The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume I Part 38

I have never seen the _Cosmopolitan_ in its new dress, and I do not know what has been going on anywhere....

Philadelphia is a city very peculiar--isolated by custom antique, but having a good solid social morality, and much peace. It has its own dry drab newspapers, which are not like any other newspapers in the world, and contain nothing not immediately concerning Philadelphia.

Consequently no echo from New York enters here--nor any from anywhere else: there are no New York papers sold to speak of. The Quaker City does not want them--thinks them in bad taste, accepts only the magazines and weeklies. But it's the best old city in the whole world all the same.

Faithfully, L. HEARN.

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

MY DEAR MISS BISLAND,--I don't know whether you saw a little gem of Loti's in the _Fortnightly_; I cut it out and send it,--also an attempt at translation which proves the wisdom of the English magazine editor in printing it in French,--and a comment of mine. I don't think you are likely to wish to print such a thing as the translation; but if you should, don't use it without sending me a proof, because it is full of errors.

While in Saint-Pierre, Martinique, I found it--originally contributed, in French, to the _Fortnightly_ for August, 1888--copied into a French paper. The impression made by reading it startled me for reasons independent of the exquisite weirdness of the thought. There was the great orange sunset of the tropics before me, over a lilac sea,--bronzing the green of the mango, and tamarind-trees, and the broad, satiny leaves of _bananier_ and _balisier_. The interior described in the vision was not of modern Saint-Pierre; but I knew an old interior in Fort de France, whose present quaint condition repeated precisely the background of the dream. A hundred years ago there were but two places on the sunset-side of Martinique which could have presented the spectacle of the little low streets described,--Fort de France and Saint-Pierre. The high mountains cut off the sunset glow at an early hour on the eastern side of the island. It seemed to me a strange coincidence that in _Les Colonies_, a local paper, I had just read also, that some old cemetery of Fort de France was about to be turned into a playground for children.

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--Verily shirin, shirintar, and shirintarin art thou,--and Saadi in the Garden of the Taj likewise,--and also the letter which I have just received.

Emotionally the book is surely Arnold's strongest: it has that intensity of sweetness which touches the sphere of pain. One need not seek in the Bostan or Gulistan for the essence of that volume: the Oriental thought has been transfigured in its reflection from a nineteenth century mind.

There has been in one of Edwin Arnold's books some suggestion of a future religion of human goodness and human brotherhood, through recognition of soul-unity,--but in none, I think, so strangely as in this. And then, what horror to read the very coa.r.s.e interview published recently in a daily paper: the brutal repet.i.tion of a man's words uttered under constraint, about the most sacred of sentiments!...

No; I won't go to New York till you come back. I trust you will not overwork yourself: when we see (I mean "hear") each other, we can talk over all known devices for lightening literary duties. I am acquainted with some; and I would not have you fall sick for anything--unless you were to do me something "awfully mean:" then I'm afraid I would not be so sorry as I ought to be.

I will try to give you something for the Christmas number anyhow,--but not very long. By the way, I have an idea which may be wrong, but seems to me worth uttering. The prose fiction which lives through the centuries in the short story: like the old Greek romances--narratives like "Manon Lescaut;" "Paul et Virginie;" the "Candide" of Voltaire; the "Vicar of Wakefield;" "Undine," etc., outlive all the ampler labour of their authors. It seems to me that with this century the great novel will pa.s.s out of fashion: three-quarters of what is written is unnecessary,--is involved simply by obedience to effete formulas and standards. As a consequence we do not read as we used to. We read only the essential, skipping all else. The book that compels perusal of every line and word is the book of power. Create a story of which no reader can skip a single paragraph, and one has the secret of force,--if not of durability. My own hope is to do something in accordance with this idea: no descriptions, no preliminaries, no explanations--nothing but the feeling itself at highest intensity. I may fail utterly; but I think I have divined a truth which will yet be recognized and pursued by stronger minds than mine. The less material, the more force;--the subtler the power the greater, as water than land, as wind than water, as mind than wind. I would like to say something about light, heat, electricity, rates of ether-vibration;--but the notion will work itself out in your own beautiful mind without any clumsy attempts of mine to ill.u.s.trate.

