The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume I Part 18

unrhymed, what the French call _vers a.s.sonances_. This corresponds exactly with your lines in breadth; also in tone, as the accent of the a.s.sonance is thrown upon the last syllable of each line.

Very gratefully yours, L. H.

P. S. Just received another note from you. Have seen the reproduction; I am exceedingly thankful for the compliment; and you know that so far as the copyright business is concerned, the credit must do the book too much good for Worthington to find any fault. I suppose you receive the _Times-Democrat_ of New Orleans. I forward last Sunday's issue, containing a little compliment to the _Argonaut_.

Very sincerely yours, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO JEROME A. HART

NEW ORLEANS, December, 1882.

DEAR SIR,--I venture to intrude upon you to ask a little advice, which as a brother-student of foreign literature you could probably give me better than any other person to whom I could apply. I am informed that in San Francisco there are enterprising and liberal-minded publishers, with whom unknown authors have a better chance than with the austere and pious publishers of the East. It would be a very great favour indeed, if you could give me some positive indication in this matter. I desire to find a publisher for that excessively curious but somewhat audacious book, "La Tentation de Saint Antoine," of Flaubert, of which I have completed and corrected the MS. translation. You who know the original will probably agree with me that it would be little less than a literary crime to emasculate such a masterpiece in the translation. I have translated almost every word of the Heresiarch dispute, and the soliloquy of the G.o.d Crepitus, etc.

Consequently I have very little hopes of obtaining a publisher in New York or Boston. Do you think I could obtain one in San Francisco? I would be willing to advance something toward the cost of publis.h.i.+ng,--if necessary.

Trust you will pardon my intrusion. I think the mutual interest we both feel in one branch of foreign literature is a fair excuse for my letter.

With thanks for previous many kindnesses,

I remain, truly yours, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO JEROME A. HART

NEW ORLEANS, January, 1883.

DEAR SIR,--Writing to San Francisco seems, after a sort, like writing to j.a.pan or Malabar, so great is the lapse of time consumed in the transit of mail-matter, especially when one is anxious. I was quite so, fearing you might have considered my letter intrusive; but your exceedingly pleasant reply has dispelled all apprehension.

I am not surprised at the information; for the difficulty of finding publishers in the United States is something colossal, and my hopes burned with a very dim flame. I do not know about Worthington,--as he is absent in Europe, perhaps he will undertake the publication; but I fear, inasmuch as he is a Methodist of the antique type, that he will not. Now the holy _Observer_ declared that the "Cleopatra" was a collection of "stories of unbridled l.u.s.t without the apology of natural pa.s.sion;" that "the translation reeked with the miasma of the brothel," etc., etc.,--and Worthington was much exercised thereat. Otherwise I should have suggested the publication in English of "Mademoiselle de Maupin."

I regret that I cannot tell you anything about the fate of "Cleopatra's Nights," but the publisher preserves a peculiar and sinister silence in regard to it. Perhaps he is sitting upon the stool of orthodox repentance. Perhaps he is preparing to be generous. But this I much doubt; and as the translations were published partly at my own expense, I am anxious only regarding the fate of my original capital.

Yes, I read the _Critic_--and considered that the observation on Gautier stultified the paper. If the translator had been dissected by the same hand, I should not have felt very unhappy. But I received some very nice private letters from Eastern readers, which encouraged me very much, and among them several requesting for other translations from Gautier.

"Salammbo" is the greatest, by far, of Flaubert's creations, because harmonious in all its plan and purpose, and because it introduces the reader into an unfamiliar field of history, cultivated with astonis.h.i.+ng skill and verisimilitude. It was twice written, like "La Tentation." I translated the prayer to the Moon for the preface to "La Tentation." I sincerely trust you will translate it. As for time, it is astonis.h.i.+ng what system will accomplish. If a man cannot spare an hour a day, he can certainly spare a half-hour. I translated "La Tentation" by this method,--never allowing a day to pa.s.s without an attempt to translate a page or two. The work is audacious in parts; but I think nothing ought to be suppressed. That serpent-scene, the crucified lions, the breaking of the chair of gold, the hideous battles about Carthage,--these pages contain pictures that ought not to remain entombed in a foreign museum.

I pray you may translate "Salammbo,"--a most difficult task, I fancy,--but one that you would certainly succeed admirably with. In my preface I spoke of "Salammbo" as the most wonderful of Flaubert's productions.

"Herodias" is another story which ought to be translated. But I would write too long a letter if I dilate upon the French masterpieces.

I will only say that, in regard to recent publications, I have noticed some extraordinary novels which have not earned the attention they deserve. "Le Roman d'un Spahi" seems to me a miracle of art,--and "Le Mariage de Loti" contains pa.s.sages of wonderful and weird beauty. These, with "Aziyade," are the productions of a French naval officer who signs himself Loti. Think I shall try to translate the first-named next year.

