Lafcadio Hearn

“ In Cincinnati Hearn eventually found work that enabled him to live, though this did not come immediately, as is proved by an anecdote, related by himself, of his early days there. A Syrian peddler employed him to help dispose of some accumulated wares, sending him out with a consignment of small mirrors. Certainly no human being was more unfitted by nature for successful peddling than Lafcadio Hearn, and at the end of the day he returned to the Syrian with the consignment intact. ”

“ Art! Bitter deception!" cries Flaubert. "Phantom that flows with light, only to lead one on to ruin." For Lafcadio Hearn, art was the one reality, the anchor that kept him from drifting to mental wreckage; out of his very industry and determination grew a certain healthy habit of thought and life.
It has been said that Hearn had no creative ability. With regard to his capability of writing a complex work of fiction, this is perhaps true, he had forfeited his birthright to produce a Pêcheur d'Islande; but on most of his Japanese work his individuality is unmistakably impressed. ”

“ It is not without a sense of amusement that we observe the complex personality, Lafcadio Hearn, in the Matsue phase of self-suppression and discipline. Well might Kinjuro, the old gardener, tell him that he had seven souls. A dignified university professor had taken the place of the erratic Bohemian who frequented the levee at Cincinnati, and of the starving little journalist who, arrayed in reefer coats, flannel shirt, and outlandish hat, used to appear in the streets of New Orleans. ”

“ Indeed, in that country where he longed for appreciation, the idea is gradually growing, that when many shining lights in the literary world of to-day stand unread on topmost library shelves, Lafcadio Hearn will still be studied by the scientist, and valued by the cultured, because of the subtle comprehension and sympathy with which he has presented, in exquisite language, a subject of ever-increasing importance and interest—the soul of the people destined, in the future, to hold undisputed sway in the Far East. ”

“ She doesn't kill people like me,—she only bites and scratches them; and I've got the marks of her teeth in a number of places on my soul. She meets me every few years and asks the same tiresome question,—and I have latterly contented myself with simply telling her, 'I don't know.'" [8]
[8] "The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn," Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
In a letter to his sister, written from Kumamoto, in Japan, years later, Hearn tells her that he found his way to the office of an old English printer, named Watkin, some months after his arrival in Cincinnati. "I asked him to help me. ”

“ Inestimable, immortal, would be such books—could they anywhere be found—setting down the faiths, the traditions, the daily lives, the songs, the dances, the names, the legends, the humble lore of plants, birds, and insects, of that people who suddenly stood up at Thermopylæ, broke the wave from the East, made Europe possible, and set the cornerstone of Occidental thought. This was what Lafcadio Hearn, a little penniless, half-blind, eccentric wanderer had come to do for Japan. ”

“ Lafcadio Hearn is a journalist in the best sense of the word. He is a writer who has something striking and original to say upon the events of the day, upon the conditions and institutions of a land, upon the possibilities of development in a people, upon deep philosophical, social and religious problems, upon the 'Idea of Pre-existence,' upon Buddhism and Shintōism, upon the difference between Occidental and Oriental culture, and who judges all things, all conditions that he sees, from lofty heights. He is besides a character, a man of great ideals ”

“ Copyright, 1890, by Harper and Brothers.
"There is not a writer who could have so steeped himself in this languorous Creole life and then tell so well about it. Trollope and Froude give you the hard, gritty facts, and Lafcadio Hearn the sentiment and poetry of this beautiful island." (387.)
More and more is Hearn realizing the necessity of finding new colour. "I hope to be able to take a trip to New Mexico in the summer just to obtain literary material, sun-paint, tropical colour, etc." It is always the intense that his fancy craves, and indeed must have in order to work. ”

“ Gould quotes it in his book, "Concerning Lafcadio Hearn," published by Messrs. Fisher Unwin.
"Chita," Hearn's first work of fiction, is in no way an artistic production; it lacks construction and the delicate touches that constitute the skilful delineation of character; but every now and then memories of his childhood fall across its pages, illumining them as with sudden light. ”

