2021-05-06 Thu

Maurice Maeterlinck was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911 for his outstanding works of Symbolist theatre. Maeterlinck studied law at the University of Ghent and was admitted to the bar in that city in 1886. In Paris in he met Auguste Villiers de L’Isle-Adam and the leaders of the Symbolist movement, and he soon abandoned law for literature. His first verse collection, Serres chaudes (“Hothouses”), and his first play, La Princesse Maleine, were published in 1889.

Maeterlinck wrote many other plays, including historical dramas such as Monna Vanna (1902). After he won the Nobel Prize, however, his reputation declined, although his Le Bourgmestre de Stilmonde (1917; The Burgomaster of Stilmonde), a patriotic play in which he explores the problems of Flanders under the wartime rule of an unprincipled German officer, briefly enjoyed great success.

The 100th anniversary of Maurice Maeterlinck's greatest contemporary success, his play The Blue Bird, was selected as the main motif of a high-value collectors' coin: the Belgian 50 euro Maurice Maeterlinck commemorative coin, minted in 2008. This coin features on its obverse the image of the bluebird spreading its wings and leaving the confines of its cage for freedom.

Image Source: coinsworld.eu