Customer Reviews

The Blue Bird

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The story of the Blue Bird is the base on which the Wizzard of Oz was written and is a beautiful yet realistic story of two children's dreams. It has hidden meanings in its story and truths which are often denied to children, while the images and the character lines are colourful and imaginative. This hard cover edition reinforces the gracefulness and authenticity of the author's story.

Reviewer Randy Keehn would be well served when possessing a quality children (the intended readership for this play) posses plentiful of, I'm speaking of an IMAGINATION. The irony of it all is that that's exactly something Maeterlinck's book is conveying; that children imaginations are precious and are what insulate them from the adults' "worlds" around them.
This is a beautiful book for children, and yes, I read it when I was a child.

I came across a copy of Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird" some years ago and bought it because the author was an early recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. I finally read it yesterday and I was seriously disappointed in Maeterlinck and the Nobel Prize committee of his era. This play defies any sort of realistic audience group. It is too simplistic in message for an adult-level fantasy and too bizarre in format for children to appreciate. The characters are people, animals, food, emotions, plants, time, day and night, and a few other "entities" that escape my bewildered mind. The story is simplistic and tells of two children who go on a journey to find a blue bird in order to save a fairy's daughter. They use a magical diamond to recreate things into mammalian life forms in order that they may communicate with the boy and girl. Many "entities" express their displeasure over human tratment while others "bring to life" emotions. The children meet their departed relatives because all live so long as we think of them. That's actually not a bad way of looking at things and, if that was as far into fantasy as the play went, I could see a lot of possibilities. However, discussions with the "Luxury of Running Barefoot on Dewy Grass" left me reeling in disbelief. The ending reminded me somewhat of "The Wizard of Oz" and I challenged myself to ask what my impression of that book would have been had I not already been familiar with its' outstanding movie version. I tossed that thought aside quickly because "The Blue Bird" doesn't merit such a comparison. You can see for yourself without investing too much time. It's probably the shortest 6 act play I ever read.

I looked up the Nobel Prize rationale for Maeterlinck. It says, in part, "in appreciation for 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 reader's own feelings and stimulate their immagination." I guess. I have to admit that I was not stimulated in the least. In reflection, the book and the award preceeded Europe's first serious attempt to destroy itself in the guise of WWI. The resulting pessimism may have made it impossible to return to the optimism of those halcyon days. After reading "The Blue Bird", I'm not sure that was such a great loss, literarily speaking.