“ None the less is his book, though dominated by a somewhat uncritical enthusiasm, full of interest and instruction as to the difference between the gifts, the motives, and the mental and moral attitude of the Japanese and the peoples of the West, ourselves in particular. It is well worth while to study that remarkable people as they are seen by one who is so much captivated by them, and believes in them so strongly, as Mr. Lafcadio Hearn." (380.)
The Athenæum does not speak so cordially, and a review in the Atlantic Monthly says:—
"Mr. Hearn is not at his best as a metaphysician.... ”

“ Lafcadio Hearn.
TO MITCHELL McDONALD
Tōkyō, April, 1898.
Dear Friend,—The holidays are over; and the winter is still dying hard. We are all feeling pretty well now notwithstanding,—and my imp was down yesterday to Ueno, in the sea of people, trying to get a glimpse of things. Because he had a naval uniform on, he became quite angry at the kurumaya for proposing to lift him up to look over the heads of the people. The K. wisely answered: “I know you are a man—but then you must think that I am a horse only, and ride on my back. Even military men ride horses, you know!” ”

“ Even as he was ascending the steps of the temple, he beheld a damsel descending toward him, unrobed above the hips, after the fashion of her people. Sweet as the moon was her face; her hair was like a beautiful dark cloud; her eyes were liquid and large as a wild deer's; her brows were arched like bows well bent; her delicate nose was curved like a falcon's beak; her neck was comely as a dove's; her teeth were like pomegranate seeds; her lips ruddy as the crimson gourd; her hands and feet soft as lotus-leaves. Golden-yellow was her skin, like the petals of the champa-flowers ”

“ Lafcadio seems to have been born with prominent near-sighted eyes. They must have been a Hearn inheritance, [Pg 49] for Mrs. Atkinson's son, Carleton, has prominent myopic eyes, and Lafcadio's eldest son has been disqualified, by his near-sight, from entering the Japanese army.
There is something intensely pathetic in Hearn's perception of the idea of beauty, and of the reality manifested in his own person. ”

“ Kazuo (Hearn's Son, Aged about Seventeen) .
"Patience is a virtue inculcated by life in the Far East," said Mr. Mason. "Come out with me, I will show you some of the most beautiful sights in the world, and in course of time either Mrs. Koizumi or a letter will turn up."
Anxious not to offend the little Japanese lady by any proceeding not in consonance with the social etiquette of her country, we took Mr. Mason's advice.
I had been reading "Out of the East," and pleaded that our first pilgrimage might be to the Jizo-Do Temple, scene of Lafcadio Hearn's interview with the old Buddhist priest. ”

“ All the life of the open ports is not commonplace: there are heroisms and romances in it; and there is nothing in this world nearly as wonderful as life itself. All real life is a marvel—but in Japan a marvel that is hidden as much as possible—especially hidden from dangerous chatterers like Lafcadio Hearn. ”

“ In treating of Hearn's vagaries it is well to remember that his brain was abnormal by inheritance, and at this time was still further thrown off its balance by privation, injustice, and unhappiness. All through the course of his life there was failure of straight vision and mental vigour when he was going through a period of difficulty and struggle.
"He may have been a genius in his line," his brother writes to Mrs. Atkinson, referring to Lafcadio, "but genius is akin to madness, and I do really think that dark, passionate Greek mother's blood had a taint in it. ”

“ Lafcadio Hearn's volumes is that, in contrast to other writers, he does take the Japanese very seriously indeed." (316.)
"To the details of life and thought in Japan Mr. Hearn's soul seems everywhere and at all times responsive. He catches in his eye and on his pen minute motes scarcely noticeable by the keen natives themselves." (367.)
"He has written nothing on Japan equal in length to his tales of West Indian life. But while we deplore this reserve of a writer who possesses every quality of style, except humour, we have reason to be grateful for whatever he gives us." ”

