The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wisdom and Destiny, by Maurice Maeterlinck

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Title: Wisdom and Destiny

Author: Maurice Maeterlinck

Posting Date: August 1, 2009 [EBook #4349]
Release Date: August, 2003
First Posted: January 12, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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WISDOM AND DESTINY

By

MAURICE MAETERLINCK

Translated by ALFRED SUTRO

TO

GEORGETTE LEBLANC

I OFFER THIS BOOK, WHEREIN HER THOUGHT BLENDS WITH MINE

INTRODUCTION

This essay on Wisdom and Destiny was to have been a thing of some
twenty pages, the work of a fortnight; but the idea took root, others
flocked to it, and the volume has occupied M. Maeterlinck continuously
for more than two years. It has much essential kinship with the
"Treasure of the Humble," though it differs therefrom in treatment; for
whereas the earlier work might perhaps be described as the eager
speculation of a poet athirst for beauty, we have here rather the
endeavour of an earnest thinker to discover the abode of truth. And if
the result of his thought be that truth and happiness are one, this was
by no means the object wherewith he set forth. Here he is no longer
content with exquisite visions, alluring or haunting images; he probes
into the soul of man and lays bare all his joys and his sorrows. It is
as though he had forsaken the canals he loves so well--the green, calm,
motionless canals that faithfully mirror the silent trees and
moss-covered roofs--and had adventured boldly, unhesitatingly, on the
broad river of life.

He describes this book himself, in a kind of introduction that is
almost an apology, as "a few interrupted thoughts that entwine
themselves, with more or less system, around two or three subjects." He
declares that there is nothing it undertakes to prove; that there are
none whose mission it is to convince. And so true is this, so
absolutely honest and sincere is the writer, that he does not shrink
from attacking, qualifying, modifying, his own propositio