LAFCADIO HEARN.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 846, 18 June 1910, Page 9

LAFCADIO HEARN.

Readers interested in " the work and personality of Lnfcadio Hearn ought not to overlook the article of Yoni Noguchi in this month's "Atlantic Monthly." Tho writer does not seem to have been himself ono of Hearn's students, but he is evidently thoroughly well versed in his. works, and his style, although at times a little awkward, at others attains a quaint and tender grace the secret of which he may have learned from the pages of the'interpreter of Japan. For those who are acquainted with Missßisland's volumes it will be no surprise that Hearn was a favourite with his students and that they were indignant when he was invited to resign, but a pleasant picture is given of tho awe in which tho young men held him. Tho writer describes Hearn's slightly stooping form, his soft, broad-brimmed hat, "like that of tho Koreans," and tells us how it was his custom, avoiding the professors' room, .to pace slowly and contemplatively along the lake of. tho university. garden or sit upon a stone upon the shore smoking his Japanese pipe, buried in meditation. "The students did . not daro to come nearer to him for fear lest they might disturb liis solitude, but admired him from the distance, as if he were some old china vaso which would be broken even by a single touch." This was at Tokio, and at Tokio Hearn was in uncongenial surroundings. He writes of "this detestable Tokio"; "'to think of art or time or eternity in tho dead waste and muddle of this mess is difficult" ; " tho Holy Ghost of tho poets is not in Tokio"; "ill this horrible Tokio 1 feel like a cicada—l am caged and cannot sing." Nevertheless, Mr. Nognehi is of opinion that tho removal from Izumo <Kumamoto to Tokio was the making of Hearn as a writci' 011 Japan. In the country .lie had come- face to .face with Old Japan, "that old faith and beauty which grew marvellously from the ground like the blossoming cherry-tree through the spring mist/' and it threw so powerful a spell over his supersensitive nature that he became doubtful of his fitness to see Japan with the Japanese miud. But when, coming to Tflkio, he witnessed the encroachment oi the AVcst and the welcome given to 'Western ideas and Western things, 110 felt-himself more Japanese than tho Japanese themselves. Ho acquired selfconfidence, and his: later works accordingly are the wprks by which he shall stand or fall. Their effect .upon tho Japanese mind has been great and salutary. "We Japanese have been regenerated .'by ■ his sudden magic and baptised from under his transcendental rapture; 'in fact, ilie old romances which wo had forgotten ages ago were brought again to quiver in the air, and the ancient beauty which we buried under the dust rose again with a strange and new splendour. He made us shake the robe of bias which wo wore without knowing it, and gave us a sharp sense ol' revival." licarn's works, Jlr. Noguchi thinks, aro to last while Japan lasts.