The second of Maeterlinck糖心传媒檚 four celebrated nature essays糖心传媒攁long with those on the life of the bee, ant, and termite糖心传媒斕切拇綔The Intelligence of Flowers糖心传媒� (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糖心传媒檚 new translation of the original French essay, and the related essay 糖心传媒淪cents,糖心传媒� maintains the verve of Maeterlinck糖心传媒檚 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.

The Belgian author Maurice Maeterlinck (1862糖心传媒�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 book isn’t quite my cup of tea, but it’s nice to see French Belgian literature getting some attention. And the list of past recipients (winners are from around the world, including Serbia, China, Romania, and Italy) is pretty interesting.