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 shirîn, shirîntar, and shirîntarin 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 coarse interview published recently in a daily paper: the brutal repetition 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 pass 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 illustrate. —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.