Maurice Maeterlinck's 150th anniversary ("The Blue Bird")

[leno...@yahoo.com]

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&q=Maurice+Maeterlinck+150&oq=Maurice+Maeterlinck+150&gs_l=news-cc.3..43j43i400.1527.1527.0.3254.1.1.0.0.0.0.45.45.1.1.0...0.0...1ac.lN1J2jLxYQw
(about today - these are all in French, German, Spanish and Dutch)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Maeterlinck

Excerpt:

"Maurice Maeterlinck was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. His plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement."

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27991/27991-h/27991-h.htm
(the whole story - I THINK the pictures are supposed to be in color, but they're not)

http://www.ferdyonfilms.com/2008/nobel-on-film-the-blue-bird-1918-and-1976/335/
(about the play and the film versions, including the 1976 U.S.-Soviet production with Elizabeth Taylor)

First three paragraphs:

By Marilyn Ferdinand

"In 1911, three years after he wrote and premiered his fairytale play The Blue Bird, Count Maurice Maeterlinck of Ghent, Belgium, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Nobel committee said in making its award, 'In appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers’ own feelings and stimulate their imaginations.'

"The Blue Bird seems to be the stuff that inspires affection from generation to generation. It has been a movie at least five times over (though surprisingly not by German-occupied France in during World War II, which would seem to be a natural fit for the French-language fairy tale)—two silent versions, a 1940 version starring Shirley Temple, an animated telling in 1970, and finally, in 1976, the first U.S.-Soviet film collaboration, with Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, and Ava Gardner acting alongside dancers of the Kirov Ballet. I doubt we’ll ever see another retelling. Although the story tracks fairly closely to L. Frank Baum’s 1900 classic The Wizard of Oz—animals and inanimate objects that can talk accompanying children on a quest through various lands of enchantment, a mistaken apprehension of all witches/fairies as being ugly, true happiness found right at home among one’s loved ones—The Blue Bird has seen little but failure at the box office. What is it about this fairy tale that fails to appeal, and do the two film versions under consideration here bear the blame for their individual failures?

The play

"Maeterlinck’s play tells of a brother and sister, Tyltyl and Myltyl, who live humbly with their woodcutter father and hard-working mother, Mr. and Mrs. Tyl, their dog Tylo and their cat Tylette. One night the children observe a great celebration taking place on the other side of the woods, at a rich family’s home. When they fall asleep, they share a dream in which the Fairy Berylune, who resembles their neighbor whose daughter is sick, sends them on a quest for a blue bird that will bring happiness and ultimate power and knowledge to all humanity..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Bird_%28play%29

http://amodernfable.blogspot.com/2011/07/blue-bird-of-happiness.html
(two book covers of "The Blue Bird," plus posters and a clip from the Shirley Temple movie)

https://www.google.com/search?q=Maurice+Maeterlinck+%22blue+bird%22&hl=en&prmd=imvnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=2Fo-UM-6MMbx0gHU54CIDA&ved=0CFgQsAQ&biw=1680&bih=911
(more images)


Lenona.