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Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), European-born American author, wrote novels and articles with exotic themes in highly precise and polished prose.

Lafcadio Hearn was born June 27, 1850, on the Greek island of Santa Maura. His mother was Maltese and his father a British army surgeon of Anglo-Irish extraction. When Hearn was 2, his mother abandoned him to an aunt in Dublin, who later sent him to St. Cuthbert's College to prepare for the priesthood. There he lost his left eye in an accident; he lost much of his religious faith as well. His other eye, strained by incessant reading, bulged badly.

At 19, extremely short, disfigured, and psychologically maimed, Hearn arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he eventually became a reporter for the Inquirer. In 1874 he married a local African American girl, breaking the Ohio laws against miscegenation. The marriage lasted 3 years and cost Hearn his job. Sent by another periodical to New Orleans, he found there the colorful, exotic ambience that would energize his pen.

By 1881 Hearn had become the successful literary editor of the New Orleans Times Democrat, to which he contributed local-color sketches, obscure folktales and legends, and translations of French writers. His first book, One of Cleopatra's Nights (1882), was a perceptive translation of six Théophile Gautier stories. He also contributed to Harper's Weekly and the Century. His literary propensities were becoming more obvious; he was attracted by the romantic, strange, and grotesque, but he presented these against real backgrounds or with real people. He published a book of obscure legends and stories, Stray Leaves from Strange Literature (1884) and Some Chinese Ghosts (1887). He lived for 2 years in the West Indies, where he wrote his first novels, Chita (1889), a Rousseauesque romance, and Youma (1890), concerning a slave rebellion. Both narratives illustrate his deft, polished, precise prose and emphasis on description which often overshadow the brittle and abstract plot and characterization.

In 1890 Hearn was commissioned to go to Japan, but shortly after arriving there he quarreled with his publisher and found himself unemployed. For a while he taught English at a government school in Matsue and freelanced newspaper articles. His life in Japan was greatly enhanced by his marriage to Setsuko Koizumi, whose family adopted him. As Yakumo Koizumi, Hearn found his final nationality and an estimable academic position as professor of literature at the Imperial University of Tokyo. During this happy period Hearn composed his best prose - minute examinations of Japan, its people, and its folkways: Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894); Kokoro (1896); Gleanings in Buddha-fields (1897); Exotics and Retrospectives (1898); In Ghostly Japan (1899); Shadowings (1900); and Kwaidan and Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904). He died in Okubo, Japan, on Sept 26, 1904.

Further Reading

Vera S. McWilliams, Lafcadio Hearn (1946), is the important biography. Also useful are Elizabeth Stevenson, Lafcadio Hearn (1961), and Arthur E. Kunst, Lafcadio Hearn (1970). The authorized study by Elizabeth Bisland, The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn (2 vols., 1906), contains indispensable material but appears more apologetic than definitive. For perceptive criticism see Nina H. Kennard, Lafcadio Hearn (1911), and Edward Larocque Tinker, Lafcadio Hearn's American Days (1924; 2d ed. 1925). P. D. and lone Perkins, Lafcadio Hearn: A Bibliography of His Writings (1934), is reliable but incomplete.

Additional Sources

Ball, Charles Edward, Lafcadio Hearn: an appreciation, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1976.

Bellair, John, In Hearn's footsteps: journeys around the life of Lafcadio Hearn, Huntington, W. Va.: University Editions, 1994.

Cott, Jonathan, Wandering ghost: the odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn, New York: Knopf, 1991; New York: Kodansha International, 1992.

Dawson, Carl, Lafcadio Hearn and the vision of Japan, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

Hearn, Lafcadio, The Japanese letters of Lafcadio Hearn, Wilmington, Del., Scholarly Resources 1973.

Hearn, Lafcadio, Lafcadio Hearn: Japan's great interpreter: a new anthology of his writings, 1894-1904, Sandgate, Folkestone, Kent: Japan Library; New York: Distributed in the U.S. by Talman Co., 1992.

Hearn, Lafcadio, Letters, New York: AMS Press, 1975.

Hearn, Lafcadio, Manuscripts, New York: AMS Press, 1975.

Hearn, Lafcadio, Some new letters and writings of Lafcadio Hearn, Folcroft, Pa. Folcroft Library Editions, 1973.

Hearn, Lafcadio, Writings from Japan: an anthology, New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin Books, 1984.

Hughes, Jon Christopher, The tanyard murder: on the case with Lafcadio Hearn, Washington: University Press of America, 1982.

Kennard, Nina H., Lafcadio Hearn; containing some letters from Lafcadio Hearn to his half-sister, Mrs. Atkinso, Port Washington, N.Y., Kennikat Press 1967.

Koizumi, Setsu, Reminiscences of Lafcadio Hearn, Folcroft, Pa.: Folcroft Library Editions, c1978.

Kunst, Arthur E., Lafcadio Hearn, New York, Twayne Publishers c1969.

Noguchi, Yonâe, Lafcadio Hearn in Japan, Folcroft, Pa.,: Folcroft Library Editions, 1978.

Perkins, Percival Densmore, Lafcadio Hearn; a bibliography of his writing, New York: B. Franklin 1968.

