Background
Maurice Maeterlinck was born in Ghent on August 29, 1863.
(In "The Life of the Bee," Nobel Prize winner Maurice Maet...)
In "The Life of the Bee," Nobel Prize winner Maurice Maeterlinck offers brilliant proof that "no living creature, not even man, has achieved in the center of his sphere, what the bee has achieved." From their amazingly intricate feats of architecture to their intrinsic sense of self-sacrifice, Maeterlinck takes a "bee's-eye view" of the most orderly society on Earth. A classic bee book written in a lively and readable style, "The Life of the Bee" is reasonably accurate (for a book of its vintage). In the words of Maurice Maeterlinck, "It is not my intention to write a treatise on apiculture, or on practical bee-keeping...I wish to speak of the bees very simply, as one speaks of a subject one knows and loves to those who know it not." It's safe to say that, in "The Life of the Bee," Maurice Maeterlinck succeeded in his goal very well. Maeterlinck, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, played an important part in the Symbolist movement. A Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist, Maeterlinck wrote primarily about death and the meaning of life.
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(A new translation of one of Maeterlincks four great natu...)
A new translation of one of Maeterlincks four great nature essays. The republication of Maurice Maeterlincks The Intelligence of Flowers, regrettably forgotten in our time, is long overdue. The introduction by Mosley is itself a gem, and contains one of the best overviews in print of writings about intelligence in Nature. Stephen Harrod Buhner, author of The Secret Teachings of Plants: The Intelligence of the Heart in the Direct Perception of Nature The second of Maeterlincks four celebrated nature essaysalong with those on the life of the bee, ant, and termiteThe Intelligence of Flowers (1907) represents his impassioned attempt to popularize scientific knowledge for an international audience. Writing with characteristic eloquence, Maeterlinck asserts that flowers possess the power of thought without knowledge, a capacity that constitutes a form of intelligence. Appearing one hundred years after the first publication, Philip Mosleys new translation of the original French essay, and the related essay Scents, maintains the verve of Maeterlincks prose and renders it accessible to the present-day reader. This is a book for those who are excited by creative encounters between literature and science as well as current debates on the relationship of humankind to the natural world. It would be superfluous to redraw the picture of the great systems of floral fertilization: the play of stamens and pistil, the seductiveness of scents, the appeal of harmonious and striking colors, the development of nectar, totally useless to the flower, and which it manufactures only to attract and hold the foreign liberator, the messenger of love, bee, bumblebee, fly, butterfly, moth, which must bring it the kiss of the distant, invisible, motionless lover We could truly say that ideas come to flowers in the same way they come to us. Flowers grope in the same darkness, encounter the same obstacles and the same ill will, in the same unknown. They know the same laws, same disappointments, same slow and difficult triumphs. It seems they have our patience, our perseverance, our self-love; the same finely tuned and diversified intelligence, almost the same hopes and the same ideals. Like ourselves, they struggle against a vast indifferent force that ends by helping them. from The Intelligence of Flowers a wonderfully enjoyable, insightful and worthwhile read This work would be of interest to anyone excited by the remarkable process of the plant world and would expressly appeal to gardeners and flower growers. Huntia A rare gem, written in lyrical and accessible prose. The Times Literary Supplement Maeterlinck is a seductive essayist and writes with the same intrinsic humility that will be familiar to admirers of John Muir, Aldo Leopold, or Mary Oliver. The Boston Globe That the intelligence of flowers provides Maeterlinck with a theory riddled with contradictionsmostly as a result of his metaphoric reasoningseems less important than the fundamental truths of the metaphors unto themselves. As a result, The Intelligence of Flowers is happily welcome once more, in this centenary reissue. San Francisco Chronicle The Belgian author Maurice Maeterlinck (18621949) is remembered best as a pioneer of Symbolist drama in the 1890s. Recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911, Maeterlinck was also a prolific and accomplished essayist.
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(The Blue Bird is a 1908 play by Belgian author Maurice Ma...)
The Blue Bird is a 1908 play by Belgian author Maurice Maeterlinck. It premiered on 30 September 1908 at Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre and has been turned into several films and a TV series. The French composer Albert Wolff wrote an opera (first performed at the N.Y. Metropolitan in 1919) based on Maeterlinck's original play, and Maeterlinck's innamorata Georgette Leblanc produced a novelization. The story is about a girl called Mytyl and her brother Tyltyl seeking happiness, represented by The Blue Bird of Happiness, aided by the good fairy Bérylune. Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (29 August 1862 6 May 1949) was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was a Fleming, 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. His plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement.
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(Excerpt from Monna Vanna: Pièce en Trois Actes Mes homme...)
Excerpt from Monna Vanna: Pièce en Trois Actes Mes hommes n'ont plus rien; plus une ?èche, plus une balle; et l'on retournerait en vain tous les ton neaux des souterrains pour y trouver encore quelques onces de poudre. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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(The landmark plays from the French theatre included in th...)
The landmark plays from the French theatre included in this edition embody the transition from the old to the modern in dramatic experimentation: precursors of surrealism, they are innovative, outrageous and highly enjoyable. Consisting of Maeterlinck's The Blind, Jarry's Ubu the King, and Apollinaire's The Mammaries of Tiresias, this edition provides new translations sensitive to crucial linguistic features such as rhyme and pun and contains the only editions of Maeterlinck and Apollinaire's plays in print. These three plays written between 1890 and 1917 surprised and shocked their first audiences and still continue to do so today.
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( This edition of Maeterlinck's "Peleas et Melisande" inc...)
This edition of Maeterlinck's "Peleas et Melisande" includes English language introduction and notes, and is designed to make accessible a classic text which heralded the ethos of modernism of the late 20th century.
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(It has been well said Death and death alone is what we mu...)
It has been well said Death and death alone is what we must consult about life and not some vague future or survival in which we shall not be present It is our own end and everything happens in the interval between death and now Do not talk to me of those imaginary prolongations which wield over us the childish spell of number do not talk to me to me who am to die outright of societies and peoples There is no reality there is no true duration save that between the cradle and the grave The rest is mere bombast show delusion They call me a master because of some magic in my speech and thoughts but I am a frightened child in the presence of death 1
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Maurice Maeterlinck was born in Ghent on August 29, 1863.
Maeterlinck studied law at the University of Ghent and was admitted to the bar in that city in 1886.
He was destined by his family for a career in law but turned early to the world of letters. In 1886 he went to Paris, where he met Villiers de I'Isle-Adam, Saint-Paul Roux, and Catulle Mendès. Three years later he published a volume of verse, Serres chaudes (Hothouses), and a five-act play, La Princesse Maleine, the first in a long series of dramatic works, among the most notable being two one-act plays, L'Intruse (1890; The Intruder) and Les Aveugles (1890; The Blind); Pelléas et Mélisande (1892); Intérieur (1894); La Mort de Tintagiles (1894); Aglavaine et Sélysette (1896); Monna Vanna (1902); and L'Oiseau bleu (1909; The Blue Bird). Other plays are Les Sept Princesses (1891), Alladine et Palomides (1894), Joyselle (1903), Ariane et Barbe Bleu (1907), Marie Magdeleine (1910), Le Miracle de Saint Antoine (1919), Le Bourgmestre de Stilmonde (1919), Les Fiancailles (1922), La Princesse Isabelle (1935), and Jeanne d'Arc (1948). Maeterlinck's preoccupation with man's inner life and spiritual mystery is evident in Le Trésor des humbles (1896; The Treasure of the Humble), a collection of essays whose chapters "Silence, " "The Awakening of the Soul, " "The Tragic in Everyday Life, " "The Inner Life, " and "The Beauty Within" afford a rich introduction to Maeterlinck's thought and provide a very helpful background for his symbolist plays, where unseen forces are at work beyond the ordinary levels of human consciousness. The Intruder and The Blind show Maeterlinck's effective technique of suggestion and creation of mood or emotion by repetition, oversimplified vocabulary, and the use of symbols and periods of silence-a technique employed to remarkable advantage in Pelléas et Mélisande. In Maeterlinck's characteristic symbolist plays, the individuals who sense most profoundly the spiritual mystery in which they move are those at the extremes of life-the very young and the very old, the blind, and those in love. Other characters tend to exist unperceiving. But even the most sensitive seem incapable of comprehending their situations or resolving their destinies, so that in watching them one seems to be observing figures in a dream allegory rather than living beings. Maeterlinck wrote books and collections of speculative essays on a variety of subjects, among them The Life of the Bees (1901), The Intelligence of Flowers (1907), Death (1913), The Great Secret (1921), The Life of Space (1928), The Life of the Ants (1930), Before the Great Silence (1934), The Shadow of the Wings (1936), Before God (1937), and The Great Portal (1939). He died in Nice on May 7, 1949.