Verily the path of the translator is hard. The Petersons and Estes & Lauriat are deluging the country with bogus translations or translations so unfaithful to the original that they must be characterized as fraudulent. And the great American public like the stuff. One who translates for the love of the original will probably have no reward save the satisfaction of creating something beautiful, and perhaps of saving a masterpiece from desecration by less reverent bards. But this is worth working for.

With grateful thanks, and sincere hopes that you will not be deterred from translating "Salammbo" before some incompetent hand attempts it, I remain,

Sincerely, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO REV. WAYLAND D. BALL

NEW ORLEANS, 1882.

DEAR SIR,--I am very grateful for the warm and kindly sympathy your letter evidences; and as I have already received about a half-dozen communications of similar tenor from unknown friends, I am beginning to feel considerably encouraged. The "lovers of the antique loveliness" are proving to me the future possibilities of a long cherished dream,--the English realization of a Latin style, modelled upon foreign masters, and rendered even more forcible by that element of _strength_ which is the characteristic of Northern tongues. This no man can hope to accomplish; but even a translator may carry his stone to the master-masons of a new architecture of language.

You ask me about translations. I am sorry that I am not able to answer you hopefully. I have a curious work by Flaubert in the hands of R.

Worthington (under consideration); and I have various MSS. filed away in the Cemetery of the Rejected. I tried for six years to obtain a publisher for the little collection you so much like, and was obliged at last to have them published partly at my own expense--a difficult matter for one who is obliged to work upon a salary. As for "Mademoiselle de Maupin," much as I should desire the honour of translating it, I would dread to work in vain, or at best to work for the profit of some publisher who would have the translator at his mercy. If I could find a publisher willing to publish the work precisely as I would render it, I would be glad to surrender all profits to him; but I fancy that any American publisher would wish to emasculate the ma.n.u.script.

I am told that an English translation was in existence in London some years ago, but I could not learn the publisher's name. Chatto & Windus, the printers of the admirable English version of the "Contes Drolatiques," might be able to inform you further. But I am afraid that the English version was scarcely worthy of the original, owing to the profound silence of the press in regard to the matter. An American translation was being offered to New York publishers a few years ago. It was not accepted.

Although my own work is far from being perfect, I think I am capable of judging other translations of Gautier. The American translations are very poor ("Spirite," "Captain Fraca.s.se," "Romance of the Mummy"), in fact they are hardly deserving the name. The English translations of Gautier's works of travel are generally good. Henry Holt has reprinted some of them, I think.

But out of perhaps sixty volumes, Gautier's works include very few romances or stories. I have never seen a translation of "Fortunio" or "Militona,"--perhaps because the s.e.xual idea--the Eternal Feminine--prevails too much therein. "Avatar" has been translated in the New York _Evening Post_, I cannot say how well; but I have the ma.n.u.script translation of it myself, which I could never get a publisher to accept. Then there are the "Contes Humoristiques" (1 vol.) and about a dozen short tales not translated. Besides these, and the four translated already ("Fraca.s.se," "Spirite," "The Mummy," and possibly "Mademoiselle de Maupin") Gautier's works consist chiefly of critiques, sketches of travel, dramas, comedies--including the charmingly wicked piece, "A Devil's Tear,"--and three volumes of poems.

My purpose now is to translate a series of works by the most striking French authors, each embodying a style of a school. I tried in the first collection to offer the best novelettes of Gautier in English, relying upon my own judgement so far as I could. Hereafter with leisure and health I shall attempt to do the same for about five others. I can understand your desire to see more of Gautier, and I trust you will some day; but when you have read "Mademoiselle de Maupin" and the two volumes of short stories, you have read his masterpieces of prose, and will care less for the remainder. His greatest art is of course in his magical poems; except the exotic poetry of the Hindoos, and of Persia, there is nothing in verse to equal them.

I must have fatigued your patience, however, by this time. With many thanks for your kind letter, which I took the liberty to send to Worthington, and hoping that you will soon be able to see another curious attempt of mine in print, I remain,

Sincerely, LAFCADIO HEARN.

I forgot to say that in point of archaeologic art the "Roman de la Momie"

is Gautier's greatest work. It towers like an obelisk among the rest.

But the American translation would disappoint you very much; it is a poor concern all the way through. It would not be a bad idea to drop a line to Chatto & Windus, Pub., London, and enquire about English versions of Gautier. You know that Austin Dobson translated some of his poems very successfully indeed.

In haste, L. H.

TO REV. WAYLAND D. BALL

NEW ORLEANS, November, 1882.

DEAR SIR,--I translate hurriedly for you a few extracts from "Mademoiselle de Maupin," some of which have been used or translated by Mallock, who has said many very clever things, but whose final conclusions appear to me to smack of Jesuitic casuistry.

