The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume I Part 16

Remember me kindly to Mrs. Krehbiel. I am sure you will soon have made a cosy little home in the metropolis. In my last letter I forgot to acknowledge receipt of the musical articles, which do you the greatest credit, and which interested me much, although I know nothing about music further than a narrow theatrical experience and a natural sensibility to its simpler forms of beauty enable me to do. I see your name also in the programme of _The Studio_, and hope to see the first number of that periodical containing your opening article. I should like one of these days to talk with you about the possibility of contributing a romantic--not musical--series of little sketches upon the Creole songs and coloured Creoles of New Orleans to some New York periodical. Until the summer comes, however, it will be difficult for me to undertake such a thing; the days here are much shorter than they are in your northern lat.i.tudes, the weather has been gloomy as Tartarus, and my poor imagination cannot rise on dampened wings in this heavy and murky atmosphere. This has been a hideous winter,--incessant rain, sickening weight of foul air, and a sky grey as the face of Melancholy.

The city is half under water. The lake and the bayous have burst their bonds, and the streets are Venetian ca.n.a.ls. Boats are moving over the sidewalks, and moccasin snakes swarm in the old stonework of the gutters. Several children have been bitten.

I am very weary of New Orleans. The first delightful impression it produced has vanished. The city of my dreams, bathed in the gold of eternal summer, and perfumed with the amorous odours of orange flowers, has vanished like one of those phantom cities of Spanish America, swallowed up centuries ago by earthquakes, but reappearing at long intervals to deluded travellers. What remains is something horrible like the tombs here,--material and moral rottenness which no pen can do justice to. You must have read some of those mediaeval legends in which an amorous youth finds the beautiful witch he has embraced all through the night crumble into a ma.s.s of calcined bones and ashes in the morning. Well, I feel like such a one, and almost regret that, unlike the victims of these diabolical illusions, I do not find my hair whitened and my limbs withered by sudden age; for I enjoy exuberant vitality and still seem to myself like one buried alive or left alone in some city cursed with desolation like that described by Sinbad the sailor. No literary circle here; no jovial coterie of journalists; no a.s.sociates save those vampire ones of which the less said the better.

And the thought--Where must all this end?--may be laughed off in the daytime, but always returns to haunt me like a ghost in the night.

Your friend, L. HEARN.

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, 1881.

MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--To what could I now devote myself? To nothing! To study art in any one of its branches with any hope of success requires years of patient study, vast reading, and a very considerable outlay of money. This I know. I also know that I could not write one little story of antique life really worthy of the subject without such hard study as I am no longer able to undertake, and a purchase of many costly works above my means. The world of Imagination is alone left open to me. It allows of a vagueness of expression which hides the absence of real knowledge and dispenses with the necessity of technical precision of detail. Again, let me tell you that to produce a really artistic work, after all the years of study required for such a task, one cannot possibly obtain any appreciation of the work for years after its publication. Such works as Flaubert's "Salammbo" or Gautier's "Roman de la Momie" were literary failures until recently. They were too learned to be appreciated. Yet to write on a really n.o.ble subject, how learned one must be! There is no purpose, as you justly observe, in my fantastics,--beyond the gratification of expressing a Thought which cries out within one's heart for utterance, and the pleasant fancy that a few kindred minds will dream over them, as upon pellets of green hascheesch,--at least should they ever a.s.sume the shape I hope for. And do not talk to me of work, dear fellow, in this voluptuous climate. It is impossible! The people here are so languidly lazy that they do not even dream of chasing away the bats which haunt these crumbling buildings.

Is it possible you like Dr. Ebers? I hope not! He has no artistic sentiment whatever,--no feeling, no colour. He is dry and dusty as a mummy preserved with bitumen. He gropes in the hypogaea like some Yankee speculator looking for antiquities to sell. You must be Egyptian to write of Egypt;--you must feel all the weird solemnity and mighty ponderosity of the antique life;--you must comprehend the whole force of those ideas which expressed themselves in miracles of granite and mysteries of black marble. Ebers knows nothing of this. Turning from the French writers to his lifeless pages is like leaving the warm and perfumed bed of a beloved mistress for the slimy coldness of a sepulchre.

The Venus of Milo!--the Venus who is not a Venus! Perhaps you have read Victor Rydberg's beautiful essay about that glorious figure! If not, read it; it is worth while. And let me say, my dear friend, no one dare write the whole truth about Greek sculpture. None would publish it. Few would understand it. Winckelmann, although impressed by it, hardly realized it. Symonds, in his exquisite studies, acknowledges that the spirit of the antique life remains, and will always remain to the greater number, an inexplicable although enchanting mystery. But if one dared!...

