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MOUNTAIN PATHS
MOUNTAIN PATHS
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An excerpt from the beginning of the:
PREFACE
Presentation Speech for The Nobel Prize in Literature 1911
Speech given by C.D. af Wirsén, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, on December 10, 1911
This year highly competent persons have proposed several men of letters as candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Several among them presented such great and unusual qualities that it has been very difficult to weigh their respective merits. In giving this year's award to Maurice Maeterlinck, who has been proposed and seriously considered several times before, the Swedish Academy has been determined first by the profound originality and singularity of his talent as a writer, so different from the usual forms of literature. The idealistic character of this talent is elevated to a rare spirituality and mysteriously causes delicate and secret strings to vibrate in us. He is certainly not of a shallow nature, this unusual man, who has not yet reached the age of fifty and who, as an author, follows his own quite personal voice and possesses the marvellous faculty of being at once mystical, profound, and popular through the charm of his expression. While reading him one sometimes recalls the words of Sophocles, «Man is only a trivial shadow», or the words of Calderon that life is a dream; and yet Maeterlinck knows how to render the fine nuances of our moral life with the force of a visionary. What in ordinary circumstances dwells in us latently and belongs to the secret depths of our being, he calls up with the tap of a wand, and we acknowledge that he has evoked features of our most intimate being, which ordinarily remains hidden in a mysterious twilight. He does it without affectation and mannerisms and mostly with an unfailing sureness and classical refinement, although action and scenery are often vague - like a Chinese shadow show - and in keeping with the great subtlety of his poetry. Legendary and fantastic as the narration may be, the dialogue is pointed. With the sounds of muted music, the poet introduces us to unsuspected regions of our inner being, and we feel with Goethe that «Alles Vergängliche/Ist nur ein Gleichnis». We have the foreboding that our true home is far away, well beyond the limits of our earthly experiences. We hardly ever pass beyond this foreboding with Maeterlinck, although his poetry opens for us glimpses of inaccessible distances.
Maurice Maeterlinck was born in 1862 at Ghent. His family appears to have been well-to-do. He was educated at the Jesuit college of Saint-Barbe. He did not like it, but this conventional school probably influenced his intellectual development very strongly by orienting him toward mysticism. After finishing school and passing the baccalaureate, Maeterlinck followed the wishes of his parents, read law, and established himself in Ghent as a lawyer. But he succeeded, according to his biographer Gerard Harry, only in demonstrating brilliantly his ineptitude for the legal career, having the «happy defects» that render a man absolutely unfit for the pettifogging quarrels and public counsel's speeches in the law court. He was attracted by literature, and this attraction increased during a stay in Paris where he became acquainted with a number of writers, one of whom, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, apparently had a great influence on him. Paris fascinated Maurice Maeterlinck so much that he established himself there in 1896. Nonetheless, the great metropolis did not really suit this solitary contemplative mind as a permanent place to live. He goes there, from time to time, to deal with his editors, but in the summer he likes to live at Saint-Wandrille, an old Norman abbey which he bought and saved from imminent vandalism. In the winter he seeks refuge in the mild climate of the town of Grasse, known for its flowers.
The first work published by Maurice Maeterlinck was a slim collection of verses entitled Serres chaudes (1889) [Ardent Talons]. These poems appear more tormented than one would have expected from his calmly meditative disposition. The same year (1889) he published a dramatic fantasy, La Princesse Maleine. It is sombre, terrifying, and deliberately monotonous due to numerous repetitions intended to give an impression of duration; but a delightful fairy-tale charm reigns in this little drama, which is written with a vigour one would not have suspected in the author of the Serres chaudes. It is in any case an important work of art. La Princesse Maleine was enthusiastically praised by Octave Mirbeau in Le Figaro, and from that day on Maurice Maeterlinck was no longer unknown. Later on, Maeterlinck wrote a whole series of dramatic compositions. Most unfold in eras that we could not determine and in places not to be found on any map. The scene is usually a fairy castle with underground passages, a park with lovely shady places,...
