Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck  (29 August 1862 6 May 1949) also known as Count (or Comte) Maeterlinck from 1932 was a Belgian playwright poet and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911 "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 main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. He was a leading member of La Jeune Belgique group and his plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement.