The Intelligence of Flowers [Paperback]

Maurice Maeterlinck (Author), Philip Mosley (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 29, 2007

A new translation of one of Maeterlinck's four great nature essays.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"The republication of Maurice Maeterlinck's `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 Maeterlinck's four celebrated nature essays--along with those on the life of the bee, ant, and termite--"The 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 Mosley's new translation of the original French essay, and the related essay "Scents," maintains the verve of Maeterlinck's 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"

The Belgian author Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) 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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Philip Mosley is Professor of English, Communications, and Comparative Literature at Penn State Worthington Scranton. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 110 pages
• Publisher: State University of New York Press (November 29, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791472744
• ISBN-13: 978-0791472743
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,471,159 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The poetry of flowers, May 20, 2009

By 

Dr. Richard M. Price (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Intelligence of Flowers (Hardcover)

The publication of a new English translation of one of the works of the neglected Maurice Maeterlinck is most welcome. After his early symbolist plays, Maeterlinck was at his best at natural history, and this is my favourite among his works in this field, if only because I find flowers more attractive than insects. The argument of the book is that plants (trees and flowers) show such ingenious adaptation to their environment and such skill in self-propagation that one must suppose a superior intelligence diffused throughout the natural world. Andre Gide mocked Maeterlinck for being less intelligent than his flowers, and (as usual when he tried to be a philosopher) the general ideas are neither clearly expressed nor forcibly argued. The strength of the book is rather in its descriptions of plants, which combine precision, vividness and poetry. The poet Edward Thomas (as good a judge as anyone in this field) said that Maeterlinck's descriptions of the natural world were the best since John Ruskin's.
This new edition is preceded by a fascinating introduction that brings out well the continuing relevance of Maeterlinck's ideas. The only caveat I would mention is that Maeterlinck's highly literary, mellifluous prose sounds dated today, and is best in the original French. This small book of 77 pages seems over-priced, but it is handsomely produced.