Volume I Part 14 (2/2)

”More than a hundred lovely daughters I see produced at one tiracefully circuipsy poetry? The sparks are coitanas_ ”_fiery_ as roses;” and in the words, ”I see theure of the gypsy dance,--the Romalis, with its wild bounds and pirouettes

My letter is too long I fear it will try your patience; but I cannot say half I should wish to say You will soon hear froain; for le pere Rouquette hath returned; I must see him, and show hiion has overcast the sky with a cope of lead, and filled the sunny city with gloom From my dovecot shaped s I can see only wet roofs and dripping gable-ends The nights are now starless, and haunted by fogs Soestion of daylight,--a gloa Sometimes in the darkness I hear hideous cries of ables and fantastic dormers But murders are so common here that nobody troubles hiht up loeave fancies of palhostly reefs and tepid winds, and a Voice from the far tropics calls to me across the darkness

Adios, hermano mio, Forever yours, LAFCADIO HEARN

TO HE KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, 1879

MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--I regret very edfor several days; I am just in that peculiar condition of convalescence when one cannot tell how to regulate the strain upon his eyes

It pleased me very much to hear from you just before you entered upon your duties as a professor of the beautiful art you have devoted yourself to;--that letter infors more than its written words directly expressed,--especially that you felt I was really and deeply interested in every step you were taking, and that I would on receiving your letter experience that very thrill of indescribable anxiety and hope, tiled sensations,--which ever besets one standing on the verge of uncertainty ere taking the first plunge into a new life

I read your lecture with intense interest, and felt happy in observing that your paper did you the justice to publish the essay entire Still, I fancy that you may have interpolated its delivery with a variety of unpublished comments and verbal notes,--such as I have heard you often deliver when reading from print or MSS These I should much have wished to hear,--if they were uttered

Your lecture was in its entirety a vast e wonderfully condensed into a very sret if applied to certain phases of your whole plan, could not have been avoided in its inception; and only gave to the whole an encyclopaedic character which must have astonished many of your hearers

To present so infinite a subject in so santic task of itself; and nevertheless it was accomplished symmetrically and har broken I certainly think you need harbour no further fears as to success in the lecture-rooion as the conservator of Romanticism, as the promoter of musical development, seemed to me very novel and peculiar I cannot doubt its correctness, although I believe soard to the Roard to roion is beyond any question the ic research has given us any record of any social systeotten and nurtured by an ethical idea You know that I have no faith in any ”faiths” or doght as a mechanical process, and individual life as a particle of that eternal force of which we know so little: but the true philosophers who _hold_ these doctrines to-day (I cannot say originated them, for they are old as Buddhism) are also those who best coious idea for the ether and developed The naion has little to do with this truth; the law of progress has been everywhere the sayptian, the culture of the Greeks, the successful policy of Rome, the fantastic beauty of Arabic architecture, were the creations of various religious ideas; and passed away only when the faiths which nourished theotten So I believe with you that the ions, and varied according to the character of that religion But I have also an inclination to believe that Roious conservation The amorous Provencal ditties which excited the horror of the endered by the ious conservatism in Provence; and I fancy that the same reaction everywhere produced similar results, whether in ancient or modern history This is your idea, is it not; or is it your idea carried perhaps to the extre the birth of Ro in white beauty fro which I will venture to criticize in the lecture,--not positively, however I cannot help believing that the deity whose name you spell _Schiva_ (probably after a German writer) is the salish and French authors If I a Schiva the _Goddess_ of fire and destruction The God, yes; but althoughSiva, are bi-sexual and self-engendering, as the embodiment of any force, they are masculine

Now Siva is the third person of the Hindoo trinity,--Brahma, the Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver; Siva, the Destroyer Siva signifies the wrath of God Fire is sacred to him, as it is an emblem of the Christian Siva, the _Holy Ghost_ Siva is the Holy Ghost of the Hindoo trinity; and as sins against the Holy Ghost are unforgiven, so are sins against Siva unforgiven There is an awful legend that Brahreatness, when Siva suddenly towered between them as a pillar of fire Brah to reach the fla capital of that fiery colu able to reach its base

And the Gods trenifies only that the height and depth of the vengeance of God is immeasurable even by hiht I have no works here to which I can refer on the subject

There is to in of five tones from the head of Siva I cannot explain the idea; but it is a terrible one, and e truth All this Brahminism is half true; it conflicts not with any doctrine of science; its syht to hide fronorant truths they cannot understand; and those elephant-headed or hundred-armed Gods do but represent tremendous facts

On the subject of Romanticism, I send you a translation from an article by Baudelaire The last part of the chapter, applying wholly to romanticism in form and colour, hardly touches the subject in which you are most interested His criticism of Raphael is very severe; that of Rembrandt enthusiastic ”The South,” he says, is ”brutal and positive in its conception of beauty, like a sculptor;” and he remarks that sculpture in the North is always rather picturesque than realistic

Winckel since pointed out, however, that antique art was never realistic; it was only a dream of human beauty deified and immortalized, and the ancients were true Romanticists in their day I wonder what Baudelaire would have thought of our modern Pre-Raphaelites,--Rossetti, _et als_ Surely they are true Romanticists also; but I must not tire you with Roio-yptian worshi+p, there may have been a considerable develop from the wonderful variety of instruments,--harps, flutes, tamborines, sistrums, drums, cymbals, etc, discovered in the tombs or pictured forth upon the walls? Your re

I fearonly because I must write as I would talk to you were it possible I aard to several ; and can tell you little of interest The work of Cable is not yet in press--yellow fever killed half his fa et nothing from him in the way of music until his crazy fit is over Several persons to whom I applied for information beca I traced one source of , and discovered that the individual had been subsidized by another collector to say nothing Speaking of Pacific Island es,” 5 vols, with strange music therein I have many ditties in my head, but I cannot write theer, L HEARN

TO H E KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, 1880