Orange and Sérignan, the latter a little Provençal village that should be as widely celebrated as Maillane , 1 hâve of late years rendered honour to a man whose brow deserves to be girt with a double and radiant crown. But famé—at least that which is not the true nor the great famé, but her illegitimate sister, and which créâtes more noise than durable work in the morning and evening papers—famé is often forgetful, négligent, behindhand or unjust; and the crowd is almost ignorant of the name of J. H. Fabre, who is one of the most profound and inventive scholars and also one of the purest writers and, I was going to add, one of the finest poets of the century that is just past.
22101606339 Med Kl 6968 UÜu c/Lc iv uLL ' Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/b28128850 THE WORKS OF J H FABRE THE LIFE OF THE SPIDER BY J HENRI FABRE Translatée! by ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS JVith a Préfacé by MAURICE MAETERLINCK HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO fl\2- Z^T 6i2 Copyright in the United States of America, 1912, by [ " WELLCO' Coü! vA/e ^ CaM No , riTl T: Y U! | Dodd Mead ô° "Ornée ' 'SX Co Préfacé THE INSECTS HOMER I Orange and Sérignan, the latter a little Pro- venỗal village that should be as widely cele- brated as Maillane honour to a , man hâve of late years rendered whose brow deserves to be girt with a double and radiant crown famé —at least that which is But not the true nor the great famé, but her illegitimate sister, and which créâtes more noise than durable work in the morning and evening papers forgetful, négligent, the crowd is —famé is often behindhand or unjust; and almost ignorant of the name of H Fabre, who is one of the most profound and inventive scholars and also one of the J purest writers and, the finest I was going to add, one of poets of the century that is just past — Maillane is the birthplace of Mistral, the Translatons Note Provenỗal poet The Life of the Spider vi H Fabre, as some few people know, is the author of half a score of well-filled volumes in J which, under the of title Souvenirs entomolo- he has set down the results of giques, seem most familiar different species of : ; and the wasps and and cater- to us the best-known wild bees, a few gnats, Aies, beetles pillars years study and experiment on the of observation, insects that fifty in a word, ail those vague, unconscious, rudimentary and almost nameless little lives which surround us on every side and which we contemplate with eyes that are amused, but already thinking of other things, our window to welcome the or when we go bask first when we open hours of spring, into the gardens or the fields to in the blue summer days We take up at random one of these bulky volumes and naturally expect to find first of ail the very learned and rather dry lists of names, the very fastidious and exceedingly quaint spécifications of those huge, dusty graveyards of which ail hâve read so the entomological treatises that far seem almost wholly to we consist vu Préfacé We book without zest and and forthwithout unreasonable expectations with, from between the open leaves, there rises and unfolds itself, without hésitation, without interruption and almost without remission to the end of the four thousand pages, the most therefore open the ; extraordinary of tragic fairy plays that possible for the create or to human there imagination, is not to but to admit and to conceive, acclimatize within Indeed, human it itself is no question here imagination The of the insect does not belong The other animais, the plants notwithstanding their dumb life and the secrets which they cherish, not seem to our world even, great wholly foreign to us a certain earthly brotherhood in often surprise and amaze our not utterly upset we feel them They In spite of intelligence, There it ail, is but something, on the other hand, about the insect that does not seem to belong to the habits, the ethics, the psychology of our globe One would be to say that the insect cornes more monstrous, more more atrocious, more inclined from another planet, energetic, more insane, infernal than our own The Life of the Spider viii One would think that it was born of some cornet that had lost its course and died demented in space In vain does it seize upon life with an authority, a fecundity unequalled here below we cannot accustom it is ; ourselves to the idea that a thought of that nature of whom we fondly believe ourselves to be the privileged children and probably the idéal to which ail the earth’s efforts tend Only the infinitely small disconcerts us still more greatly but what, in reality, is the infinitely small other than an insect which our eyes not see ? There is, no doubt, in this astonishment and lack of understanding a certain instinctive and profound uneasiness inspired by those existences incom; parably better-armed, better-equipped than our own, by those créatures made up of a sort of compressed energy and activity in whom we suspect our most mysterious adversaries, our ultimate rivais and, perhaps, our successors But it is time, under the conduct of an admir- able guide, to penetrate behind the scenes of our fairy play and to study at close quarters ... the entrance to the corridor down face to face ; Then, far from the light and the cares of day and in the great silence of the hypogeous shade, solemnly commences The Life of xii the Spider the. .. receives the products of the work of respiration performed under the cover of the outer membrane ‘ Instead of being expelled through the egg-shell, the carbonic acid, the incessant resuit of the vital... casually, the ail of the absorbing inter- under the rocks, ground, in the walls, on the branches, the grass, down to the very bodies of the subjects studied; for we sometimes the flowers, the fruits