Concerning Lafcadio Hearn Part 10

Nous t'emporterons par les plaines Nous te bercerons a la fois Dans le murmure des fontaines Et la bruiss.e.m.e.nt des bois.

Viens. La nature universelle Cherche peut-etre en ce tombeau Pour de soleil une etincelle!

Pour la mer une goutte d'eau!

Et dans ma tombe imperissable Je sens venir avec affroi Les siecles lourds comme du sable Qui s'amoncelle autour de moi.

Ah! sois maudite, race impie, Qui le l'etre arretant l'essor Gardes ta laideur a.s.soupie Dans la vanite de la mort.

In one of Hearn's letters to the Cincinnati _Commercial_, written soon after his arrival in New Orleans, he writes:

Here is a specimen closely akin to the Creole of the Antilles. It is said to be an old negro love-song, and I think there is a peculiar weird beauty in several of its stanzas. I feel much inclined to doubt whether it was composed by a negro, but the question of its authors.h.i.+p cannot affect its value as a curiosity, and, in any case, its spirit is thoroughly African. Unfortunately, without accented letters it is impossible to convey any idea of the melody, the liquid softness, the languor, of some of the couplets. My translation is a little free in parts.

I

Dipi me vouer toue, Adele, Ape danse calinda, Mo reste pour toue fidele, Liberte a moin caba.

Mo pas soussi d'autt negresses, Mo pas gagnin coeur pour yo; Yo gagnin beaucoup finesses; Yo semble serpent Congo.

II

Mo aime toue trop, ma belle, Mo pas capab resiste; Coeur a moin tout comme sauterelle, Li fait ne qu'appe saute.

Mo jamin contre gnoun femme Qui gagnin belle taille comme toue; Jie a ton jete la flamme; Corps a toue enchene moue.

III

To tant comme serpent sonnette Qui connin charme zozo, Qui gagnin bouche a li prette Pour servi comme gnoun tombo.

Mo jamin voue gnoun negresse Qui connin marche comme toue, Qui gagnin gnoun si belle gesse; Corps a toue ce gnoun poupe.

IV

Quand mo pas vouer toue, Adele, Mo sentt m'ane mourri, Mo vini com' gnoun chandelle Qui ape alle fini: Mo pas vouer rien sur la terre Qui capab moin fait plaisi; Mo capab dans la riviere Jete moin pour pas souffri.

V

Dis moin si to gagnin n'homme; Mo va fals ouanga pour li; Mo fais li tourne fantome, Si to vle moin pour mari.

Mo pas le in jour toue boudeuse; L'autt femme, pour moin ce fatras; Mo va rende toue bien heureuse; Mo va baill' toue bell' madras.

TRANSLATION

I

Since first I beheld you, Adele, While dancing the _calinda_, I have remained faithful to the thought of you: My freedom has departed from me.

I care no longer for all other negresses; I have no heart left for them: You have such grace and cunning: You are like the Congo serpent.

II

I love you too much, my beautiful one: I am not able to help it.

My heart has become just like a gra.s.shopper, It does nothing but leap.

I have never met any woman Who has so beautiful a form as yours.

Your eyes flash flame; Your body has enchained me captive.

III

Ah, you are so like the serpent-of-the-rattles Who knows how to charm the little bird, And who has a mouth ever ready for it To serve it for a tomb!

I have never known any negress Who could walk with such grace as you can, Or who could make such beautiful gestures: Your body is a beautiful doll.

IV

When I cannot see you, Adele, I feel myself ready to die; My life becomes like a candle Which has almost burned itself out.

I cannot, then, find anything in the world, Which is able to give me pleasure;-- I could well go down to the river And throw myself in it that I might cease to suffer.

V

Tell me if you have a man; And I will make an _ouanga_ charm for him; I will make him turn into a phantom, If you will only take me for your husband.

I will not go to see you when you are cross; Other women are mere trash to me; I will make you very happy, And I will give you a beautiful Madras handkerchief.

I think there is some true poetry in these allusions to the snake. Is not the serpent a symbol of grace? Is not the so-called "line of beauty"

serpentine? And is there not something of the serpent in the beauty of all graceful women?--something of undulating shapeliness, something of silent fascination?--something of Lilith and Lamia? The French have a beautiful verb expressive of this idea, _serpenter_, "to serpent"--to curve in changing undulations like a lithe snake. The French artist speaks of the outlines of a beautiful human body as "serpenting,"

curving and winding like a serpent. Do you not like the word? I think it is so expressive of flowing lines of elegance--so full of that mystery of grace which puzzled Solomon; "the way of a serpent upon a rock."

