Talks To Writers

by Lafcadio Hearn, John Erskine (Introduction)

CONTENTS Introduction On the Relation of Life and Character to Literature On Composition Studies of Extraordinary Prose The Norse Writers Sir Thomas Browne Björnson Baudelaire The Value of the Supernatural in Fiction The Question of the Highest Art Tolstoy's Theory of Art Note upon the Abuse and the Use of Literary Societies On Reading Literature and Public Opinion Farewell Address Index

Genres: Writing

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Greek-born American writer Lafcadio Hearn spent 15 years in Japan; people note his collections of stories and essays, including Kokoro (1896), under pen name Koizumi Yakumo.

Rosa Cassimati (Ρόζα Αντωνίου Κασιμάτη in Greek), a Greek woman, bore Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (Πατρίκιος Λευκάδιος Χερν in Greek or 小泉八雲 in Japanese), a son, to Charles Hearn, an army doctor from Ireland. After making remarkable works in America as a journalist, he went to Japan in 1890 as a journey report writer of a magazine. He arrived in Yokohama, but because of a dissatisfaction with the contract, he quickly quit the job. He afterward moved to Matsué as an English teacher of Shimané prefectural middle school. In Matsué, he got acquainted with Nishida Sentarô, a colleague teacher and his lifelong friend, and married Koizumi Setsu, a daughter of a samurai.
In 1891, he moved to Kumamoto and taught at the fifth high school for three years. Kanô Jigorô, the president of the school of that time, spread judo to the world.

Hearn worked as a journalist in Kôbé and afterward in 1896 got Japanese citizenship and a new name, Koizumi Yakumo. He took this name from "Kojiki," a Japanese ancient myth, which roughly translates as "the place where the clouds are born". On that year, he moved to Tôkyô and began to teach at the Imperial University of Tôkyô. He got respect of students, many of whom made a remarkable literary career. In addition, he wrote much reports of Japan and published in America. So many people read his works as an introduction of Japan. He quit the Imperial University in 1903 and began to teach at Waseda University on the year next. Nevertheless, after only a half year, he died of angina pectoris.

Reviews

[Clint Okayama · Rating 3 out of 5]

These lectures were given between 1896 and 1902 at the University of Tokyo to Japanese-speaking students and most of the text is reformulated from those students’ notes.

Reading this book is more of an exercise in history and language than anything else. Most of Hearn’s cultural viewpoints are outdated to the point of alienation, from his emphasis on international boundaries that seemed indelible in the 19th century to his celebration of the “recent” integration of Russian authors into Western literary culture. That being said, his notes on writing itself—particularly his analysis of particular writers and their passages—stand out as topical and relevant.

For example, this passage from his “Farewell Address:”

“Conservatism and exclusiveness have their values; and I do not mean to suggest the least disrespect toward them. But conservatism invariably tends to fixity, to mannerisms, to a hard crystallization. At length refined society obliges everybody to do and say according to rule--to express or to repress thought and feeling in the same way. Of course men's hearts cannot be entirely changed by rule; but such a tyranny of custom can be made that everybody is afraid to express thought or to utter feeling in a really natural way. When life becomes intensely artificial, severely conventional, literature begins to die. Then, western experience shows that there is one cure; nothing can bring back the failing life except a frank return to the unconventional, a frank return to the life and thought of the common people, who represent after all the soil from which everything human springs. When a language becomes hopelessly petrified by rules, it can be softened and strengthened and vivified by taking it back to its real source, the people, and soaking it there as in a bath. Everywhere this necessity has shown itself; everywhere it has been resisted with all the strength of pride and prejudice; but everywhere its outcome has been the same.”

In summation: if you’re interested in this book, you’ve probably already seen examples that demonstrate his lessons on writing (Strunk and White, for example, cover all the mechanics that Hearn recommends in his analysis of Norse myths). But I found it fascinating to read the same lessons from a point of view written over a century ago.