This beautiful sympathy and literary loyalty made it possible for Hearn to use the words of faith and of religion, even of morality, as if they were his own, while with them he had no personal sympathy whatever. For instance, he could speak, as if from his heart out, of "a million astral lamps lighted in the vast and violet dome of God's everlasting mosque." He could praise as a sublime exhortation the command, "O ye that are about to sleep, commend your souls to Him who never sleeps!" It is, of course, true that in Hearn's mind, doubtless, the poorest heathen or savage virtue was sublimely virtuous, and any barbaric vice had more of virtue in it than of viciousness. Surely the most paltry Oriental excellence was far lovelier to him than any Occidental heroism or beauty, however splendid. We are thus helped to understand how his mind could seem to flush with religious or ethical enthusiasm, while the mosque of his real heart was only a chasm of gloomy negation or a chaos of hideous death. This was due to the fact that he had no constructive mind, and as only one kind of doing, writing, was possible to him, because of his near-sightedness, he must needs hate Occidentalism, and exalt with a somewhat ludicrous praise the vapid, and even pitiful childishness of semi-barbaric Orientalism. The illogicality reaches its acme when Hearn, atheistic, disloyal, and unethical, was compelled, as in some of his Japanese pages, to put a morality and a religion behind the acts and in the hearts of his characters, which with his and with their atheism, was, dramatically, so out of place that the incongruity would make us smile if it were not all done with such a sweet and haunting grace. The culmination of the contradictory trends is in "Karma." To put it bluntly, Hearn had no spark of practical sexual virtue, and yet praise one shall, marvel at one must, the literary and dramatic honour which could, as in "Karma," so sympathetically describe the almost unscalable summits of virtue,—there where in holy silence, Passion gazes with awe at her divine Master, Duty.
A negative condition of this sympathy was the interior voidness of his character, the non-existence of reality within him, which thus allowed the positive loyalty to his subject free play; yet that which gave it leave to be, did not explain the genesis or quality of life of the being. But have a care! Do not ask the interest in any one subject to last for more than a fleeting moment! Early and always he possessed the rare, the wonderful gift of the instant, the iridescent, the wingéd word. At last was presented to him what he called a "soul," and that, in conjunction with his growth in artistic technique, in his handling of colours, and in procuring nobler data, helped to give the Japanese work a content and an enduring substance which distinguishes it from that of all others. This atones for all the hurt that precedes, and it is a benefaction and a delight to the entire world. In reward Literature will place upon his head one of her loveliest crowns.
CHAPTER XII.—APPRECIATIONS AND EPITOMES
TAKEN as a whole, the criticisms upon Hearn's work are complimentary. He has his warm admirers, and some who are not so enthusiastic; but those who criticize adversely do so with a gentleness,—I may say, almost a reluctance that is perhaps the reflection of the spirit of his work. And whatever else these may offer, all agree that his writings have a unique charm.
Following are a few excerpts which should give an average of opinions:—
"One great secret of his success in interpreting the Japanese mind and temperament lay in his patience in seeking out and studying minutely the little things of a people said to be great in such. As Amenomori says of Hearn's mind, it 'called forth life and poetry out of dust.'" (327.)[20]
"As an interpreter of the Japanese heart, mind, hand and soul, Mr. Hearn has no superior. But he will not convert those who in health of body and mind love the landmarks of the best faith of the race. It is very hard to make fog and miasmatic exhalations, even when made partly luminous with rhetoric, attractive to the intellect that loves headlands and mountain-tops. The product of despair can never compete in robust minds with the product of faith." (357.)
"Sympathy and exquisiteness of touch are the characteristics of Mr. Hearn's genius. He is a chameleon, glowing with the hue of outer objects or of inward moods, or altogether iridescent. He becomes translucent and veined like a moth on a twig, or mottled as if with the protective golden browns of fallen leaves. We may not look for architectonic or even plastic powers. His is not the mind which constructs of inner necessity, which weaves plots and schemes, or thinks of its frame as it paints. He attempts no epic of history. The delver for sociologic or theologic spoil must seek deeper waters....