Poklad pokorných – Maeterlinck Maurice (2017)

This collection of essays is by the French-writing Belgian dramatist, poet, essayist, mystic, philosopher and one of the founders of Symbolism, Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949). Published in 1896, the same year as his essay collection The Buried Temple, it follows his first two poetry collections, The Greenhouses (1889) and Twelve Songs (1896). Maeterlinck gained particular renown as a dramatist, most notably for the dreamlike fairy play The Blue Bird (1908). His other successful play Pelléas and Mélisande (1892) is also known through Claude Debussy’s opera and Arnold Schoenberg’s symphonic poem. The book opens with the often-quoted essay Silence, in which the author sets meditative silence against noise and the misuse of speech in the modern media world. Further essays explore the awakening of the soul, mystical morality, women and everyday tragedy, alongside distinctive portraits of the Romantic poet Novalis and the American pantheist philosopher Emerson. This edition is a reprint of the second edition of Maeterlinck’s essays in Marie Kalašová’s translation and includes Jan Suk’s essay Before Each Day Came the Night.