Gautier was not the founder of a philosophic school, but the founder of a system of artistic thought and expression. His "Mademoiselle de Maupin" is an idyl, nothing more, an idyl in which all the vague longings of youth in the blossoming of p.u.b.erty, the reveries of amorous youth, the wild dreams of two pa.s.sionate minds, male and female, both highly cultivated, are depicted with a daring excused only by their beauty. I think Mallock wrong in his taking Gautier for a type of Antichrist. There are few who have beheld the witchery of an antique statue, the supple interlacing of nude limbs in frieze or cameo, who have not for the moment regretted the antique. Freethinkers as were Gautier, Hugo, Baudelaire, De Musset, De Nerval, none of them were insensible to the mighty religious art of mediaevalism which created those fantastic and enormous fabrics in which the visitor feels like an ant crawling in the skeleton of a mastodon. With the growth of aestheticism there is a tendency to return to antique ideas of beauty, and the last few years has given evidence of a resurrection of Greek influence in several departments of art. But when the first revolution against prudery and prejudice had to be made in France, violent and extreme opinions were necessary,--the Gautiers and De Mussets were the Red Republicans of the Romantic Renaissance. Gautier's poems utter the same plaints as his prose; mourning for the death of Pan, crying that the modern world is draped with funeral hangings of black, against which the white skeleton appears in relief. But the dreams of an artist may influence art and literature only; they cannot affect the crystallization of social systems or the philosophy of the eye.

They were all pantheists, these characters of Romanticism, some vaguely like old Greek dreamers, others deeply and studiously, like De Nerval, a lover of German mysticism: nature, whom they loved, must have whispered to them in wind-rustling and wave-lapping some word of the mighty truths she had long before taught to Brahmins and to Bodhisatvas under a more luxuriant sky. They saw the evil beneath their feet as a vast "paste"

for which the great Statuary eternally moulded new forms in his infinite crucible, and into which old forms were remelted to reappear in varied shapes;--the lips of loveliness might blossom again in pouting roses, the light of eyes rekindle in amethyst and emerald, the white breast with its delicate network of veins be re-created in fairest marble. The wors.h.i.+p within sombre churches, and chapels, seemed to them unworthy of the spirit of Universal Love;--to adore him they deemed no temple worthy save that from whose roof of eternal azure hang the everlasting lamps of the stars; no music, save that never-ending ocean hymn, ancient as the moon, whose words no human musician may learn.

I do not know whether Mallock translated Gautier himself, or made extracts; but Gautier's madrigal pantheistic alone contains the germ of a faith sweeter and purer and n.o.bler than the author of "Is Life Worth Living?" ever dreamed of, or at least comprehended. The poem is a microcosm of artistic pantheism; it contains the whole soul of Gautier, like one of the legendary jewels in which spirits were imprisoned.

Speaking of the "Decameron," Petronius, Angelinus, and so forth, I must say that I think it the duty of every scholar to read them. It is only thus that we can really obtain a correct idea of the thought and lives of those who read them when first related or written. They are historical paintings, they are shadows of the past and echoes of dead voices. Brantome or De Chateauneuf teach one more about the life of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries than a dozen ordinary historians could do. The influence of s.e.x and s.e.xual ideas has moulded the history of nations and formed national character; yet, except Michelet, there is perhaps no historian who has read history fairly in this connection.

Without such influence there can be no real greatness; the mind remains arid and desolate. Every n.o.ble mind is made fruitful by its virility; we all have a secret museum in some corner of the brain, although our Pompeian or Etruscan curiosities are only shown to appreciative friends.

I have read your enclosed slip and am quite pleased with the creditable notice given you by way of introduction, and quite astonished that you should be so young. You have fine prospects before you, I fancy, if so successful already. Of course _Congregational_ is so vague a word that I cannot tell how lat.i.tudinarian your present ideas are (for people in general), nor how broadly you may extend your studies of philosophy.

Your correspondence with a freethinker of an extreme type would incline me to believe you were very liberally inclined, but I have often noticed that clergymen belonging even to the old cast-iron type may be cla.s.sed among warm admirers of the beautiful and the true for their own sakes.

Very sincerely yours, LAFCADIO HEARN.

P. S. Have just been looking at Mallock, and am satisfied that he made the translation himself because he translated the "virginity" by "purity." No one but a Catholic or Jesuit would do that; only Catholics, I believe, consider the consummation of love intrinsically impure, or attempt to identify purity with virginity. Gautier would never have used the word--a word in itself impure and testifying to uncleanliness of fancy. I have translated it properly by the English equivalent. I suppose you know that Mallock's aim is to prove that everybody not a Catholic is a fool.