The Unknown Guest

by Maurice Maeterlinck

My Essay on Death led me to make a conscientious enquiry into the present position of the great mystery, an enquiry which I have endeavored to render as complete as possible. I had hoped that a single volume would be able to contain the result of these investigations, which, I may say at once, will teach nothing to those who have been over the same ground and which have nothing to recommend them except their sincerity, their impartiality and a certain scrupulous accuracy. But, as I proceeded, I saw the field widening under my feet, so much so that I have been obliged to divide my work into two almost equal parts. The first is now published and is a brief study of veridical apparitions and hallucinations and haunted houses, or, if you will, the phantasms of the living and the dead; of those manifestations which have been oddly and not very appropriately described as "psychometric"; of the knowledge of the future: presentiments, omens, premonitions, precognitions and the rest; and lastly of the Elberfeld horses...

﷓ Maurice Maeterlinck, from the Introduction to The Unknown Guest

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Belgian

392 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1914

About the author

Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (also called Count Maeterlinck from 1932) was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was a Fleming, but wrote in French.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911 "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations".

The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. His plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement.

Reviews

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book of Maeterlinck essays on spiritualism, ghosts, fortune telling, communicating with the dead and other mysticism. It was written over a hundred years ago when belief in such things was much more accepted and so many of his conclusions can be excused. Although he had some skepticism on some of the subjects he was all too willing to accept a supernatural explanations for most of them. I rated the book 4 stars purely for the quality of the prose and not for his analysis. It was an entertaining read though.

[Agnes]

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