The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume I Part 21

I bear witness that Mohammed is the Prophet of G.o.d!

Come to Prayer!

Come to Prayer!

Come unto Salvation!

G.o.d is Great!

G.o.d is Great!

There is no other G.o.d but G.o.d!"

And Omar wept and all the people with him.

This is an outline. I'd like to have the music of that. Sent to London for it, and couldn't get it.

L. H.

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, 1883.

I'm so delighted with that music that I don't know what to do.

First, I went to my friend Grueling, the organist, and got him to play and sing it. "It is very queer," he said; "but it seems to me like chants I've heard some of these negroes sing." Then I took it to a piano-player, and he played it for me. Then I went to a cornet-player--I think the cornet gives the best idea of the sound of a tenor voice--and he played it exquisitely, beautifully. Those arabesques about the name of Allah are simply divine! I noticed the difference clearly. The second version seems suspended, as a song eternal,--something never to be finished so long as waves sing and winds call, and worlds circle in s.p.a.ce. So I thought of Edwin Arnold's lines:--

"Suns that burn till day has flown, Stars that are by night restored, _Are thy dervishes_, O Lord, _Wheeling_ round thy golden throne!"

I believe I'll use both songs. The suspended character of the second has a great and pathetic poetry in it. Please tell me in your next letter what kind of voice Blal ought to have--being a woolly-headed Abyssinian. I suppose I'll have to make him a tenor. I can't imagine a ba.s.so making those flourishes about the name of the Eternal.

Next week I'll send you selections of Provencal and other music which I believe are new. My library is very fine. I have a collection worth a great deal of money which you would like to see.

If you ever come down here, you could stay with me nicely, and have a pleasant artistic time.

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO H.E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, October, 1883.

MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--I have been too sick with a strangling cold to write as I had wished, or to copy for you something for which I had already obtained the music-paper. Nevertheless I am going to ask another favour.

I hope you can find time to copy separately for me the Arabic words of the _Adzan_: I prefer Villoteau. As for Koran-reading, it would delight me; but please give me the number of the _sura_, or chapter, from which the words are taken.

My article on Blal is progressing: the second part being complete. I am dividing it into four Sections. But I do not feel quite so hopeful now as I did before. Magazine-writing is awful labour. Six weeks at least are required to prepare an article, and then the probability is that the magazine editor will make beastly changes: my article on Cable suffered at his hands. The Harpers change nothing; but they keep an article over for twelve months and more. One of mine is not yet published. I have been hoping that if my "Blal" takes, you might follow it up with an article on Arabic music generally: the open letter department of _Scribner's_ pays well, and the Harpers pay even better. I would like to see you with a series, which could afterward be united into a volume: you could copyright each one. This is only a suggestion.

I will not make much use of the Koran-reading in "Blal:" I want to leave that wholly to you. I feel even guilty for borrowing your pithy and forcible observation upon the _cantillado_.

If you have a chance to visit some of your public libraries, please see whether they have Maisonneuve's superb series: "Les Litteratures populaires de toutes les nations." I have fourteen volumes of it, rich in musical oddities. If they have it not, I will send you extracts from time to time. Also see if they have _Melusine_: my volume of it (1878) contains the music of a Greek dance, older than the friezes of the Parthenon. Of course, if you can see them, it will be better than the imperfect copying of an ignoramus in music like me.

I grossly offended a Creole musician the other day. He denied _in toto_ the African sense of melody. "But," said I, "did you not tell me that you spent hours trying to imitate the notes of a roustabout-song on your flute?" "I did," he replied, "but not because it pleased me--only because I was curious to learn why I could not imitate it: it still baffles me, but it is nevertheless an abomination to my ear!" "Nay!"

said I, "it hath a most sweet sound to me; and to the ethnologist a most fascinating interest. Verily, I would rather listen to it, than hear a symphony of Beethoven!" ... Whereupon he walked away in high fury; and now ... he speaketh to me no more!

Yours very thankfully, L. HEARN.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

TO H.E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, 1883.

MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--There is nothing in magazine-work in the way of profit; for the cent-a-word pay does not really recompense the labour required: but the magazines introduce one to publishers, and publishers select men to write their books. Magazine-work is the introduction to book-work; and book-work pays doubly--in money and reputation. I hope to climb up slowly this way--it takes time, but offers a sure issue. You could do so much more rapidly.

I find in my Oriental catalogues "Villoteau--_Memoire sur la Musique de l'antique Egypte._--Paris: Maisonneuve & Cie, 1883 (15 fr.)." Wonder if you have the work in any of your public libraries. If you have not, and you would like to get it, I can obtain it from Paris duty-free next time I write to Maisonneuve, from whom I am obtaining a great number of curious books.

You must have noticed in the papers the real or pretended discovery of an ancient Egyptian melody,--the notes being represented by owls ascending and descending the musical scale. Hope you will get to see it.

I have been thinking that we might some day, together, work up a charming collection of musical legends: each legend followed by a specimen-melody, with learned dissertation by H. Edward Krehbiel. But that will be for the days when we shall be "well-known and highly esteemed authors." I think I could furnish some singular folk-lore.

Meanwhile "Blal" has been finished. I wrote to _Harper's Magazine_;--the article was returned with a very complimentary autograph letter from Alden, praising it warmly, but recommending its being offered to the _Atlantic_, as he did not know when he could "find room for it." Find room for it! Ah, bah!... I am sorry: because I had written him about your share in it, and hoped, if successful, it would tempt him to write you. It is now in the hands of another magazine. I used your Koran-fragment in the form of a musical footnote.

I notice you called it a "brick." Are you sure this is the correct word?