--About the translation,--do as you please,--but don't please put it in a great big daily, next to the account of a prize-fight or a murder,--and please, if you do anything with it, see, _above all things earthly_, that I get proofs. But I would just as soon you would keep it.

I made it for you, and am glad you had not seen the original previously.

I thought the _Cosmo._ was a sort of literary weekly. It is a beautiful little magazine,--full of surprises; and I trust it is going to win a great success.

Good-bye;--your Voice wishes you a very happy pleasure-trip, in which you will feel all sorts of new feelings, and dream all manner of new dreams.

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

This morning I dropped you a little note; but this afternoon, reading your book-chat in the _Cosmo._ I find I must write you something more impersonal.

--You know, perhaps, that Spencer's thought about education--the paramount necessity of educating the Will through the Emotion--has received, consciously or unconsciously, more attention in Italy than elsewhere. The Emotions are not, as a rule, educated at all outside of the home-circle. The great public schools of all countries have a system which either ignores the emotions, or leaves them unprotected;--while all sectarian teaching warps and withers them in the direction, at least, of their natural growth. You know all this, I suppose, better than I. But perhaps you do not know the "Cuore" of Edmondo de Amicis (Thos. Y. Crowell & Co.), which has pa.s.sed through 39 Italian editions.

And if you do not know it, I pray you to read it without skipping a single phrase. It is as full of heart-sweetness as attar-of-roses is full of flower-ghosts; and it seems a revelation of what emotional education might accomplish.

I read Brownell's book at your suggestion. It contains, I think, the best teaching about _how_ to study French character; but I could not accept many of its inferences,--especially in regard to art and morality,--without reluctance. There is a sense of something wanting in the book--something lucid and spiritual (is it Conviction?) that makes it heavy. How luminous and psychically electric is Lowell's book compared with it. And how much n.o.bler a soul must be the dreamer of Choson!

--I shall never write "Miss Bisland" again, except upon an envelope. It is a formality,--and you are you: you are not a formality,--but a somewhat. And I am only

"_I._"

TO GEORGE M. GOULD

1889.

DEAR GOULD,--Verily there is no strength nor power but from G.o.d,--the High, the Great! I have thy letter, O thou of enormous working capacity, and I admire and wonder, but am in no wise sorry for thee, seeing thou doest that which thou art able to do, and findest pleasure therein and excellence and dignity and power,--and that if thou wert doing it not thou wouldst surely be doing something else;--for G.o.d (whose name be exalted!) hath numbered thee among those who find felicity in exceeding activity. Thou art indeed forty-one years old, by reckoning of time; but as thou art of the Giants this reckoning hath no signification for thee.

Verily thou art but twenty-five years old, and thou shalt never know age until a hundred winters shall have pa.s.sed over thee. And all things which thou dost desire shall be accorded unto thee by Him who, like thyself, reposeth never, and whose blessed name be forever exalted! Also unto thee shall the patients come, as an army for mult.i.tude, so that thy bell shall make but one ringing through all thy days continuously, and that thy neighbours shall be oppressed by reason of the concourse in the street about thy dwelling.

But as for me, concerning whom thou makest inquiry, trouble not thyself about thy servant, whose trust and power are in G.o.d--the High, the Great! That which shall be shall be, and that which hath been shall not be again:--for the moment, indeed, I am concerned only to know why the flame of my lamp goeth _upward_, and all flame likewise,--unless it be for the purpose of praising G.o.d (whose name be exalted by all living creatures!). For thou saidst unto me, being a Kafeer, that Flame is a vibration only; but thou hast not been able to tell me the mystery of the pointing of fire and the upreaching of it to the feet of G.o.d, the Compa.s.sionate, the Merciful.

Here it raineth always, and this Soul of me is slowly evaporating, despite the perusal of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who spake of souls.

