Unfamiliar Lafcadio Hearn

114 Pages·1936·3.594 MB·English

by  Kenneth P. Kirkwood

LAFCADIO HEARN
Portrait Sketch by Y. Nakatsuchi
UNFAMILIAR
LAFCADIO HEARN
Kokpo
THE HOKUSEIDO PRESS
RIGHTS RESERVED, 19 3 6
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PREFA CE
Lafcadio Hearn needs no introduction to those
interested in literature or in the Far East. In
English letters he was, as he had wished to be, a
Columbus.
“I would give anything to be a literary Columbus,—
to discover a Romantic America in some West Indian
or North African or Oriental region,—to describe the
life that is only fully treated of in universal geographies
or ethnological researches. ... If I could only become
a Consul at Bagdad, Algiers, Ispahan, Benares, Samar­
kand, Nippo, Bangkok, Ninh-Binh,—or any part of
the world where ordinary Christians do not like to go!
Here is the nook in which my romanticism still hides.
. . . Alas ! O that I were a travelling shoemaker, or
a player upon the sambuke ! n 1
Born in Ionia, in the blue and the gold of the
Mediterranean ; spending his early youth in Ire­
land, England and Wales; visiting France in boy­
hood ; wandering through the United States as
far as the Gulf of Mexico ; visiting the French
West Indies and the islands of the Caribbean Sea;
and finally travelling, via Canada, to the Orient,
—his wish would seem to have been completely
fulfilled. Born in those wine-dark seas where lay
1.E. Bisland. Life and Letters. Vol. I. p. 294-5.
the mythical Isles of the Lotus Eaters, he ended
his days in a land where, as he wrote in a letter
to a friend, the people were actual lotus eaters.1
Dreaming that he might be a Consul in some
eastern land, he proved himself English litera­
ture^ greatest ambassador from the West to the
East, interpreting to his students in Japan what
Ruskin callea the King's Treasuries, and making
an “ attempt at interpretationn—in his own
unique, speculative manner and in the most ex­
quisite of poetic prose—of Japan, for his readers
in the occident.
Though his name has been too often omitted
from standard text-books on English literature, in
Japan his name is almost a household word.
Thanks to the devotion of his old students and
disciples, his fame is perpetuated and his life com­
memorated. There is in Matsue his old home, a
memorial museum and a library of his works.
There is in Tokyo a Hearn house, with a museum;
and at Toyama a Lafcadio Hearn Library at the
Toyama Koto-Gakko, There is something of a
Hearn cult, led by a group of his devotees, in­
cluding such literary scholars as the late Professor
M. Otani and the late Professor T. Nannichi of
the Toyama Koto-Gakko; Professor Ichikawa of
the Tokyo Imperial University, Professor T. Takata
and Professor Nishizaki of the Hearn Library,
Professor R. Ishikawa of the Bunri University at
1.E. Bisland. Life and Letters. Vol.II. p. 45, 63.
vi
Otsuka, Professor Tanabe and Professor Ochiai,
two of Hearn’s former students, and Mr. Y,
Nakatsuchi, Director of the Hokuseido Press and
publisher of Hearn’s works ; and members of the
Japanese Government and the Foreign Office who
were students under Hearn at Matsue, Kuma­
moto or in Tokyo. Many of these are outstand­
ing authorities on Hearn^ life and work. There
has been a Lafcadio Hearn Chair of English
Literature at the Imperial University in Tokyo,
successively occupied by various distinguished
English men of letters until a few years ago.
Finally, there has recently been published in
Tokyo, by the Hokuseido Press, the exhaustive
work of Mr* and Mrs. P. D. Perkins, Lafcadio
Hearn : A Bibliography of His Writings, comprising
450 pages of annotated references to books and
articles by or about Hearn.
In the face of the foregoing, it would seem a
work of supererogation to attempt to write again
on Hearn, or to claim that there can be anything
unknown or unfamiliar about him. Of his earlier
years there are autobiographical fragments pre­
served in Miss Elizabeth Bisland^ (Mrs* Wet-
morels) Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, and in
Mrs. Jean Templet Blue Qhost. Of his American
days these books are rounded out by a more com­
plete account, Mn E. L. Tinker's Lafcadio Heamfs
American Days ; while his writings of that period
are to be found in An American Miscellany, edited
vii
by Mn Albert Mordell. His West Indian adven­
tures are recorded in Hearn’s own book Two
Years in the French West Indiesy and his tales
Chita and Youma. Of his Japanese period, we
have the Life and Letters^ supplemented by The
Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, Mrs. Templet
charming study Blue Qhost, his wife Mrs. Setsu
Koizumi’s Reminiscences, Mr. Yone Noguchi’s
Lafcadio Hearn in ]apan, his son Mr. Kazuo Koi­
zumis Father and I; Memories of Lafcadio Hearn,
and numerous other reminiscences and special
studies published in Japan by his friends and
devotees ; while his own descriptive volumes
on Japan afford a quantity of autobiographical
material.
The present study makes no attempt, there­
fore, to go over ground already so thoroughly
explored, except in a very sketchy way as a nec­
essary background for the aspects which here
examined from a more or less unfamiliar angle.
To the writer, it seems that notwithstanding the
apparently thorough study of Hearn that has
already been made, there are certain aspects which
have not received the emphasis they deserve ; and
in the pages which follow some attempt has been
made to fill these gaps.
In particular, is the important phase of Hearn's
transition, from a frustrated career in the West to
a career of fulfilment and relative happiness in
the East. This special and signiticant episode of
viii
his life, the crucial turning point upon which, so
often, success or failure in life depends, is here
described somewhat in detail, with the reasons
and methods of Hearn’s journey to the Orient.
The notes relating to his connection with Sir
William Van Horne and the Canadian Pacific
Railway Company are, to a large degree, a new
contribution to the records of" Hearn’s life.
Added to this brief essay on Hearn’s transition
period, will be found two other papers. The first
is a little study of one special aspect of Hearn’s
character, namely his profound love for animals,
that reveals him as one having the true spirit of
St. Francis of Assisi,—an aspect which has not
hitherto received the particular attention it merits
in any proper appreciation of the man.
The other is an attempt to reveal Hearn as a
literary craftsman, one of the most conscientious
and painstaking to be found in modern English
letters ; and also an attempt to reveal his merits
as a poet, an aspect which has previously been
ignored by most writers who have regarded Hearn
as only a writer of exquisite and finished prose ;
and to recover from his scattered works some of
his verses exemplifying his latent poetic gifts.
The first part of the present study formed the
substance of an address delivered by the writer
in Tokyo, on the occasion of the Seventh
Annual Convention of the Foreign Teachers, As­
sociation in Japan, on April 2nd, 1935, and later
ix
before the American Association of University
Women, on May 4th, 1935. Its appearance in
the present published form is due in the first in­
stance to the kind suggestion of Dr. James A. B.
Scherer, whose sympathetic interest in everything
culturally contributing to friendly understanding
between the East and West, and whose several
books of his own serving this ideal, are well-
known among readers in Japan and students of
Japan abroad. To Mr. Y. Nakatsuchi the devot­
ed publisher of Hearniana in Japan, the writer is
under sincere obligation for sympathetic criticism
and suggestions.
K- P. K.
Tokyo, June,1936.
CONTENTS
Page
I. Hearn’s Transition ............................................ 1
II. Hearn the Animal Lover....................................45
III. Hearn as Poet and Craftsman...........................69
xi