And you speak of the Song of Solomon. I love it more than ever. But Michelet, the pa.s.sionate freethinker, the divine prose-poet, the bravest lover of the beautiful, has written a terrible chapter upon it. No lesser mind dare touch the subject now with sacrilegious hand.

I doubt if you are quite just to Gautier. I had hoped his fancy might please you. But Gautier did not write those lines I sent you. They are found in the report of conversations held with him by Emile Bergerat;--they are mere memories of a dead voice. Probably had he ever known that these romantic opinions would one day be published to the world, he would never have uttered them.

Your Hindoo legends charmed me, but I do not like them as I love the Greek legends. The fantasies created in India are superhumanly vast, wild, and terrible;--they are typhoons of the tropical imagination;--they seem pictures printed by madness,--they terrify and impress, but do not charm. I love better the sweet human story of Orpheus. It is a dream of human love,--the love that is not only strong, but stronger than death,--the love that breaks down the dim gates of the world of Shadows and bursts open the marble heart of the tomb to return at the outcry of pa.s.sion. Yet I hold that the Greek mind was infantine in comparison to the Indian thought of the same era; nor could any Greek imagination have created the visions of the visionary East. The Greek was a pure naturalist, a lover of "the bloom of young flesh;"--the Hindoo had fathomed the deepest deeps of human thought before the Greek was born.

Zola is capable of some beautiful things. His "Le Bain" is pure Romanticism, delicate, sweet, coquettish. His contribution to "Les Soirees de Medan" is magnificent. His "Faute de l'Abbe Mouret" does not lack real touches of poetry. But as the copy of Nature is not true art according to the Greek law of beauty, so I believe that the school of Naturalism belongs to the low order of literary creation. It is a sharp photograph, coloured by hand with the minute lines of vein and shading of down. Zola's pupils, however,--those who wrote the "Soirees de Medan,"--have improved upon his style, and have mingled Naturalism with Romanticism in a very charming way.

I was a little disappointed, although I was also much delighted, with parts of Cable's "Grandissimes." He did not follow out his first plan,--as he told me he was going to do,--viz., to scatter about fifty Creole songs through the work, with the music in the shape of notes at the end. There are only a few ditties published; and as the Creole music deals in fractions of tones, Mr. Cable failed to write it properly. He is not enough of a musician, I fancy, for that.

By the time you have read this I think you will also have read my articles on Gottschalk and translations. I sent for his life to Havana; and received it with a quaint Spanish letter from Enrique Barrera, begging me to find an agent for him. I found him one here. His West Indian volume is one of the most extraordinary books I have ever seen.

It is the wildest of possible romances.

L. H.

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, 1881.

MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--How could you ever think you had offended me? I was so sick--expecting to go blind and "lift the cover of my brains," as the Spaniards say, and also ill-treated--that I had no spirit left to write.

You will be glad to know that I have now got so fat that they call me "The Fat Boy" at the office.

Your letter gave me great pleasure. I think your plan--vague as it appears to be--will crystallize into a very happy reality. You have the sacred fire,--_le vrai feu sacre_,--and with health and strength must succeed. What you want, and what we all want, who possess devotion to any n.o.ble idea, who hide any artistic idol in a niche of the heart, is that independence which gives us at least the time to worship the holiness of beauty,--be it in harmonies of sound, of form, or of colour.

You have strength, youth,--not in years only but in the vital resources of your being,--the true _parfum de la jeunesse_ is perceptible in your thoughts and hopes and abilities to create; and you have other advantages I will not mention lest my observations might be "embarra.s.sing." I should be surprised indeed to hear in a few years from now that you had not been able to emanc.i.p.ate yourself from the fetters of that intensely vulgar and detestably commonplace thing, called American journalism,--of which I, alas! must long remain a slave. A prize in the Havana lottery might alone deliver me speedily; but I mostly rely on the hope of being able next year to open a little French bookstore in one of the tense quaint old streets. I had hoped to leave New Orleans; but with my eyes in their present condition, it would be folly to fight for life over again in some foreign country.

You say you hope to see some day a product of my pen more durable than a newspaper article. But I very much doubt if you ever will. My visual misfortune has reduced my hours of work to one third. I only work from 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. You will see, therefore, that my work must be rapid.

At 2 P.M. my eyes are usually worn out. But as you seem to have been interested in some of my little fantasies, I take the liberty of sending you several now. They are too flimsy, however, to be ever collected for publication, unless in the course of a few years I could write a hundred or so, and select one out of three afterward.

