I fear, however, my travelling days (except for business and monotonous work) are nearly over. I’m not going to get rich. Some day I may hit the public; but that will probably be when I shall have become ancient. I feel just now empty and useless and a dead failure. Perhaps I shall feel better next season. At all events I have learned that, beyond all doubt and question, it is absolutely useless for me to try to “force work.” If the feeling does not come of itself from outside, one had better do nothing.
I had a sensation the other day, though, which I want to talk to you about. I felt as if I hated Japan unspeakably, and the whole world seemed not worth living in, when there came two women to the house, to sell ballads. One took her samisen and sang; and people crowded into the tiny yard to hear. Never did I listen to anything sweeter. All the sorrow and beauty, all the pain and the sweetness of life thrilled and quivered in that voice; and the old first love of Japan and of things Japanese came back, and a great tenderness seemed to fill the place like a haunting. I looked at the people, and I saw they were nearly all weeping, and snuffing; and though I could not understand the words, I could feel the pathos and the beauty of things. Then, too, for the first time, I noticed that the singer was blind. Both women were almost surprisingly ugly, but the voice of the one that sang was indescribably beautiful; and she sang as peasants and birds and semi sing, which is nature and is divine. They were wanderers both. I called them in, and treated them well, and heard their story. It was not romantic at all,—small-pox, blindness, a sick husband (paralyzed) and children to care for. I got two copies of the ballad, and enclose one. I should be very glad to pay for having it translated literally:—if you think it could be used, I wish you would some day, when opportunity offers, give it to a Japanese translator. As for price, I should say five yen would be a fair limit.
Would you not like me to return some day your version of the Kumamoto Rōjō, and admirable translation? I preserve it carefully; and have used some of the lines for a sketch in the forthcoming book. I rendered nearly the whole into loose verse, but in spite of my utmost efforts, I could do nothing with the best part of it; I could put no spirit into the lines. My suggestion about it is because it is a very curious if not a very poetical thing; and should you ever make an essay upon modern Japanese military songs, it would be a pity not to include it. So it is always carefully kept, not only for its own sake, but also in view of such possible use.
I find it is still the custom when a shinjū occurs to make a ballad about it, and sing the same, and sell it. This reminds one of London. Ballad customs seem to be the same in all parts of the world.
I shall soon return the books, with a copy of the next Atlantic. What could I send you that you would like? I should suggest Rossetti, if you do not know him well—for I think he ranks as high as Tennyson. I have only Wallace among travellers. I have all of Fiske and Huxley and Spencer and Clifford and the philosophy of Lewes. By the way, have you read “Trilby”? I have read it several times over. It is a wonderful book. The art of it escapes one at first reading, when one reads only for the story.
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Kōbe, 1895.
Dear Chamberlain,—I warned you not to get Gautier’s complete works—so you have been disappointed against my desire. Gautier’s own opinion was adverse to the publication of his complete poems in this shape. He selected and published separately those which satisfied him, in the “Emaux et Camées.” (I once translated “Les Taches Jaunes,”—isn’t it?—in the other volume; a bit of weird sensualism quite in the Romantic spirit.) Gautier’s work is often uneven. He was a journalist, and lived by the newspaper. His life’s complaint was that he could never find time for perfect work: the effort merely to live finally worried him to death during the siege, I think. Still, writing merely for a newspaper,—in haste,—without a chance to think and polish,—his feuilletons remain treasures of French literature. (You are very unjust to his prose; for it is the finest of all French prose.) His complete works are worth having—they run to about 60 vols., but they cannot all be had from one publisher. So he has become a subject for book-collectors. Sainte-Beuve, like Gautier, existed as a journalist. In France a journalist used to have literary chances. In English-speaking countries literary work is still outside of the newspapers; and our would-be littérateurs have therefore a still harder struggle. (See that article in the Revue. No English prose could accomplish those feats of colour and sensation—delicate sensation the most difficult to produce. English as an artistic tongue is immeasurably inferior to French.)
“Philip and His Wife” was finished in the October number. I know I sent all the numbers containing it. Mrs. Deland is a great genius, I think. Her “Story of a Child” was one of the daintiest bits of psychology I ever read.