Butterflies
Reflections, Tales, and Verse
Hermann Hesse wrote iconic, pensive novels, but he was also a butterfly collector. In Butterflies, a charming book for nature and literature lovers, he marvels over the creatures up close.
Excerpts concerning butterflies, selected from Hesse’s complete works, are reminders to take pleasure in fleeting beauty. Hesse’s sensual fascination with the natural world is contagious. We see insects in detail; we see landscapes and characters fully, too, drawn from Hesse’s childhood and time in Switzerland and Sri Lanka. And the book’s short prose passages (immediate and effortless), intermittent poems (that maintain elegant rhymes), and lovely, fitting reproductions of the historical, hand-colored engravings that Hesse loved add up to a gorgeous anthology that makes good use of white space. “The Giant Peacock Moth” is a perfect, moving fable, centering a memory that is still replete with gestures and emotions many years after it took place.
Sharing biographical and entomological insights, Butterflies is a short but satisfying book––leaving audiences feeling as lucky to encounter it as Hesse felt about meeting his winged subjects.
Reviewed by
Meredith Grahl Counts
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