Meseems that each time I behold the eyes of her concerning whom I spake to thee, something of that soul is drawn out unto her, and devoured perhaps for sustenance of that Jinneyah--which is her own soul. So that mine hath become thin as the inner shadow wrought by a strong double light upon the ground; and I shall become even as a vegetable presently--having knowledge of nothing save the witchery of G.o.d in the eyes of women. The memory of Schopenhauer hath pa.s.sed,--and with its pa.s.sing I find my only salvation in a return to the study of the Oceanic Majesty and Power and Greatness and Holiness and Omniscience of the mind of Herbert Spencer.

Be thou ever blessed and loved by the sons of men, even as by

HEARN.

TO GEORGE M. GOULD

1889.

GOULD,--You must have skipped, bad boy!--for the girl is _not_ "all face and foot"! You missed the finely detailed account of her body in William's diary,--and the just observation of a trait characteristic of the race in its purity; the great length of the lower limb,--fine greyhounds, fine thoroughbred horses, and fine men and women have all this characteristic, like the conventional figures of antique gem-work.

The gipsy-girl is possible: I have seen charming ones. You must read Borrow's "Gipsies" (the unabbreviated edition in two volumes),--also his "Bible in Spain," and "Lavengro,"--a Gipsy novel. Simpson's "Gipsies" is also worth looking at.... But if you won't believe in the bird of pa.s.sage, take Carmen and believe in her--there, at least, you will not doubt: all will prove in accordance with possible sin and sorrow. Why do you want the Bird's body to be better known--since n.o.body ever knew it any better than you know it; (or would know if you had read all)--could not have except by making to operate, like the Vicar of Azey-le-Rideau, all its "hinges and mesial part.i.tions," even to disjuncture. What a singular fact in the history of torture, that the inquisitor was trained to believe the beautiful body he was breaking and rending and burning was _never beautiful_--that its grace and symmetry were illusions, the witchcraft of the dear old compa.s.sionate Devil striving to save his victim by the mirage of fleshly attractiveness! Only through this belief could certain monstrosities have been possible. It was always Saint Anthony's temptation!

I have a book for you--an astounding book,--a G.o.dlike book. But I want you to promise to read every single word of it. Every word is dynamic.

It is the finest book on the East ever written; and though very small contains more than all my library of Oriental books. And an American (?) wrote it! It is called "The Soul of the Far East." It will astound you like Schopenhauer, the same profundity and lucidity. Love to you,

HEARN.

TO GEORGE M. GOULD

1889.

DEAR GOULD,--I blacked--that is, I had my boots blacked yesterday,--just for the same reason that we do things after people are dead (which we would not have done for them while they lived and asked), with a ghostly idea of pleasing them. If you had been here I might not have had them blacked, but as you were gone, I did it for the Shadow of you. And I gave the boy 20 cents,--because of the feeling that he might never have such a chance again. That boy runs after me now everywhere,--but--he is mistaken! I am no longer the same! I have satisfied my conscience, and enjoy Nirvana.

This morning when I got up I thought the streets looked queer. It seemed as if they were lighted by the afternoon in some way or other, instead of the morning. I went to the P. O. with "The Soul of the Far East." How silent the streets for a Friday morning! The population seemed all to have ebbed away somewhere as if to look at something. The post-office was silent as a pyramid inside. I went to the book-store, and found it closed,--and for the first time realized that it was Sunday. Then I understood why the streets looked like afternoon; and the sunshine had a tinge as of evening in a cemetery. Confound Sunday!

Talking with Jakey last night about Nature, I heard him express the opinion that his capacity of scientific realization of the _causes_ of things was enough to account for the absence in him of any feeling of awe or reverence in the presence of mountain scenery. It occurred to me therewith that the characteristic of indifference to poetry might be almost common to mathematicians. The man who wrote "The Soul of the Far East" and "Choson" is nevertheless an accomplished mathematician. But you will notice that his divine poetry touches only that which no scientific knowledge can explain,--that which no mathematics can solve,--that which must remain mysterious throughout all conceivable span of time,--the fluttering of the Human Soul in its chrysalis, which it at once hates and loves, and hates because it loves, and strives to burst through, and still fears unspeakably to break,--though dimly conscious of the infinite Ghostly Peace beyond.

HEARN.