I echo the sentiments of the previous reviewers... and agree wholeheartedly. I can tell you from my own extensive studies of Maeterlinck that he has inspired me in wondrous ways... I wrote a book, many songs and created many paintings because of the wonder of who he was and especially this, his most valuable book. Sandy Frazier - www.mystic-art.com

I think that this is a shame and a misery of our modern civilization that books of this kind are not available to general reader. This collection of essays is a great source of spiritual vigour and a fruit of very profound work of mind and very pure sentiments. As Maeterlinck says in one of the essays "this is the disgrace of whole our existence that we live so far from our own souls..." This book just helps to make this wretched, miserably pragmatic existence at least realized and to try to find the way to disclose the world of human spirituality for ourselves.

I found this book, a 1937 ed., in the back of a library. I wanted to read this book after i had learned that one of my favorite poets, Kahlil Gibran, cherished it. The power behind the book outweighed its tiny scale. An overall fabolous book if you can find it. I am searching now for my own copy.

Not enough people read Maeterlinck today and this is a shame: the man was, unlike some Nobel prize winners in literature, truly a fantastic writer with a uniquely tuned, sharp, comprehensively philosophical but never didactic mind. Coming from a well-to-do Belgian family in the age before Television, Radio, and all the other usually destructive distractions of today, the young Maeterlinck had beekeeping for his principal hobby (just ask even your high-I.Q. high-schooler today ANYTHING about the life of bees and ants and other social insects and you'll be amazed at how little they know, in spite of the 'Discovery' Channel and all the documentary films made about the subject and shown on TV), and inspired by the essays of Fabre, began a period of amateur observation and experiment with his apiary, finally publishing the results in 1901, at the age of 39, as "Life of the Bee." Written in a highly poetic style that blended fact, imagination, and mystical speculation, it became the single most popular book ever written about insect life. Not that there aren't errors in Maeterlinck's observations that subsequent research corrected, but as far as the QUALITY OF WRITING is concerned, no one else can even come close to these amazing descriptions: in fact, some of the best written passages in all of literature are in this book.

i found a copy of this in london, just hoping for something to keep me occupied while i was traveling. it turned out to be one of the best books i've ever read. an utterly unique view of the world - the bee's and our own.

When Maeterlinck was awarded the Nobel prize, this play was singled out for mention as perhaps his masterpiece. It has since fallen into obscurity, but Maeterlinck's experts see it as a pivotal work, marking the transition from his earlier Symbolist plays ( his 'theatre of silence') to his later more conventional ones, with their romantic themes and mellifluous rhetoric. The work stands out for the singular beauty of its style, its rich and subtle psychology, and a sustained note of sensitivity and moral elevation. One of the richest of Maeterlinck's works, the various elements do not, perhaps, coalesce successfully, and the tragic denouement lacks the sheer rightness and inevitability of that of Pelleas and Melisande, Maeterlinkc's most admired play. But it remains one of the works of Maeterlinck most worth exploring, and it rewards repeated re-reading.