like Villiers de L'Isle-Adam and Barbey d'Aurevilly had died in obscurity and poverty. Both men, indeed, had been hostile to cheap popularity. B

terlinck in writing a play on Mary Magdalene. There was Paul Roux, who, as time went on, blossomed into "Saint-Pol-Roux le Magnifique"-he who founded "le Magnificisme," the school of poetry which had for its programme "a mystical magnificat to eternal nature." It was in Pierre Quillard's rooms one evening that Grégoire Le Roy read to this circle of friends a short story by Maeterlinck: Le Massacre des Innocents. On the day following he introduc

discarded it; but it was reprinted in Gérard Harry's monograph (1909).

the delightful quaintness of ea

up of their horses rode red or yellow lansquenets, who dismounted and ran across the snow to stretch their limbs

e door, which was opened reluctantly, and they went and w

es of wheaten bread for their companions who had stayed round t

the hamlet from the side of the fields, and ordered the lansquenets to bring before him all infants of t

the style is such that anyone who has seen the Breughels' paintings understands at once that a series of fantastic pictures, which have no relation whatever to

ey had set fire to the farm, hanged his mother in the willow-tree

the deep green and any other colours you like.... Never

ng in the midst of the stars." (This is a flat canvas, remember.) "Here the

in the midst of huddling sheep, and cow

n. It is an immense pity that Maeterlinck did not write more in this fashion; many of us would have given some of his essays for this pure artistry. Not that he threw his gift of seeing pictur

ture. Adolphe van Bever in his little book publishes a letter from Charles van Lerberghe to himself which shows that the t

hat he never sent me any tragedy or epic poem, never anything bombastic or declamatory, never anything languorous or sentimental either. Neither the rhetorical nor the elegiac had any hold on him. He was a fine handsome young fe

an Lerberghe, too, more than any other, who won Maeterlinck over to symbolism. But Maeterlinck met Mallarmé personally during his stay i

s d'ames et de sangs and Jules Laforgue's Les Complaintes came out; in 1886, René Ghil's Le Traité du Verbe, Jean Moréas's Les Cantilènes, Rimbaud's Les Illuminations, Vielé-Griffin's Cueille d'Avril. In the pages of La Vogue, launched on the 11th of April, 1

poetry; and two of the French poets who were the first to use the medium, Francis Vielé-Griffin and Gustave Kahn, might dispute the glory of being its originators. As to Francis Vielé-Griffin, he is said to have introduced it by translations of Walt Whitman;[17]

t, few people knew anything about Whitman, beside the two poets of American birth, Francis Vielé-Griffin and Stuart Merrill; and both at that time, although of course their manner was new, were writing, as far as form is concerned, regular verses. Another of the first poets to write free verses, the Walloon poet, Albert Mockel, was not unacquainted with Whitman; he had read American Poems selected by William M. Rossetti. Now Mockel, as editor of La Wallonie, which he had founded to defend the new style, was connected with the whole group of symbolists and verslibristes, all of whom, practically, were regular contributors to the review. And La Wallonie was hardy: it lasted seven years; a great rallyi

mentioned. Kahn's Palais Nomades appeared in April, 1887; Mockel's first vers libres appeared in La Wallonie in July, 1887. But these poems of Mockel h

ave Kahn, in honour of the latter's book, La Pluie et le beau Temps. But, having weighed the arguments for and against, Mallarmé not only agreed to presid

Vergalo, was a Peruvian exile living in Paris; his ideas were that lines of poetry should begin with small letters, and that the alternance of masculine and feminine rhymes should be discarded. But the founders of the

d the vers libre at this time; more than one, though all had the greatest regard for Mallarmé, may be said to have remained tolerably fai

-ter-lee-nk; but Frenchmen pronounce

a young man would skate "into Holland." See Huret's Enqu

eblanc, Morceaux ch

eine, Maeterl

Chaudes,

ons, rises remote, far from noisy streets, Sainte-Barbe, the grey-walled Jesuit monastery. Its thick, defensive walls, its silent corridors and refectories, remind one somewhat of Oxford's beautiful col

eblanc, Morceaux ch

ck, p. 9. But cf. Léon Bazal

ry, Maeterlinc

eterlinck, p. 26; Hei

ur son bonheur n'est-ce pas le doubler?" with

blez, beginning three years later, and in which Maeterlinck's criticism of

e Innocents and other T

(printed in December, 1890) in Les Flambeaux noirs. But in May, 1890, he h

knowledged symbolism, did not appear till 1890, but the

with the collaboration of Jean Moréas and

o was delighted. (See Le Masque, Série ii, Nos. 9 and 10, 1912). Vielé-Griffin's first translation of Whitman appeared in November, 1888, in. La Revue indépendan

ncesse Maleine was written in vers lib