“ I know that there are a hundred millions of suns. The horses do not know. But, nevertheless, they are worth, I have been told, fifteen hundred dollars each: they are superior beings! How much am I worth?...
“To-morrow, after they have been fed, I also shall be fed—by kindly stealth;—and I shall not have earned the feeding, in spite of the fact that I know there are hundreds of millions of suns!”
Sometime during the year 1869—the exact date cannot be ascertained—Lafcadio Hearn, nineteen years old, penniless, delicate, half-blind, and without a friend, found himself in the streets of New York. ”

“ At all events, Lafcadio Hearn has the merit of recalling powerfully to the Europeans of Europe the importance, often misunderstood, of Eastern civilization. No one better than this Japanizing enthusiast to make us feel what there is of narrowness in our habitual conception of the world, in our individualistic literature, misunderstanding too much the influence of the Past in our anthropocentric art, neglecting Nature too often, penetrated too 'singly' in our classic philosophy with Greco-Latin and Christian influences. ”

“ All are one. And Kshitigarbha is not our Japanese Jizō,—and Kwannon is not Avalokitesvara, and the Ni-ō are not the figures of Indra, and Emma-O is not Yama. “They were and are not.” Don’t you agree with me that the popular idea of a divinity is an element of weight in such questions of doubt as we are chatting about?
With every wish that you may enjoy your journey in Shikoku, I remain, most truly ever,
Lafcadio Hearn.
P. S.... I have been teaching three days, and find no difference in the boys from those of Izumo, —they are gentle, polite, manly and eager. ”

“ There are many of Lafcadio Hearn's critics who say that, in consequence of his ignorance of the Japanese language, and the isolation in which he lived, he never could have known anything really of the innermost thoughts and feelings of the people to whom he professed to act as interpreter. Sometimes they maintain that his views are unfavourable to an exaggerated extent, at another too laudatory. ”

“ Moreover, there was never in his life any personal happiness, romance, poetry, or satisfaction which could serve as the material of Hearn's æsthetic faculty. Almost every hour of that life had been lived in physical or mental anguish, denied desire, crushed yearnings, and unguided waywardness. Born of a Greek mother, and a roving English father, his childhood was passed in an absurd French school where another might have become a dwarfed and potted Chinese tree. ”

“ It is difficult to believe that the writer, bewitched with the warmth and colour of the tropics, giving his pen an unlicensed flow of word colour and enthusiasm, in a few years could have matured into this quiet, gentle thinker equally absorbed by the East. One finds scarcely a trace of the Hearn of the tropics: therein lies his unique genius; just so admirably as he reflected the West Indian life, does he now reflect that of the Japanese.
It is the old Japan that Hearn loves, and the passing of which he mourns even at the first. ”

“ All the roughness of the man was gone! To Julien's startled fancy, the fishers had ceased to be;—lo! Carmelo was a princely page; Sparicio, a king! How perfectly their voices married together!—they sang with passion, with power, with truth, with that wondrous natural art which is the birthright of the rudest Italian soul. And the stars throbbed out in the heaven; and the glory died in the west; and the night opened its heart; and the splendor of the eternities fell all about them. ”

“ Every life must have its eternal records in the Universal life,—every thought of good or ill or aspiration,—and the Buddhistic Karma would be a scientific, not a theoretical doctrine; all about us the thoughts of the dead, and the life of countless dead worlds would be forever acting invisibly on us."
Perhaps of all the incongruous, paradoxical incidents connected with Lafcadio Hearn's memory, none is more incongruous or paradoxical than his funeral. ”

“ That comradeship such as we comprehend it in England could exist between two nationalities, so fundamentally different as Setsu Koizumi's and Lafcadio Hearn's, is improbable if not impossible. "Even my own little wife," Hearn writes years afterwards, "is somewhat mysterious still to me, though always in a lovable way—of course a man and a woman know each other's hearts; but outside of personal knowledge, there are race tendencies difficult to understand." ”