THE UNKNOWN GUEST

BY MAURICE MAETERLINCK




Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos




INTRODUCTION

1

My Essay on Death[1] led me to make a conscientious enquiry into
the present position of the great mystery, an enquiry which I
have endeavoured 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