Volume I Part 9 (1/2)

Perhaps because of the narrowness of his social life his mental life deepened and expanded, or possibly his indifference to the outer worlditself in his”The Heart of Things”) ritten in Kobe, as was also ”Gleanings in Buddha-Fields,” and they quite re indifference to the externals of life, the deepening of his thought toward the intrinsic and the fundarew to absorb hiht for the essential principle of beauty

In one of the letters written about this ti a sort of resents in which I used to take pleasure I can't look at a number of the _Petit Journal pour Rire_ or the _Charivari_ without vexation, aler I can't find pleasure in a French novel written for the obvious purpose of appealing to instincts that interfere with perception of higher things than instincts I should not go to the Paris Opera if it were next door

I should not like to visit thedress You see how absurd I have become--and this without any idea of principle about thewhich does not help me to ain: ”I ht say that I have become indifferent to personal pleasure of any sortwhat is reatest pleasure is to work for others--for those who take it as a matter of course that I should do so, and would be as much amazed to find me selfish about it as if an earthquake had shaken the house down It now sees conceivable I can't waste it by going out to hear people talk nonsense There are rich natures that can afford the waste, but I can't, because the best part ofdirection and I shall have to work like thunder till I die to ravity and force of his thought was shown not only in his books but in his correspondence Most of the letters written at this period were addressed to Professor Cha with matters of heredity and the evolution of the individual under ancestral racial influences The following extract is typical of the tone of the whole:--

”Here comes in the consideration of a very terrible possibility Suppose we use integers instead of quintillions or centillions, and say that an individual represents by inheritance a total of 10-5 of impulses favourable to social life, 5 of the reverse (Such a balance would really occur in many cases) The child inherits, under favourable conditions, the father's balance plus thefavourable We have then a total which becoives preponderance to an accumulation of ancestral impulse incalculable for evil It would be like a pair of scales, each holding a e as Fuji If the balance were absolutely perfect the weight of _one_ hair would be enough to move a mass of nified Let the individual descend below a certain level and countless dead suddenly seize and destroy hiins to ainst which he had set his enchantingly realistic pictures of beautiful things and people, but in the place of the sensuous charm, the honeyed felicities of phrase, he offered such essays as the ”japanese Civilization” in ”Kokoro,” with its astounding picture of New York City, and its subliht into the iinings as ”Dust” in the ”Gleanings fronancies of ”The Nun of the Teer”

I think it was at Kobe he reached his fullest intellectual stature

None of the work that followed in the next eight years surpassed the results he there achieved, and much was of lesser value, despite its beauty He had attained to complete mastery of his mediuht before clothing it in words--a far more difficult andin words was no s examples of how he laboured for the perfection of his vehicle These are not the first struggles of a young and clue of fifty-three of one of the greatest lish

It was done, too, by a man who earned with his pen in a year less than the week's income of one of the facile authors of the ”six best sellers”

As has been said of De Quincey, whorasp a little of his le for perfection of utterance; I can share a part of his aesthetic torment over cacophony, redundance, obscurity, and all the thousand minute delicacies and subtleties of resonance and dissonance, accent and caesura, that only a De Quincey's ear appreciates and seeks to achieve or evade How s to-day? How'a' sound, or spends a sleepless night in his endeavour to find another with the short 'a,' that shall at once answer his purpose and crown his sentence with harreat artist's h verb against adjective, vowel against consonant, that they may a little understand the unique splendour of this prose? And hen an artist is the matter, attempt to measure his hopes as well as his attainh faulty atte those rite, have fatho, the continence and self-denial of our great artists in words?”

[Illustration: _Specimen of Hearn's MS, first draft_]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV

THE LAST STAGE

Withexa indifference to the external details of life, and growing concentration of esoteric thought, it was plain that literature and journalism would not suffice to sustain a fa a japanese subject had accepted the japanese duty ofthe elder members of the family into which he had been adopted, and his household included the ancestors of his son He referred to the fact occasionally with amused impatience, but seeainst the filial duties which to the Western point of view s that could not be ignored, and with reluctance he yielded to the necessity of earning a larger inco the Governain came to his aid and secured for hilish in the Ie co he had as yet received, and where he was per

Of his lectures an exaiven in the appendix, under the title ”Naked Poetry” This, it is interesting toby Teizaburo Inomata, who possesses five manuscript volumes of these records, for Hearn transcribed none of his lectures, delivering the feat by a member of one of his classes all written record of his teaching would have been lost Mr Inoe 64 of the present voluakko of Matsue Another of these Matsue pupils was Masanobu Otani, whoh the university by e him to collect data formanuscript volume of information which Mr

Otani sentof these voluet to add that I had received from him 12 yen (6 dollars) for my work each month It was too kind of him that a poor monthly work of mine was paid with the money above mentioned To speak frankly, however, it was not very easy for h the three years of my university course I had to pay 2 yen and a half as the ing and eating every month; to buy sos inevitable So I was forced to make some more money beside his favour Each azines; I reprinted the four books of Nesfield's grammar; I published some pamphlets Thus I could equal the expense of each month, but I need hardly say that it was by his extraordinary favour that I could finish et his extreme kindness forever and ever”

A revelation this, confirhtful price paid in life and energy by japan in the endeavour to assi in the brief space of half a century

From these notes by Mr Otani, Mrs Hearn, and Mr Inomata it is possible to reconstruct his life in Tokyo with that minuteness deraphy:--

”When he came to the university he immediately entered the lecture room, and at the recreation hour he was always seen in a lonely part of the college garden, s to and fro No one dared disturb his le with the other professors

”Very regular and very diligent in his teaching, he was never absent unless ill His hours of teaching being twelve in the week

”He never used an umbrella

”He liked to bathe in tepid water

”He feared cold; his study having a large stove and double doors; he never, however, used gloves in the coldest weather”

And so on, to the _nth_ power of fatigue Personally nothing would have been so obnoxious to theup of unimportant detail and banal ana about his private life He was entirely free of that egotis the literary artist, whichcocks, the black beetles, and the marital infelicities of the Carlylessolemnly and meticulously recorded for the benefit of an awestruck world