Volume I Part 16 (1/2)

Remember me kindly to Mrs Krehbiel I am sure you will soon have made a cosy little hoe receipt of the reatest credit, and which interestedabout music further than a narrow theatrical experience and a natural sensibility to its simpler forramme of _The Studio_, and hope to see the first nu article I should like one of these days to talk with you about the possibility of contributing a romantic--not s and coloured Creoles of New Orleans to some New York periodical Until the summer comes, however, it will be difficult for ; the days here are much shorter than they are in your northern latitudes, the weather has been glooination cannot rise on das in this heavy and murky atmosphere This has been a hideous winter,--incessant rain, sickening weight of foul air, and a sky grey as the face of Melancholy

The city is half under water The lake and the bayous have burst their bonds, and the streets are Venetian canals Boats areover the sidewalks, and utters Several children have been bitten

I ahtful impression it produced has vanished The city of old of eternal sue flowers, has vanished like one of those phantoo by earthquakes, but reappearing at long intervals to deluded travellers What re horrible like the tombs here,--material and moral rottenness which no pen can do justice to You ends in which an amorous youth finds the beautiful witch he has eht cru Well, I feel like such a one, and alret that, unlike the victims of these diabolical illusions, I do not find e; for I enjoy exuberant vitality and still seem to myself like one buried alive or left alone in some city cursed with desolation like that described by Sinbad the sailor No literary circle here; no jovial coterie of journalists; no associates save those vampire ones of which the less said the better

And the thought--Where hed off in the daytiht

Your friend, L HEARN

TO H E KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, 1881

MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--To what could I now devote ! To study art in any one of its branches with any hope of success requires years of patient study, vast reading, and a very considerable outlay of money This I know I also know that I could not write one little story of antique life really worthy of the subject without such hard study as I aer able to undertake, and a purchase of ination is alone left open to ueness of expression which hides the absence of real knowledge and dispenses with the necessity of technical precision of detail Again, let me tell you that to produce a really artistic work, after all the years of study required for such a task, one cannot possibly obtain any appreciation of the work for years after its publication Such works as Flaubert's ”Salammbo” or Gautier's ”Roman de la Momie” were literary failures until recently They were too learned to be appreciated Yet to write on a really noble subject, how learned one must be! There is no purpose, as you justly observe, in ht which cries out within one's heart for utterance, and the pleasant fancy that a few kindred reen hascheesch,--at least should they ever assume the shape I hope for And do not talk to me of work, dear fellow, in this voluptuous cliuidly lazy that they do not even drea buildings

Is it possible you like Dr Ebers? I hope not! He has no artistic senti, no colour He is dry and dusty as a aea like so for antiquities to sell You ypt;--you hty ponderosity of the antique life;--you must comprehend the whole force of those ideas which expressed theranite andof this Turning fro the warm and perfumed bed of a beloved mistress for the slimy coldness of a sepulchre

The Venus of Milo!--the Venus who is not a Venus! Perhaps you have read Victor Rydberg's beautiful essay about that glorious figure! If not, read it; it is worth while And let me say, my dear friend, no one dare write the whole truth about Greek sculpture None would publish it Feould understand it Winckelh impressed by it, hardly realized it Syes that the spirit of the antique life rereater nuof Solomon I love it more than ever But Michelet, the passionate freethinker, the divine prose-poet, the bravest lover of the beautiful, has written a terrible chapter upon it No lesser ious hand

I doubt if you are quite just to Gautier I had hoped his fancy ht please you But Gautier did not write those lines I sent you They are found in the report of conversations held with hierat;--they are mere memories of a dead voice Probably had he ever known that these romantic opinions would one day be published to the world, he would never have uttered theends charends The fantasies created in India are superhumanly vast, wild, and terrible;--they are typhoons of the tropical iination;--they seem pictures printed by madness,--they terrify and impress, but do not charm I love better the sweet human story of Orpheus It is a dreaer than death,--the love that breaks down the diates of the world of Shadows and bursts open the marble heart of the tomb to return at the outcry of passion Yet I hold that the Greek ht of the saination have created the visions of the visionary East The Greek was a pure naturalist, a lover of ”the bloo flesh;”--the Hindoo had fathoht before the Greek was born

Zola is capable of sos His ”Le Bain” is pure Romanticism, delicate, sweet, coquettish His contribution to ”Les Soirees de Medan” is nificent His ”Faute de l'Abbe Mouret” does not lack real touches of poetry But as the copy of Nature is not true art according to the Greek law of beauty, so I believe that the school of Naturaliss to the low order of literary creation It is a sharp photograph, coloured by hand with theof down Zola's pupils, however,--those rote the ”Soirees de Medan,”--have iled Naturalis way

I was a little disappointed, although I was also hted, with parts of Cable's ”Grandissimes” He did not follow out his first plan,--as he toldto do,--viz, to scatter about fifty Creole songs through the work, with the music in the shape of notes at the end There are only a few ditties published; and as the Creole music deals in fractions of tones, Mr Cable failed to write it properly He is not enough of a musician, I fancy, for that

By the time you have read this I think you will also have read my articles on Gottschalk and translations I sent for his life to Havana; and received it with a quaint Spanish letter froent for him I found him one here His West Indian volume is one of the most extraordinary books I have ever seen

It is the wildest of possible romances

L H

TO H E KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, 1881

MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--How could you ever think you had offended o blind and ”lift the cover of my brains,” as the Spaniards say, and also ill-treated--that I had no spirit left to write

You will be glad to know that I have now got so fat that they call reat pleasure I think your plan--vague as it appears to be--will crystallize into a very happy reality You have the sacred fire,--_le vrai feu sacre_,--and with health and strength must succeed What you want, and e all want, who possess devotion to any noble idea, who hide any artistic idol in a niche of the heart, is that independence which gives us at least the time to worshi+p the holiness of beauty,--be it in harth, youth,--not in years only but in the vital resources of your being,--the true _parfuhts and hopes and abilities to create; and you have other advantages I will not ” I should be surprised indeed to hear in a few years from now that you had not been able to ear and detestably co, called A reht alone deliverable next year to open a little French bookstore in one of the tense quaint old streets I had hoped to leave New Orleans; but with ht for life over again in son country

You say you hope to see some day a product of my pen more durable than a newspaper article But I very much doubt if you ever will My visual misfortune has reduced my hours of work to one third I only work from 10 AM to 2 PM You will see, therefore, that my work must be rapid

At 2 PM my eyes are usually worn out But as you seem to have been interested in so you several now They are too flimsy, however, to be ever collected for publication, unless in the course of a few years I could write a hundred or so, and select one out of three afterward

Your observations about Amphion and Orpheus prompted me to send you an old issue of the _Item_, in which you will find some very extraordinary observations on the subject of Greekwork in usted, perhaps, to know that with all his erudition upon ends and musical history, Gautier had no ear foryou not to tell that to anybody