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Page 2
Through this study, reading, and brooding Lafcadio Hearn's prose
ripened and mellowed consistently to the end. In mere workmanship the
present volume is one of his most admirable, while in its heightened
passages, like the final paragraph of "The Romance of the Milky Way,"
the rich, melancholy music, the profound suggestion, are not easily
matched from any but the very greatest English prose.
In substance the volume is equally significant. In 1884 he wrote to
one of the closest of his friends that he had at last found his
feet intellectually through the reading of Herbert Spencer which
had dispelled all "isms" from his mind and left him "the vague
but omnipotent consolation of the Great Doubt." And in "Ultimate
Questions," which strikes, so to say, the dominant chord of this
volume, we have an almost lyrical expression of the meaning for him of
the Spencerian philosophy and psychology. In it is his characteristic
mingling of Buddhist and Shinto thought with English and French
psychology, strains which in his work "do not simply mix well," as
he says in one of his letters, but "absolutely unite, like chemical
elements--rush together with a shock;"--and in it he strikes his
deepest note. In his steady envisagement of the horror that envelops
the stupendous universe of science, in his power to evoke and revive
old myths and superstitions, and by their glamour to cast a ghostly
light of vanished suns over the darkness of the abyss, he was the most
Lucretian of modern writers.
* * * * *
In outward appearance Hearn, the man, was in no way prepossessing. In
the sharply lined picture of him drawn by one of his Japanese comrades
in the "Atlantic" for October, 1905, he appears, "slightly corpulent
in later years, short in stature, hardly five feet high, of somewhat
stooping gait. A little brownish in complexion, and of rather hairy
skin. A thin, sharp, aquiline nose, large protruding eyes, of which
the left was blind and the right very near-sighted."
The same writer, Nobushige Amenomori, has set down a reminiscence, not
of Hearn the man, but of Hearn the genius, wherewith this introduction
to the last of his writings may fitly conclude: "I shall ever retain
the vivid remembrance of the sight I had when I stayed over night at
his house for the first time. Being used myself also to sit up late, I
read in bed that night. The clock struck one in the morning, but there
was a light in Hearn's study. I heard some low, hoarse coughing. I was
afraid my friend might be ill; so I stepped out of my room and went to
his study. Not wanting, however, to disturb him, if he was at work,
I cautiously opened the door just a little, and peeped in. I saw
my friend intent in writing at his high desk, with his nose almost
touching the paper. Leaf after leaf he wrote on. In a while he held
up his head, and what did I see! It was not the Hearn I was familiar
with; it was another Hearn. His face was mysteriously white; his
large eye gleamed. He appeared like one in touch with some unearthly
presence.
"Within that homely looking man there burned something pure as the
vestal fire, and in that flame dwelt a mind that called forth life and
poetry out of dust, and grasped the highest themes of human thought."
F.G.
September, 1905.
THE ROMANCE, OF THE MILKY WAY
Of old it was said: 'The River of Heaven is the Ghost of
Waters.' We behold it shifting its bed in the course of the
year as an earthly river sometimes does.
_Ancient Scholar_
Among the many charming festivals celebrated by Old Japan, the most
romantic was the festival of Tanabata-Sama, the Weaving-Lady of the
Milky Way. In the chief cities her holiday is now little observed; and
in T[=o]ky[=o] it is almost forgotten. But in many country districts,
and even in villages, near the capital, it is still celebrated in a
small way. If you happen to visit an old-fashioned country town or
village, on the seventh day of the seventh month (by the ancient
calendar), you will probably notice many freshly-cut bamboos fixed
upon the roofs of the houses, or planted in the ground beside them,
every bamboo having attached to it a number of strips of colored
paper. In some very poor villages you might find that these papers are
white, or of one color only; but the general rule is that the papers
should be of five or seven different colors. Blue, green, red, yellow,
and white are the tints commonly displayed. All these papers are
inscribed with short poems written in praise of Tanabata and her
husband Hikoboshi. After the festival the bamboos are taken down and
thrown into the nearest stream, together with the poems attached to
them.
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