Maurice Maeterlinck

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) was a Belgian playwright, poet and essayist writing in French, and the leading dramatist of the Symbolist movement. Born in Ghent, he trained as a lawyer before winning sudden fame with his early plays, among them Pelléas and Mélisande, later set to music by Debussy, whose dreamlike, fatalistic atmosphere broke with realist theater. His fairy play The Blue Bird became an international success, and his essays on nature and the inner life, such as The Life of the Bee, reached a wide public. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911.