My article on Bìlâl 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 “Bìlâl” 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 “Bìlâl:” 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 Littératures 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 Mélusine: 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.
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.