Customer Reviews

The Intelligence of Flowers

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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.