Volume I Part 20 (1/2)

It is not necessary to seek it, but it would be unwise to refuse it In the mean time I shall call attention to you in our columns occasionally,--briefly of course I only proposed _T-D_ with the idea you ht have need of aas the _Inter-Ocean_ takes an interest in you,--even without coratulate yourself, as you are only beginning toyour paper to Page Baker to-night,--who has just returned to town Will send photo when I write again

I would scarcely advise you to quote froure to attract any attention; and I think it would be best for you only to cite generally recognized authorities Needless to say that I should feel greatly honoured and very grateful; but I think it would not be strictly to your interest to notice nized as a thinker, if such time shall ever arrive With you it is very different;--your _cloth_--as we say in England--gives every gaht to review and praise you as a public teacher

Yours very affectionately, LAFCADIO HEARN

TO W D O'CONNOR

NEW ORLEANS, February, 1883

DEAR SIR,--Mr Page M Baker,editor of the _Ti, handed me your letter relative to the article on Gustave Dore--stating at the same time that it seemed to him the handsomest compliment ever paid to my work I hasten to confirm the statement, and to thank you very sincerely for that delicate and nevertheless istral criticism; for no one could have uttered a more forcible compliment in feords As the author of a little volume of translations fro and gratifying letters from Eastern literary ave me more pleasure than all of the an artistic sympathy with me in htiest of ratefully and sincerely yours, LAFCADIO HEARN

TO W D O'CONNOR

NEW ORLEANS, March, 1883

MY DEAR MR O'CONNOR,--My delay in answering your char letter was unavoidable, as I have been a week absent froions of southern Louisiana, in co a series of Southern sketches As I aood terms with the Harpers, your delicate letter to theood than would have been the case had I been altogether unknown I don't kno to thank you, but trust that Ito do so verbally, if you ever visit New Orleans

Your books careat credit to your skill--I am myself a coe publishi+ng house, where I tried to establish an English system of punctuation with indifferent success Thus I can appreciate the work As yet I have not had ti Service has a peculiar intrinsic interest I will expect to find

You are partly right about Gautier, and, I think, partly wrong His idea of as to illustrate with a mosaic of rare and richly-coloured words But there is a wonderful tenderness, a nervous sensibility of feeling, an Oriental sensuousness of waro's rand Goth that he is, liked the horrible, the grotesqueness of tragic mediaevalism Gautier followed the Greek ideal so potently presented in Lessing's ”Laocoon,” and sought the beautiful only His poetry is, I believe, ee for yourself a little, by reading his two remarkable prose-fantasies--”Arria Marcella” and ”Clarimonde”--in my translations of him, which you will receive fro evaporates in translation of course, and as the book was my first effort, there will be found divers inaccuracies and errors therein; but enough reinative powers and descriptive skill Will also forward you paper you ask for

I regret having to write very hurriedly, as I have a great press of work upon ain, however, iven will reach me sooner than if sent to the _Tiratefully your friend, L HEARN

TO W D O'CONNOR

NEW ORLEANS, August, 1883

MY DEAR MR O'CONNOR,--I had feared that I had lost a rare literary friend Your char present revealed you to ined you as a delicate anize in you a Master And after I had read your two articles,--articles written in a fashi+on realizing lish in splendid Latin attire,--I felt quite ashaes unfa indispensable in the higher spheres of literary criticis silence, it only remains for me to say that your letter filled me with that sympathy which, in certain sad moments, expresses itself only by a silent and earnest pressure of the hand,--because any utterance would sound strangely hollow, like an echo in some vast dim emptiness

Your beautiful little book came like a valued supplement to an edition of ”Leaves of Grass” in my library I have always _secretly_ admired Whitman, and would have liked on more than one occasion to express my opinion in public print But in journalis Whitman unreservedly in the ordinary newspaper, whose proprietors always tell you to reoes into respectable fa obscene literature if you attempt controversy Journalism is not really a literary profession The journalist of to-day is obliged to hold himself ready to serve any cause,--like the _condottieri_ of feudal Italy, or the free captains of other countries If he can enrich himself sufficiently to acquire comparative independence in this really _nefarious_ profession, then, indeed, he is able freely to utter his heart's sentie his tastes, like that aesthetic and wicked Giovanni Malatesta whose life Yriarte has written

