The Intelligence of Flowers Quotes

“Pero la hora magnífica pertenece a las rosas de mayo. Entonces, hasta mas allá de donde alcanza la vista, desde las vertientes de las colinas hasta las hondonadas de las llanuras, entre diques de viñas y de olivares, afluyen de todas partes como un río de pétalos del que emergen las casas y los árboles, un río del color que damos a la juventud, a la salud y a la alegría. Diríase que el aroma a la vez cálido y fresco, pero sobretodo espacioso que entreabre el cielo, emana directamente los manantiales de la beatitud.”
― Maurice Maeterlinck, La inteligencia de las flores

“Is there any more cruel inadvertence or ordeal in na­ture Picture the tragedy of that longing, the inac­cessible so nearly attained, the transparent fatality, the impossible with not a visible obstacle! . . . It would be insoluble, like our own tragedy upon this earth, were it not that an unex­pected element is mingled with it. Did the males foresee the disillusion to which they would be sub­jected? One thing is certain, that they have locked up in their hearts a bubble of air, even as we lock up in our souls a thought of desperate deliverance. It is as though they hesitated for a moment; then, with a magnificent effort, the finest, the most supernatural that I know of in the annals of the insects and the flowers, in order to rise to happiness they deliberately break the bond that attaches them to life. They tear themselves from their peduncle and, with an incomparable flight, amid pearly beads of glad­ness, their petals dart up and break the surface of the water. Wounded to death, but radiant and free, they float for a moment beside their heedless brides and the union is accom­plished, whereupon the victims drift away to perish, while the wife, already a mother, closes her corolla, in which lives their last breath, rolls up her spiral and descends to the depths, there to ripen the fruit of the heroic kiss.”
― Maurice Maeterlinck, The Intelligence of the Flowers

“We cannot take leave of the aquatic plants without briefly mentioning the life of the most romantic of them all: the legendary Val­lisneria, an Hydrocharad whose nuptials form the most tragic episode in the love-history of the flowers. The Vallisneria is a rather insignificant herb, possess­ing none of the strange grace of the Water-lily or of certain submersed comas. But it seems as though nature had delighted in giving it a beautiful idea. The whole existence of the little plant is spent at the bottom of the water, in a sort of half-slumber, until the moment of the wedding-hour in which it aspires to a new life. Then the female flower slowly uncoils the long spiral of its peduncle, rises, emerges and floats and blossoms on the sur­face of the pond. From a neighbouring stem, the male flowers, which see it through the sunlit water, soar in their turn, full of hope, towards the one that rocks, that awaits them, that calls them to a magic world. But, when they have come half-way, they feel themselves suddenly held back: their stalk, the very source of their life, is too short; they will never reach the abode of light, the only spot in which the union of the stamens and the pistil can be achieved! .”
― Maurice Maeterlinck, The Intelligence of the Flowers

“There are other herbs endowed with spontaneous movements that are not so well known, notably the Hedysareæ, among which the Hedysa­rum gyrans, or Moving-plant, acts in a very restless and surprising fashion. This little Leguminosa, which is a native of Bengal, but often cultivated in our hothouses, performs a sort of perpetual and intricate dance in hon­our of the light. Its leaves are divided into three foli­oles, one wide and terminal, the two others narrow and planted at the base of the first. Each of these leaflets is animated with a different movement of its own. They live in a state of rhythmical, almost chronometrical and continuous agitation. They are so sensitive”
― Maurice Maeterlinck, The Intelligence of the Flowers

“We have taken for a long time a rather foolish pride in believing ourselves to be miraculous beings, unique and wonderfully open to chance, probably fallen from another world, without clear ties to the rest of life and, in any case, endowed with an unusual, incomparable, awful ability. It is far preferable to be nowhere near so prodigious, for we have learned that prodigies soon vanish in the normal evolution of nature. It is much more consoling to observe that we follow the same path as the soul of this great world, that we have the same ideas, the same hopes, the same trials, and—were it not for our specific dream of justice and pity—almost the same feelings. It is much more calming to assure ourselves that, to better our lot, to utilize the forces, the opportunities, the laws of matter, we employ methods exactly the same as those that the soul uses to illuminate and order its unruly and unconscious areas; that there are no other methods, that we are in the midst of truth, that we are in our rightful place and at home in this universe molded by unknown substances, whose thought is not impenetrable and hostile but analogous or apposite to our own.”
― Maurice Maeterlinck, The Intelligence of Flowers

“Flowers preceded insects upon this earth; when the latter appeared, the flower had therefore to adapt an entirely new mechanism to the habits of these unexpected collaborators. This fact alone, geologically indisputable, amid all that we do not know, is enough to establish evolution, and does not this rather vague word mean, in the final analysis, adaptation, modification, intelligent progress?”
― Maurice Maeterlinck, The Intelligence of Flowers

“Pero no me ocupo aquí sino de la salvia más común, la que recubre en este momento, como para celebrar el paso de la primavera, de colgaduras violadas todos los muros de mis terrazas de olivos. Les aseguro que los balcones de los grandes palacios de mármol que esperan a los reyes nunca tuvieron adorno más lujoso, ni más feliz, ni más fragante. Hasta parecen percibirse los perfumes de las claridades del sol cuando es más caliente que nunca, cuando promedia el día...”
― Maurice Maeterlinck, La inteligencia de las flores

“Observamos aquí, una vez más, que todo el genio reside en la especie, la vida o la naturaleza; y que el individuo es más o menos estúpido. Sólo en el hombre hay emulación real entre las dos inteligencias, tendencia cada vez más precisa, cada vez más activa a una especie de equilibrio que es el gran secreto de nuestro porvenir.”
― Maurice Maeterlinck, La inteligencia de las flores

“Sobre las vallisnerias: "(...), para elevarse hasta la felicidad, rompen deliberadamente el lazo que los une a la existencia. Se arrancan de su pedúnculo, y con un incomparable impulso, entre perlas de alegría, sus pétalos van a romper la superficie del agua. Heridos de muerte, pero radiantes y libres, flotan un momento al lado de sus indolentes prometidas; se verifica la unión, después de lo cual los sacrificios van a perecer a merced de la corriente, mientras que la esposa ya madre cierra su corola en que vive su último soplo, arrolla su espiral y vuelve a bajar a las profundidades para madurar en ellas el fruto del beso heroico”
― Maurice Maeterlinck, La inteligencia de las flores

“Sometimes the male flowers rise to the surface when there are not yet any pistillated flowers in the vicinity. And at other times, when low water permits them easily to reach their companions, they still break their stems no less automatically and uselessly. I maintain here, once again, that the whole genius rests in the species, in life or nature, and that the individual on the whole is stupid. Only in mankind do we find true emulation of the two intelligences, an increasingly precise and active tendency toward a kind of balance that is the great secret of our future.”
― Maurice Maeterlinck, The Intelligence of Flowers