A Belgian francophone poet and playwright, born in Ghent and died in Nice. Originating in the great French speaking Flemish bourgeoisie, he studied law but very soon manifested a great curiosity for the arts and sciences, doubled with philosophical preoccupations. His first poetry collections – Serres chaudes (1889) and Douze chansons (1896) – straight away became striking works of the Symbolist movement. His theatre, of a symbolist stamp also, broke with a fossilised art of theatre, reduced only to successful authors and smoothly run machinery. Into it he introduced new themes such as death and the anguish it provokes, the role of dark forces on peoples’ destinies, the tragedy of life in short: La Princesse Maleine (1889), L'Intruse (1890) and above all Pelléas et Mélisande (1892) are characteristic of this renewal, tragedies which even earned him the nickname ‘the Belgian Shakespeare.’ With L'Oiseau bleu (1909), on the other hand, the tone became lighter, a sign of a spiritual evolution towards greater serenity and an acceptance of the apparent absurdity of the human condition. Maeterlinck is also a passionate observer of nature, as is witnessed to by his works entitled La Vie des abeilles (1901), L' Intelligence des fleurs (1910), La Vie des termites (1926) and La Vie des fourmis (1930). He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911.