Volume II Part 30 (2/2)

Please this month collect for me, if you can, some poems on the _Sound of the Sea and the Sound of the Wind_ If there are not ht add poems on the Sea and the Wind in any other connection What I want to get is the _feeling_ that the sound and the

With best wishes ever, faithfully yours,

Y KOIZUMI

[Illustration: WRITING-ROOM IN MR HEARN'S TOKYO HOUSE

_His three sons on the verandah_]

TO MASAnobU OTANI

TOKYO, June, 1898

MY DEAR OTANI,--I ainary,--because this gives her idea of your sense of art

True literary art consists very largely in skilful coinary succession Literature artistic never can be raw truth, anyHere is a little sentence froreatest of modern French writers:--

”_L'art n'a pas la verite pour objet_ Il faut demander la verite aux Sciences, parce qu'elle est leur objet;--il ne faut pas la demander a la litterature, _qui n'a et ne peut avoir d'objet_ que le beau” (Anatole France)

Of course this must not be taken _too_ literally; but it is substantially the most important of truths for a writer to keep in est this addition: ”Re can be beautiful which does not contain truth, and that ination beautiful lish is poor still; but your coaveabout the grouping of facts in the dramatic sense, and how to appeal by natural and simple incidents to the reader's emotion The basis of art is there; the rest can only come with years of practice,--I h polish I would suggest that riting in your own language, you aim hereafter somewhat in the direction of compression You are now soained in strength by understanding how much of detail can be sacrificed

Yours faithfully, Y KOIZUMI

TO MITChell McDONALD

TOKYO, January, 1898

DEAR McDONALD,--I believe those three days, of e of forty-seven years I can venture to say little more about them _per se_ Such experience will not do for me except at vast intervals It sends ood an opinion of e of that morbid condition,--that utter want of self-confidence On the whole, I feel ”toned-up”--full of new energy; that will not be displeasing to you I not only feel that I ought to do so to do it,--with the permission of the Gods

How nice of you to have invited Amenomori to our tiffin,--and the trip to Omori! I look forward in the future to a Kamakura day, under like circumstances, when time and tide permit I believe A can surprise us at Ka He does not give his knowledge toyou Knapp's book, as I promised, and that volume of mine which you have not read Excuse the shabbiness of the volumes I think Dr Hall knows much about the curious dialect which I have used,--the Creole Please say to hiht to be said

I won't write any more now--and I settle down forthwith to ith fresh virateful remembrance,

Affectionately yours, LAFCADIO HEARN

TO MITChell McDONALD

TOKYO, January, 1898

DEAR McDONALD,--I have both of your kindest letters It gave me no small pleasure to find that you liked ”You that the story is substantially true You can see the ruins of the old house in the Quartier du Fort if you ever visit Saint-Pierre, and perhaps irl really died under the heroic conditions described--refusing the help of the blacks, and the ladder Of course I may have idealized _her_, but not her act The incident of the serpent occurred also; but the heroine was a different person,--a plantation girl, celebrated by the historian Rufz de Lavison I wrote the story under wretched circumstances in Martinique, near the scenes described, and under the cross with the black Christ As for the ”Sylvestre Bonnard” I believe I told you that that was translated in about ten days and published in teeks fro--at the wish of the Harpers Price 115, if I rehtly,--and no commission on sales,--but the work suffers in consequence of the haste

How to answer your kind suggestion about pulling me ”out of my shell,”