The Wanganui Chronicle. "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." MONDAY, JULY 3, 1911. THE JAPANESE LETTERS OF LAFCADIO HEARN.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12770, 3 July 1911, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." MONDAY, JULY 3, 1911. THE JAPANESE LETTERS OF LAFCADIO HEARN.

The honest and strenuous endeavours to understand tho Japanese and to rightly interpret their character have invested this peculiar, and in some respects Vend, personality with -fame; This has been posthumously ihcveaseth by the publication of his "Life ami' Letters-/* We are assured that evidence is strongly in favour of the idea that ho had lib thought of the letters becoming public property. They are, however, a revelation of greater genius than books of his like "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan"; and his later works. Pausing from tho strain of regular literary work, ho would throw off a letter as recreation, little dreaming that these wojuld some day give to the world considerable light upon his sensitive, retiring" 'and mysterious -"life." We have just readI''a -newer book oii Hcarn, <;Tho Japaneso Letters of Lafcadio Heath," a handsome volume of over 500- pages, edited by Miss Elizabeth Bisland. :>-TJiis ; is ; a ' partisan" strongly on Heam's side; who Avoitld refuto some of the damaging • assertions' of Dr. George M. Gould; Hearn's eye specialist, in his hook, " Concerning Lafcadio Hearn." The issue of this latter treatiso suggests the question of how far Is a medical man entitled to write about his patients? Dr. Gould traced clearly, powerfully and unmercifully the stages of Hearn's life, andregarded him. as only one remove from ft savage. '" His going into utter illogical and absurd captivity to the athiestie arid-, materialistic philosophy of 'Hefberb'1 Spencer was a -sorry :sacrifice ''pf '"his1 'nobler aud better; destiny ■io tho fate that relentlessly dogged his footsteps. He was forced into all the. hvtniknity arid beneficence possible to him by Japanese restraint, art and truth. His cries, of disillusion over tho Japane.so were largely the anger of tho semi-barbaric wanderer held by family tics, paternity, etc., when he found himself prevented from again necking tho far-away tropical pseudoparadise of .peoples but one remove from savagery."' Hcarn would seem to hnvo sacrificed all. to the one idea, of living, enjoying and feeling the real life of old Japa,n. Hiding away in rerno.to places as yet unaffected by tho modernising influences, which ho detested, he lived as a Japanese, married a Japancso wife, and it is snid that it was.fsr her sake he became a naturalised Japanese subject. To Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain he wrote constantly with a sense of sympathy and understanding:, which, while it leaves much unaccounted for, give "us a real —if limited—picture of the inner soul of tho man. On some points he appears narrow, uninformed and affected "\vith" dogged prejudice. Having his seiisc 'of tho artistic charmed by the beauty and simplicity of Japanese life, ho can see nothing of the changing habit without abhorrence. Every European influenco brought, to bear upon Japan he heartily hated. Hence from this, if from no deeper hearten use, ho denounces continually the wholo missionary propaganda, and writes at times in a childishly, unreasonable and also in a most unfair way of ...Christian.'enterprise. This effort to have and to hold at all costs a pagan attitude to all things Japan mars much of the beauty of his work. One of his critics comes to tho conclusion regarding Hearn that he could write about religion, faith and morality and his mind could, seem to'flash with religious or ethical.enthusiasm while the mosque of, his real Jioart was only a chasm of gloomy negation or of hideous death. Our *own impression from the reading of tho later volume of letters is that of a bird beating its wings against the cage —an intense'soul needing the aspiration and freedom to soar which itsnegation on the religious side hindered, but which a spiritual faith could have provided with wings. That his \ie\v modified itself near'the last was evident. With regard to the teaching and training of his eldest son, he says: "1 am now beginning to think that j really much of ecclesiastical-education ! (bad and cruel'as-.I used to imagine- it) j is founded upon tho best experience of j man under civilisation, and I under-1 stand lots of things which I. used to ■ think superstitious bosh* and now'-think < solid wisdom/ Lafcadio Hcarn, in liis spare time from teaching under tho Government, gave himself to laborious literary work (latterly he was on a. newspaper at Kobe). Of how completely ho gave himself to his literary tasks may be gathered from the following:—A friend wrote to him to express tho peculiar pleasure awakened i by his concluding paragraph of- tho paper on dragon-flies in the volume! called "Kotto." "Then let me hope! that tho state to which J am destined will not bo worse than that of a cicada, or of a dragon-fly—climbing the cryp-' tomerias to clash my tiny cymbals in tho sun, or-haunting the holy silence' of lotus pools with a soundless flicker! of amethyst and gold." He replied that ho had written and. rewritten that conclusion seventeen times before he had been able to express to his own satisfaction, the impression in his .mind. Voguehi, the Japanese poet, says of Boarn: "Writing was for him no light work; ho . wrote with his life and blood." While still a lad ho was maim-

