Belgian playwright and essayist (1862–1949)
A Belgian who wrote fairy-tale plays in French about death, won the Nobel Prize in 1911 for "poetic fancy" that somehow stirred readers without saying things straight, then ended his career dodging plagiarism charges.
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck was born on 29 August 1862, Flemish by birth but French by pen. He joined La Jeune Belgique and became a central figure in the Symbolist movement, writing plays that wrapped death and the meaning of life in mysterious, oblique language — the Nobel committee in 1911 praised his "wealth of imagination" and the way his dramas "appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations" while often taking the guise of fairy tales. He was made a count in 1932. By later life, credible accusations of plagiarism shadowed the reputation. He died on 6…
Sourced, dated quotes from Maurice Maeterlinck
The future is a world limited by ourselves; in it we discover only what concerns us and, sometimes, by chance, what interests those whom we love the most.
Men's weaknesses are often necessary to the purposes of life.
All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing.
We possess, in the sacred and secret books of India, of which we know only an infinitesimal part, a cosmogony which no European conception has ever surpassed.
We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet: and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us.
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