PREFACE
Presentation Speech for The Nobel Prize in Literature 1911
Speech given by C.D. af Wirsén, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, on December 10, 1911
This year highly competent persons have proposed several men of letters as candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Several among them presented such great and unusual qualities that it has been very difficult to weigh their respective merits. In giving this year's award to Maurice Maeterlinck, who has been proposed and seriously considered several times before, the Swedish Academy has been determined first by the profound originality and singularity of his talent as a writer, so different from the usual forms of literature. The idealistic character of this talent is elevated to a rare spirituality and mysteriously causes delicate and secret strings to vibrate in us. He is certainly not of a shallow nature, this unusual man, who has not yet reached the age of fifty and who, as an author, follows his own quite personal voice and possesses the marvellous faculty of being at once mystical, profound, and popular through the charm of his expression. While reading him one sometimes recalls the words of Sophocles, «Man is only a trivial shadow», or the words of Calderon that life is a dream; and yet Maeterlinck knows how to render the fine nuances of our moral life with the force of a visionary. What in ordinary circumstances dwells in us latently and belongs to the secret depths of our being, he calls up with the tap of a wand, and we acknowledge that he has evoked features of our most intimate being, which ordinarily remains hidden in a mysterious twilight. He does it without affectation and mannerisms and mostly with an unfailing sureness and classical refinement, although action and scenery are often vague - like a Chinese shadow show - and in keeping with the great subtlety of his poetry. Legendary and fantastic as the narration may be, the dialogue is pointed. With the sounds of muted music, the poet introduces us to unsuspected regions of our inner being, and we feel with Goethe that «Alles Vergängliche/Ist nur ein Gleichnis». We have the foreboding that our true home is far away, well beyond the limits of our earthly experiences. We hardly ever pass beyond this foreboding with Maeterlinck, although his poetry opens for us glimpses of inaccessible distances.
Maurice Maeterlinck was born in 1862 at Ghent. His family appears to have been well-to-do. He was educated at the Jesuit college of Saint-Barbe. He did not like it, but this conventional school probably influenced his intellectual development very strongly by orienting him toward mysticism. After finishing school and passing the baccalaureate, Maeterlinck followed the wishes of his parents, read law, and established himself in Ghent as a lawyer. But he succeeded, according to his biographer Gerard Harry, only in demonstrating brilliantly his ineptitude for the legal career, having the «happy defects» that render a man absolutely unfit for the pettifogging quarrels and public counsel's speeches in the law court. He was attracted by literature, and this attraction increased during a stay in Paris where he became acquainted with a number of writers, one of whom, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, apparently had a great influence on him. Paris fascinated Maurice Maeterlinck so much that he established himself there in 1896. Nonetheless, the great metropolis did not really suit this solitary contemplative mind as a permanent place to live. He goes there, from time to time, to deal with his editors, but in the summer he likes to live at Saint-Wandrille, an old Norman abbey which he bought and saved from imminent vandalism. In the winter he seeks refuge in the mild climate of the town of Grasse, known for its flowers.
The first work published by Maurice Maeterlinck was a slim collection of verses entitled Serres chaudes (1889) [Ardent Talons]. These poems appear more tormented than one would have expected from his calmly meditative disposition. The same year (1889) he published a dramatic fantasy, La Princesse Maleine. It is sombre, terrifying, and deliberately monotonous due to numerous repetitions intended to give an impression of duration; but a delightful fairy-tale charm reigns in this little drama, which is written with a vigour one would not have suspected in the author of the Serres chaudes. It is in any case an important work of art. La Princesse Maleine was enthusiastically praised by Octave Mirbeau in Le Figaro, and from that day on Maurice Maeterlinck was no longer unknown. Later on, Maeterlinck wrote a whole series of dramatic compositions. Most unfold in eras that we could not determine and in places not to be found on any map. The scene is usually a fairy castle with underground passages, a park with lovely shady places,...
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