Your observations about Amphion and Orpheus prompted me to send you an old issue of the _Item_, in which you will find some very extraordinary observations on the subject of Greek music, translated from a charming work in my possession. But you will be disgusted, perhaps, to know that with all his erudition upon musical legends and musical history, Gautier had no ear for music. I almost feel like asking you not to tell that to anybody.

If you could pay a visit this winter I think you would have a pleasant time. I would like to aid you to get some of the Creole music I vainly promised you. I found it impossible so far to obtain any; yet had I the ability to write music down I could have obtained you some. If you were here I could introduce you to the President of the Athenee Louisianaise, who would certainly put you in the way of doing so yourself.

What I do hope to obtain for you--if you care about it--is Mexican music. Mexicans are common visitors here; and every educated Mexican can sing and play some instrument. They have sung here for us,--guitar accompaniment. Did you ever hear "El Aguardiente"? It is a very queer air,--boisterous, merry with a merriment that seems all the time on the point of breaking into a laugh--yet withal half-savage like some Spanish ditties. When they sang it here, it was with a chorus accompaniment of gla.s.ses held upside down and tapped with spoons.

Did you ever hear negroes play the piano by ear? There are several curiosities here, Creole negroes. Sometimes we pay them a bottle of wine to come here and play for us. They use the piano exactly like a banjo.

It is good banjo-playing, but no piano-playing.

One difficulty in the way of obtaining Creole music or ditties is the fact that the French coloured population are ashamed to speak their patois before whites. They will address you in French and sing French songs; but there must be extraordinary inducements to make them sing or talk in Creole. I have done it, but it is no easy work.

Nearly all the Creoles here--white--know English, French, and Spanish, more or less well, in addition to the patois employed only in speaking to children or servants. When a child becomes about ten years old, it is usually forbidden to speak Creole under any other circ.u.mstances.

But I do not suppose this will much interest you. I shall endeavour--this time I'm afraid to promise--to secure you some Mexican or Havanese music; and will postpone further remarks to a future occasion.

I am sorry Feldwisch is ill; and I doubt if the Colorado air will do him good. When he was here I had a vague suspicion I should never see him again.

Remember me to those whom you know I like, and don't think me dilatory if I don't write immediately on receipt of a letter. I have explained the condition of affairs as well as I could.

I remain, dear fellow, yours, L. HEARN.

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, 1882.

How are you on Russian music?

You could make a terrible and taking operatic tragedy on Sacher-Masoch's "Mother of G.o.d." Get it, if you can, and read it. I send you specimen translation. It was written, I believe, in German.

Have you read in the "Kalewala" of the "Bride of Gold,"--of the "Betrothed of Silver"?

Have you read how the mother of Kullevo arose from her tomb, and cried unto him from the deeps of the dust?

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, 1882.

DEAR K.,--It got dark yesterday before I could finish some extracts from "Kalewala" I wanted to send. They are just suggestion. I must also tell you I have only a very confused idea of the "Kalewala" myself, having read it through simply as a romance, and never having had time to study out all its mythological bearings and meanings. In fact my edition is too incomplete and confusedly arranged in any case: notes are piled in a heap at the end of each volume, causing terrible trouble in making references. See if you can get Castren.

I want also to tell you that the Pre-Islamic legends I spoke of to you are admirably arranged for musical suggestion. The original narrator breaks into verse here and there, as into song: Rabiah, for instance, recites his own death-song, his mother answers him in verse. All Arabian heroic stories are arranged in the same way; and even in so serious a work as Ibn Khallikan's great biographical dictionary, almost every incident is emphasized by a poetical citation.

Your idea about your style being heavy is really incorrect. Your art has trained you so thoroughly in choosing words that hit the exact meaning desired with the full strength of technical or picturesque expression, that the continual use of certain beauties has dulled your perception of their native force, perhaps. You do not feel, I mean, the full strength of what you write--in a style of immense compressed force. I would not wish you to think you had done your best, though; better to feel dissatisfied, but not good to _underestimate_ yourself. I am now, you see, claiming the privilege of criticizing what I could not begin to do myself; but I believe I can see beauty where it exists in style, and I don't want you to be underestimating your own worth.

Are your letters of a character suitable for book-form? Hoppin,--I think, is the name,--the author of "Old England," a Yale professor, who made an English tour, formed one of the most charming volumes in such a way. Think it over.

Affectionately, LAFCADIO.

Please never even suspect that my suggestions to you are made in any spirit of false conceit: a friend of the most limited artistic ability can often suggest things to a real artist, and even give him confidence.