The allusion to Voudooism in the last stanza especially interested me, and I questioned the gentleman who furnished me with the song as to the significance of the words: "I will make him turn into a phantom." I had fancied that the term _fantome_ might be interpreted by "ghost," and that the whole line simply const.i.tuted a threat to make some one "give up the ghost."

"It is not exactly that," replied my friend; "it is an allusion, I believe, to the withering and wasting power of Voudoo poisons. There are such poisons actually in use among the negro obi-men--poisons which defy a.n.a.lysis, and, mysterious as the poisons of the Borgias, slowly consume the victims like a taper. He wastes away as though being dried up; he becomes almost mummified; he wanes like a shadow; he turns into a phantom in the same sense that a phantom is an unreal mockery of something real."

Thus I found an intelligent Louisianan zealous to confirm an opinion to which I was permitted to give expression in the _Commercial_ nearly three years ago--that a knowledge of secret septic poisons (probably of an animal character), which leave no trace discoverable by the most skilful chemists, is actually possessed by certain beings who are reverenced as sorcerers by the negroes of the West Indies and the Southern States, but more especially of the West Indies, where much of African fetichism has been transplanted.

OZIAS MIDWINTER.

CHAPTER IX.--THE POET OF MYOPIA

THE dependence not only of the literary character and workmans.h.i.+p of a writer, but even his innermost psyche, upon vision, normal or abnormal, is a truth which has been dimly and falteringly felt by several writers.

Concerning "Madame Bovary," and his friend Flaubert, Maxime du Camp reflects some glintings of the truth. But these and others, lacking the requisite expert definiteness of knowledge, have failed to catch the satisfying and clear point of view. To ill.u.s.trate I may quote the paragraph of du Camp:

"The literary procedure of Flaubert threw everybody off the track and even some of the experts. But it was a very simple matter; it was by the acc.u.mulation and the superposition of details that he arrived at power.

It is the physiologic method, the method of the myopes who look at things one after the other, very exactly, and then describe them successively. The literature of imagination may be divided into two distinct schools, that of the myopes and that of the hyperopes. The myopes see minutely, study every line, finding each detail of importance because everything appears to them in isolation; about them is a sort of cloud in which is detached the object in exaggerated proportions. They have, as it were, a microscope in their eye which enlarges everything.

The description of Venice from the Campanile of St. Mark, that of Dest.i.tution in 'Captain Fraca.s.se,' by Gautier are the capital results of myopic vision. The hyperopes, on the other hand, look at the _ensemble_, in which the details are lost, and form a kind of general harmony. The detail loses all significance, except perhaps they seek to bring it into relief as a work of art.... Besides, the myopes seek to portray sensations, while the hyperopes especially aim at a.n.a.lysis of the sentiments. If a hyperopic writer suddenly becomes myopic, his manner of thinking, and consequently of writing, at once is modified. What I call the school of the myopes, Gautier names the school of the rabids. He said to Merimee: 'Your characters have no muscles,' and Merimee answered, 'Yours have no draperies.'"

But there is one consequence, common both to Flaubert and to Hearn, a most strange unity of result flowing from a seemingly opposed but really identical cause in the two men. I have elsewhere set forth the reasons for my belief that the secret of Flaubert's life, character, and literary art consisted in an inability to think and write at the same time. He was one of the most healthy and brilliant of men when he did not read or write, but his mind refused to act creatively whenever he wrote or read. From this resulted his epilepsy. Fathered by the fear of this disease, mothered by opium, and reared by unhygiene and eye-strain, came the miserable "St. Anthony" of the second remaking. In the failure of this pitiful work there was naught left except bottomless pessimism, the "cadenced phrase," and all the rest, called "Madame Bovary" and "art for art's sake."

There never was a greater sufferer from eye-strain than Flaubert, whose eyes were strikingly beautiful, and seemingly of extraordinary perfection as optical instruments. From this fact flowed the entire tragedy of the man's life and of his life-work. His friend du Camp says that had it not been for his disease he would have been, not a writer of great talent, but a man of genius. Hearn had the most defective eyesight, he was indeed nearly blind; but physically he suffered little from this cause,--and yet his choice of subjects and methods of literary workmans.h.i.+p, and every line he wrote, were dictated and ruled by his defect of vision. Opium, with the impossibility of writing and creating at the same time, dominated Flaubert's work and working, and the similar result was begot by Hearn's enormous monocular myopia.

From Martinique, before I had met him, Hearn wrote me: