Our Friend the Dog

by Maurice Maeterlinck

I have lost, within these last few days, a little bull-dog. He had just completed the sixth month of his brief existence. He had no history. His intelligent eyes opened to look out upon the world, to love mankind, then closed again on the cruel secrets of death.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Dogs, Animals

26 pages, Paperback

Published September 2, 2015

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

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seated, left to right: Feliz Le Dantec, Emile Verhaeren, Francis Viele-Griffen, Henri-Edmond Cross, Andre Gide, Maurice Maeterlinck.
- Theo van Rysselberghe 'The Reading' 1903

Description: This volume presents the sad, but intriguing tale of Pelleas, Mr. Maeterlinck's young bulldog, who had recently passed away at the tender age of six months. The author gives an insight into the being of his dog and explains the saying that the dog is man's best friend. Illustrated.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18214

Opening: I have lost, within these last few days, a little bull-dog. He had just completed the sixth month of his brief existence. He had no history. His intelligent eyes opened to look out upon the world, to love mankind, then closed again on the cruel secrets of death.

The friend who presented me with him had given him, perhaps by antiphrasis, the startling name of Pelléas. Why rechristen him? For how can a poor dog, loving, devoted, faithful, disgrace the name of a man or an imaginary hero?

Read once waay back when - 2015 is a re-read.

[Tarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ergreifende Vignette über die Erlebniswelt der Hunde, insbesondere ihr Aufwachsen. Mit gediegener sprachlicher Eleganz beschreibt Maeterlinck die Weltaneignung eines jungen Hundes, stellt allgemeine Reflexionen über das Lebensglück der Hunde an, die im Menschen greifbare Götter gefunden haben. Immer wieder kehrt er zu seinem eigenen Hund zurück, der sehr jung an einer Krankheit verstirbt.
Der melancholische, aber immer wieder auch humorvolle kurze Text macht Lust auf das Gesamtwerk des Nobelpreisträgers, dessen Texte leider zum Großteil nicht übersetzt oder seit 100 Jahren nicht neu herausgegeben wurden.

[Classic reverie · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Maurice Maeterlinck's "Our Friend the Dog", he gives a lovely dissertation of the uniqueness of the relationship between man and dog, commemorating the death of Pelleas, his 6 month puppy, barely having had time to live. There are not so many personal accounts of Pelleas but his fondness rings through.


"And, when I saw him thus, young, ardent and believing, bringing me, in some wise, from the depths of unwearied nature, quite fresh news of life and trusting and wonderstruck, as though he had been the first of his race that came to inaugurate the earth and as though we were still in the first days of the world's existence, I envied the gladness of his certainty, compared it with the destiny of man, still plunging on every side into darkness, and said to myself that the dog who meets with a good master is the happier of the two."

Just to think of the relationship between humans and dogs is something amazing!💕

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un piccolo, ma assai profondo, testo su cosa sia avere e conoscere l'amore di un cane.
A metà tra breve saggio su queste creature e un omaggio al defunto protagonista della vicenda , con un ritmo piuttosto scorrevole ma anche tanto ironico non tuttavia banale.

Un libricino che scalda il cuore e ti fa scoprire un premio Nobel per la Letteratura davvero interessante!

[Rosanna Nava · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ho letto questo testo in soli 40 minuti... e da oggi in poi se qualcuno mi dovesse chiedere "perché ami il tuo cane?" Io gli consiglierò di leggere questo libro...

[Arianna Zargar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ho un bulldog inglese anche io e leggendo queste pagine mi sono commossa.

[Roberta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un premio Nobel della letteratura parla del proprio cane, un cucciolo di bulldog morto prematuramente. Certamente le considerazioni sul rapporto uomo-cane sono cambiate col tempo, così come è cambiato il modo in cui trattiamo questi figli pelosi, ma le riflessioni sono interessanti e dimostrano che nemmeno un genio può resistere agli occhi di un cucciolo.

[Vincentvanstop · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh this was so fun to read!

[Marta · Rating 1 out of 5]

My dog (1903)

Mi aspettavo qualcosa di diverso, cioè il racconto del rapporto dell'autore con il suo cane morto da cucciolo, qualcosa di molto personale e anche commovente (avevo già pronti i fazzoletti), invece ho trovato una specie di saggio su funzioni e utilità del cane in confronto a altri animali, niente di particolarmente originale tra l'altro e decisamente freddo.
Unico lato positivo, le illustrazioni di Cecil Aldin