Each _sura_ (or chapter) indeed signifies a "course of bricks in a wall;" but also signifies "a rank of soldiers"--and the verses, which were never numbered in the earlier MSS., are so irregular that the poetry of the term "brick" could scarcely apply to them. However, I may be wrong.

I was delighted with your delight, as expressed in your beautiful letter upon the Hebrew ceremonial. Hebrew literature has been my hobby for some time past: I have Hershon's "Talmudic Miscellany;" Stauben's "Scenes de la Vie Juive" (full of delicious traditions); Kompert's "Studies of Jewish Life," which you have no doubt read in the original German; and Schwab's French translation of the beginning of the Jerusalem Talmud (together with the Babylonian Berachoth), 5 vols. I confess the latter is, as a whole, unreadable; but the legends in it are without parallel in weirdness and singularity. Such miscellaneous reading of this sort as I have done has given new luminosity to my ideas of the antique Hebrew life; and enabled me to review them without the gloom of Biblical tradition,--especially the nightmarish darkness of the Pentateuch. I like to a.s.sociate Hebrew ceremonies rather with the wonderful Talmudic days of the Babylonian rabbonim than with the savage primitiveness of the years of Exodus and Deuteronomy. There are some queer things about music in the Talmud; but they are sometimes extravagant as that story about the conch-sh.e.l.l blown at the birth of Buddha--"where of the sound _rolled on unceasingly for four years_!" The swarthy fishermen of our swampy lakes do blow conch-sh.e.l.ls by way of marine signalling; and whenever I hear them I think of that monstrous conch-sh.e.l.l told of in the Nidanakatha.

As I write it seemeth to me that I behold, overshadowing the paper, the most Dantesque silhouette of one who walked with me the streets of the far-off Western city by night, and with whom I exchanged ghostly fancies and phantom hopes. Now in New York! How the old night-forces have been scattered! But is it not pleasant to observe that the members of the broken circle have been mounting higher and higher toward the supreme hope? Perhaps we may all meet some day in the East; whence as legendary word hath it--"lightning ever cometh." Remember me very warmly to my old comrade Tunison.

But I think it more probable I shall see you here than that you shall see me there. New York has become something appalling to my imagination--perhaps because I have been drawing my ideas of it from caricatures: something cyclopean without solemnity, something pandemoniac without grotesqueness,--preadamite bridges,--superimpositions of iron roads higher than the aqueducts of the Romans,--gloom, vapour, roarings and lightnings. When I think of it, I feel more content with my sunlit marshes,--and the frogs,--and the gnats,--and the invisible plagues lurking in visible vapours,--and the ancientness,--and the vast languor of the land. Even our vegetation here, funereally drooping in the great heat, seems to dream of dead things--to mourn for the death of Pan. After a few years here the spirit of the land has entered into you,--and the languor of the place embraces you with an embrace that may not be broken;--thoughts come slowly, ideas take form sluggishly as shapes of smoke in heavy air; and a great horror of work and activity and noise and bustle roots itself within your soul,--I mean brain. Soul = Cerebral Activity = Soul.

I am afraid you have read the poorest of Cable's short stories. "Jean-ah Poquelin," "Belles-Demoiselles," are much better than "t.i.te Poulette."

There is something very singular to me in Cable's power. It is not a superior style; it is not a minutely finished description--for it will often endure no close examination at all: nevertheless his stories have a puissant charm which is hard to a.n.a.lyze. His serial novel--"The Grandissimes"--is not equal to the others; but I think the latter portion of "Dr. Sevier" will surprise many. He did me the honour to read nearly the whole book to me. Cultivate him, if you get a chance.

Baker often talks with me about you. You would never have any difficulty in obtaining a fine thing here. Perhaps you will be the reverse of flattered by this bit of news; but the proprietors here think they can make the _T.-D._ a bigger paper than it is, and rival the Eastern dailies. For my part I hope they will do it; but they lack system, experience, and good men, to some extent. Now good men are not easily tempted to cast their fortunes here at present. It will be otherwise in time; the city is really growing into a metropolis,--a world's market for merchants of all nations,--and will be made healthier and more beautiful year by year.

Good-bye for the present.

Your very sincere friend, L. HEARN.

TO W. D. O'CONNOR

NEW ORLEANS, 1883.

MY DEAR O'CONNOR,--I felt the same regret on finishing your letter that I have often experienced on completing a brief but delightful novelette: I wanted more,--and yet I had come to the end!... Your letters are all treasured up;--they are treats, and one atones for years of silence. My dear friend, you must never trouble yourself to write when you feel either tired or disinclined: when I think I have the power to interest you, I will always take advantage of it, without expecting you to write.

I know what routine is, and what weariness is; and some day I think we shall meet, and arrange for a still more pleasant intimacy.

Your preference for Boutimar pleases me: Boutimar was my pet. There is a little Jewish legend in the collection--Esther--somewhat resembling it in pathos.

Your observation about my knowledge is something I cannot accept; for in positive acquirements I am even exceptionally ignorant. By purchasing queer books and following odd subjects I have been able to give myself the air of knowing more than I do; but none of my work would bear the scrutiny of a specialist; I would like, however, to show you my library.

It cost me only about $2000; but every volume is _queer_. Knowing that I have nothing resembling genius, and that any ordinary talent must be supplemented with some sort of curious study in order to place it above the mediocre line, I am striving to woo the Muse of the Odd, and hope to succeed in thus attracting some little attention. This coming summer I propose making my first serious effort at original work--a very tiny volume of sketches in our Creole archipelago at the skirts of the Gulf.

I am seeking the Orient at home, among our Lascar and Chinese colonies, and the Prehistoric in the characteristics of strange European settlers.