Ed" in his vision,and~Btruggle(J ever .Afterwards with myopia, -walking in constant fear of imminent darkness. Yet as Miss Bislaiid says, the general sense loft upon, the mind by his work is colour. "The brain behind those eyes so near'to incompetence'was a seeing mind,' and'through 'an inefficient medium ho perceived,,' as .few men havo done., every iridescence, of his surroundings. - Not a shimmgr of' glory escaped-him. From his books might be gathered a delightful anthology of the beauty of tint, of form, of. shadow, of line. No loveliness was too subtle, too evanescent, too minute, *to be recog-1 nised by those-dim and straining eyes." I His perception, in ' one 'of the letters ■ in this volume, of the delicate groove j in tho Japanese eyelid is an evidence j of his fine artistic .sight imd keen observation But not only of eyes could thus near-sighted artistic soul write.' Listen to what ho says about the hu-j man skin: " But to appreciate tho beauty of coloured skins it is not simply enough to travel—one must become familiar with the sight of thorn through months and years. . . . And at last v hero you perceive there are human skins of real gold {living statues of gold, with blue hair, like the Carib, half-breeds!) and all fruit tint of skins —orange, and yellow, and peach-rod, and lustrous browns of countless shades; and all colours of metal, too —bronzes of every tone —one begins to doubt whether a white skin is so fine." . . . "Now for jet-black—the smooth velvety black skin .that.,remains cold as a lizard under the, tropical sun. It soems to mo extremely beautiful. If it is beautiful in Art, why should it not be beautiful in nature? As a matter of fact,, it is, and hajs been so acknowledged by tho most prejudiced slave-owning races.'' It may from this bo judged of how the mind of Lafcadio Henrn could riso to tho appreciation of tho glory of sunsets or the shades, of tho drooping-wisteria. Of his curious and striking ideas of w,ords as mediums of warmth, colour and form, we can-

not now write.'-' Hoarn's hard life—the adverse experiences from tho lap of luxury in England to sleeping becauso of diro poverty in,an abandoned boiler in Cincinnati—gave his mind a-probable twist with regard "to conventional ideas of. society and religion .^ Ho certainly saw lifo at eccentric angles whether in America, tho strange life in Martinique, or old Japan in Izrnno. Of his first book, writte.n from this spot sheltered from .Occidental tendencies, Tone Voguehi said: "Tt,spoke in perfect accord with tho, sweet "glamour of old Japan, where the" sea'of reality and tho sky of vision molted into one blue eter-

nity." Hcarn's regard for women in thoso letters appoai-s to bo high, and his treatment of his little Japanese wife loyal and kind. Nevertheless, his contentions as to the value of the sensuous in art, would bring to mind the possibility of the aesthetic and tho muddy combining in such a man as Oscar Wildo, for instanco ; In, this beautifully got-up volume of Miss Bisland's there is much to disagree with. There is much also to attract, quite apart from the artistic senso shown forth. The beauty of tho whole is somewhat marred by the regrettable intrusion at stages of tho habit of introducing'moral ethics and religion for tho purpose, of engaging in the .slavish practice of sur•voying them through Sponccrian spectacles. Amid the charm of conception and tho facility of expression there remain things ropellant to the devoutlyminded student of nature.