Part 10 (1/2)

Hearn has been held up by the sentimentalists as a s.h.i.+ning example of humanity's cruelty to great artists. He is instead a s.h.i.+ning example of the minor artist's cruelty to humanity. He was not rejected of men. His was not ”divine discontent,” his was the pernicious ”desire for new things.” Therefore he became merely the maker of fair and futile decorations, and he who might have been a poet, a creator, became a clever wordsmith.

The essays in this little book of Hearn's earliest work show a strange resemblance to the prose of Francis Thompson. What a contrast the lives of the two men present! Both were vagabonds, both were physically handicapped. But Francis Thompson was imaginative enough to be himself, so he wrote ”The Hound of Heaven.” And Lafcadio Hearn was so lacking in imagination as to want to be somebody else--so he wrote ”Gleanings in Buddha Fields.”

It is not for a mere journalist to point out the moral significance of the tragedy of Lafcadio Hearn. But I venture to suggest that the young American and English poets who are kissing the silken hem of Mr.

Rabindranath Tagore's garment might profitably read Lafcadio Hearn's later correspondence. Fame and happiness are not always the reward of him who gives up the Occident for the Orient. Orientalism has its own truths, its own splendors. But the writers whose words we cherish, whose names are graven on our hearts, the makers of our literature, did anyone of these sell his birthright for a mess of--rice?

SAPPHO REDIVIVA

Out of the dust of Egypt comes the voice of Sappho, as clear and sweet as when she sang in Lesbos by the sea, 600 years before the birth of Christ. The picks and spades of Arab workmen, directed by Bernard P.

Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt of the Egypt Exploration Fund, have given the world a hitherto unknown poem by the greatest woman poet of all time.

Of course it is not a complete and legible ma.n.u.script, this buried treasure unearthed at sunburnt Oxyrhyncus. It is a little pile of fragments of papyrus, fifty-six in all. And on one of them is the tantalizing inscription, ”The First Book of the Lyrics of Sappho, 1,332 lines.”

To piece these fragments together has been a task more delicate and arduous than to dig them out of the earth. Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt succeeded in combining some twenty shreds of papyrus, and thus in showing the nature of the original ma.n.u.script. And the chief product of their labor and skill was a poem of six stanzas in the form to which Sappho's name is given, a poem, however, from which two entire lines and many words were missing.

Then it was that J. M. Edmonds, an eminent h.e.l.lenist of Cambridge University, gave his attention to the matter. He studied the possible relations.h.i.+p of the words, parsing and a.n.a.lyzing as diligently as any youth whom only the implacable Homer separates from a strip of parchment marked with the university's seal and his own name parodied in Latin.

”Anactoria,” he saw, was vocative--and that was greatly significant. He added accents, syllables, words, and finally he supplied--it was pure guesswork, of course--two entire lines. And the result is undoubtedly a close approximation of the original lyric, more nearly complete, indeed, than most of the poems which have made critics call Sappho ”the Tenth Muse.”

For Sappho is known only by two brief odes and a few lyric fragments--”two small brilliants and a handful of star dust,” they have been called. She wrote, it is believed, at least nine books of odes, together with epithalamia, epigrams, elegies, and monodies.

To account for the disappearance of all this poetry several theories have been advanced. One, which is largely accepted, is that Sappho's poems were burned at Byzantium in the year A. D. 380 by command of Gregory n.a.z.ianzen, who desired that his own poems might be studied in their stead, for the improvement of the morals of his people.

J. M. Edmonds has contributed to an issue of _The Cla.s.sical Review_ his amended version of the poem. He gives also the following prose translation:

The fairest thing in all the world some say is a host of hors.e.m.e.n, and some a host of foot, and some, again, a navy of s.h.i.+ps; but to me, 'tis my heart's beloved, and 'tis easy to make this understood by any.

When Helen surveyed much mortal beauty, she chose for the best the destroyer of all the honor of Troy, and thought not so much either of child or parent dear, but was led astray by love to bestow her heart afar; for woman is ever easy to be bent when she thinks lightly of what is near and dear.

Even so you to-day, my Anactoria, remember not, it seems, when she is with you one of whom I would rather have the sweet sound of her footfall and the sight of the brightness of her beaming face than all the chariots and armored footmen of Lydia.

Know that in this world man cannot have the best; yet to pray for a share in what was once shared is better than to forget it.

I have roughly rendered the poem into English verse as follows:

Unto some a troop of triumphant hors.e.m.e.n, Or a radiant fleet, or a marching legion, Is the fairest sight--but to me the fairest Is my beloved.

Every lover must understand my wisdom, For when Helen looked on the whole world's beauty What she chose as best was a man, her loved one, Who shamed Troy's honor.

Then her little child was to her as nothing.

Not her mother's tears nor her father's pleading Moved her. At Love's word, meekly she surrendered Unto this stranger.

So does woman yield, valuing but little Things, however fair, that she looks at daily.

So you now, Anactoria, forget her, Her, who is with you,

Her, to see whose face, fairer than the sunlight, Her, to hear whose step ringing on the threshold, I'd forego the sight of the Lydian army, Bowmen and chariots.

Never in this world is the best our portion, Yet there is a vague pleasure in remembrance, And to long for joy that has pa.s.sed is better Than to forget it.