I do not think that I could ever place so lofty an estih no doubt rests in my mind as to your critical superiority I think that Genius reater attributes thancreated must be beautiful; it does not satisfy me if the h jewels I want to see the gold purified and wrought into marvellous fantastic shapes; I want to see the jewels cut into roses of facets, or turned as by Greek cunning into faultless witchery of nude loveliness And Whitold seeh Would Hohty verse,--the perfect cadence of his song that has the regularity of ocean-diapason? I think not And did not all the titans of antique literature polish their lines, chisel their words, according to severest laws of art? Whitman's is indeed a titanic voice; but it seeiant beneath the volcano,--half stifled, half uttered,--roaring betimes because articulation is iht for; it does not flash out from hastily turned leaves: it only coreatstudy But the reward is worth the pain That beauty is cos of the antique pantheis to the stars and beyond What most charms me, however, is that which is most earthy and of the earth I was amused at some of the criticisms--especially that in the _Critic_--to the effect that Mr Whitht have some taste for natural beauty, etc, _as an animal has_! Ah! that was a fine touch! Now it is just the anireat force to me--not a brutal anihts of antique poets reveal to us: the inexplicable delight of being, the intoxication of perfect health, the unutterable pleasures of breathinginto clear deep water and drifting with a swihts that drift faster Communion with Nature teaches philosophy to those who love that communion; and Nature imposes silence sometimes, that we may be forced to think:--theout there,” I heard one say: ”the silence makes you silent” Such a ht under that vastness, in the heart of that silence: but Whitht to think, or to res which are not of the wilderness but of the city He is an animal, if the _Critic_ pleases, but a huht of the city's gates He is rude, joyous, fearless, artless,--a singer who knows nothing of musical law, but whose voice is as the voice of Pan And in the violent y of his work, the rugged and ingenuous kindliness of his speech, the vast joy of his song, the discern that I perceive so of the antique sylvan deity, the faun or the satyr Not the distorted satyr of modern cheap classics: but the ancient and Godly one, ”inseparably connected with the worshi+p of Dionysus,” and sharing with that divinity the powers of healing, saving, and foretelling, not less than the orgiastic pleasures over which the androgynous God presided

I see great beauty in Whit of in er seems to me nevertheless _barbaric_ You have called his are like the ie skald, or a forest Druid: ihty the words! but the music is wild, harsh, rude, prireat work endures: I cannot think the bard is a creator, but only a precursor--only the voice of one crying in the wilderness--_Make straight the path for the Great Singer who is to coh I may differ from you in the nature of my appreciation of Whitive all possible aid and recognition to his literary priesthood Whatsoever you do to defend, to elevate, to glorify his work you do for the literature of the future, for the cause of poetical liberty, for the cause of mental freedom Your book is doubly beautiful to me, therefore: and I believe it will endure to be consulted in future times, when men shall write the ”History of the Literary Movement of 1900,” as men have already written the ”Histoire du Romantisme”

I don't think you missed veryso well The great heat uid, barren, dusty Then I have been azine work Thanks for your praise of ”The Pipes of Ha h slowly, like a turtle struggling over uneven ground Journalisht and style As for rave errors I am ashamed of, but it is not castrated My pet stories in it are ”Clario was indeed the Arthur of the Roh the best of theo's work in word-chiselling, in goldso's fancy overarches all, like the vault of the sky His prose is like the work of Angelo--the paintings in the Sistine Chapel, the figures described by E He is one of those who appear but once in five hundred years Gautier is not upon Hugo's level But while Hugo wrought like a Gothic sculptor, largely, weirdly, wondrously, Gautier could create mosaics of word-jewelry without equals The work is s as the French language, even though it figure in the Hugo architecture only as arabesque-work or stained glass or inlaid pavement

Oh yes! you will catch it for those articles! you will have the fate of every champion of an unpopular cause,--thorns at every turn, which may turn into roses

I hope to see you some day Will always have time to write Sometimes my letter may be short; but not often Believe me, sincerely,