(It has been well said Death and death alone is what we mu...)
(The landmark plays from the French theatre included in th...)
(Excerpt from Monna Vanna: Pièce en Trois Actes Mes homme...)
( This edition of Maeterlinck's "Peleas et Melisande" inc...)
(In "The Life of the Bee," Nobel Prize winner Maurice Maet...)
(The Intruder The Blind The Seven Princesses The Death of ...)
(A new translation of one of Maeterlincks four great natu...)
(The Blue Bird is a 1908 play by Belgian author Maurice Ma...)
(Format Paperback Subject History)
(The great secret 288 Pages.)
Quotations:
"It is death that is the guide of our life, and our life has no goal but death. "
"All mothers are rich when they love their children. There are no poor mothers, no ugly ones, no old ones. Their love is always the most beautiful of joys. "
"Our reason may prove what it will: our reason is only a feeble ray that has issued from Nature. "
"There is no soul that does not respond to love, for the soul of man is a guest that has gone hungry these centuries back. "
"And on this earth of ours there are but few souls that can withstand the dominion of the soul that has suffered itself to become beautiful. "
"Every year, in November, at the season that follows the hour of the dead, the crowning and majestic hours of autumn, I go to visit the chrysanthemums . .. They are indeed, the most universal, the most diverse of flowers. "
"Wisdom requires no form; her beauty must vary, as varies the beauty of flame. She is no motionless goddess, for ever couched on her throne. "
"When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough. "
"If you love yourself meanly, childishly, timidly, even so shall you love your neighbor. "
"It is the evil that lies in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that dwells within others. "
"I have done what I could do in life, and if I could not do better, I did not deserve it. In vain I have tried to step beyond what bound me. "
"In the world which we know, among the different and primitive geniuses that preside over the evolution of the several species, there exists not one, excepting that of the dog, that ever gave a thought to the presence of man. "
"I knew that if I was captured by the Germans I would be shot at once, since I have always been counted as an enemy of Germany because of my play, Le Bourgmestre de Stillemonde, which dealt with the conditions in Belgium during the German Occupation of 1918. "
"Above all, let us never forget that an act of goodness is in itself an act of happiness. It is the flower of a long inner life of joy and contentment; it tells of peaceful hours and days on the sunniest heights of our soul. "
"The truth that seems discouraging does in reality only transform the courage of those strong enough to accept it; and, in any event, a truth that disheartens, because it is true, is still of far more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods. "
"The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all. "
"At every crossway on the path that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past. Let us have no fear that the fair towers of former days be sufficiently defended. The least that the most timid among us can do is not to add to the immense dead weight that nature drags along. "
"The manner in which the hours of freedom are spent determines, no less than labor and war, the moral worth of a nation. "
"Each man has to seek out his own special aptitude for a higher life in the midst of the humble and inevitable reality of daily existence. Than this, there can be no nobler aim in life. "
"What man is there that does not laboriously, though all unconsciously, himself fashion the sorrow that is to be the pivot of his life. "
On 15 February 1919 Maeterlinck married Renée Dahon.