Gleanings from Maeterlinck

Gleanings from Maeterlinck gathers Maurice Maeterlinck's later reflections on death, consciousness, and the possibility of life beyond the visible world, translated and compiled by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. Shaped by the grief of the First World War, these essays ask readers to face mortality with intelligence rather than fear, and to treat death as a profound human reality instead of a vague terror. The volume opens through the haunting spirit of The Blue Bird, where death becomes a mystery touched by memory, continuity, and unseen existence. Maeterlinck argues in "Our Injustice to Death" that people dread what they have never honestly examined, and he urges a deliberate philosophy of mortality. From there, the book moves into questions of annihilation and survival, suggesting that true nothingness is unimaginable. It then explores metapsychics with scholarly caution, weighing reported cases of crystal visions, prophetic dreams, automatic writing, and premonitions—among them the Deutschland disaster, Mme. Buscarlet's dream, Mrs. Verrall's bird footprints, Mrs. Jones's coffins, and the Duchess of Hamilton's vision of Lord L⸺. The result is a grave, searching meditation on grief, coincidence, and the hidden capacities of the mind. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.