Stevenson, Elizabeth, Lafcadio Hearn, New York: Octagon Books, 1979, 1961.

Thomas, Edward, Lafcadio Hearn, Folcroft, Pa.: Folcroft Library Editions, 1977.

Thomas, Edward, Lafcadio Hearn, London: Constable; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1912.

Webb, Kathleen M., Lafcadio Hearn and his German critics: an examination of his appeal, New York: P. Lang, 1984.

 
 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Patricio Lafcadio Tessima Carlos Hearn

(born June 27, 1850, Levkás, Ionian Islands, Greece — died Sept. 26, 1904, Okubo, Japan) Irish-U.S.-Japanese writer, translator, and teacher. He immigrated to the U.S. at age 19 and worked as a reporter and translator, writing on a wide range of subjects. In 1890 he traveled as a magazine writer to Japan, where he soon became a teacher, took a Japanese wife and name, and became a Japanese subject. Articles and books about Japan's customs, religion, and literature followed, including Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894), Exotics and Retrospective (1898), In Ghostly Japan (1899), Shadowings (1900), and A Japanese Miscellany (1901); Kwaidan (1904) is a collection of supernatural stories and haiku translations. It was Hearn who, perhaps more than any other single person, introduced the broad culture of Japan to the West.

For more information on Patricio Lafcadio Tessima Carlos Hearn, visit Britannica.com.

 
Fairy Tale Companion: Lafcadio Hearn

Hearn, Lafcadio (1850–1904), American author and journalist, born in the Ionian islands of Irish/Maltese parents. In 1869, Hearn moved to the United States, where he wrote on subjects he called ‘exotic, strange, and monstrous’. Emigrating to Japan in 1890, he renamed himself Koizumi Yakumo, married into a samurai family, became a citizen, wrote, and held a chair in English literature at Tokyo University. The author of many sketches, essays, and several novels, Hearn is noted for sensitive interpretations of Japanese traditions, especially about spirits and ghosts. Most frequently read today are probably Kwaidan (Ghost Tales), and Japan: an Interpretation (1904).

Bibliography

  • Hayley, Barbara “‘Lafcadio Hearn, W. B. Yeats and Japan’”, in Robert Welch and Suheil Badi Bushrui (eds.), Literature and the Art of Creation (1988).
  • McNeil, William K., ‘Lafcadio Hearn: American Folklorist’, Journal of American Folklore, 91 (1978).

— Judith S. Neaman

 
Irish Literature Companion: [Patricio] Lafcadio Hearn

Hearn, [Patricio] Lafcadio (1850-1904), orientalist and philosopher; born on Lefkas, one of the Ionian Islands (hence his name), to an Irish navy surgeon father and a local mother. He worked as a journalist, then moved to Japan in 1890, where he taught at the Imperial University, 1896-1903. Hearn admired the unity of Japanese life and culture. He married a Japanese and took the name Yakumo Koizumi. Amongst his books are Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894), and Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904).

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Hearn, Lafcadio
(lăfkä'dēō hûrn) , 1850–1904, American-Japanese author, b. Lefkás, Ionian Islands, of Irish-Greek parentage. He was educated in Ireland, England, and France before immigrating to the United States in 1869. Handicapped by partial blindness, Hearn was a colorful, imaginative, but morbidly discontented man, who was most admired for his sensitive use of language in writing about the macabre and in creating strange exotic moods. Hearn first attracted attention with the originality and highly polished style of his “Fantastics,” a series of weird sketches that appeared in a New Orleans paper. His first published book was One of Cleopatra's Nights (1882), a translation of six Gautier stories. In 1890 he went to Japan to write a series of articles for an American publisher. There he spent the rest of his life, writing what is considered his best work. He married a Japanese woman, taught in Japanese universities, and became a Japanese citizen in 1895, taking the name Yakumo Koizumi. Of his 12 books written during this period, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894), Kokoro (1896), Japanese Fairy Tales (1902), and Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904) are most memorable.

Bibliography

See biography by E. Stevenson (1961).

 
Works: Works by Lafcadio Hearn
(1850-1904)

1889Chita: A Memory of Last Island. Hearn's novel dramatically describes a tidal wave that obliterates Last Island in the Gulf of Mexico. It had been first published in Harper's Magazine, where it attained phenomenal popularity. Hearn, born in the Ionian Islands and educated in France and England, had immigrated to the United States in 1869. His first books--One of Cleopatra's Nights (1882) and Stray Leaves from Strange Literature (1884)--were story collections with an emphasis on the fantastic and exotic.
1890Youma. The last work published before Hearn's move to Japan is a novella based on the actual slave revolt of 1848 in Martinique.
1894Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. Having permanently settled in Japan in 1890, Hearn publishes the first in a series of observations and interpretations of Japanese life and customs. It would be followed by Out of the East (1895), Kokoro (1896), In Ghostly Japan (1899), Shadowings (1900), A Japanese Miscellany (1901), Kotto (1902), Kwaidon (1904), Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904), and The Romance of the Milky Way (1905).

 
Quotes By: Lafcadio Hearn

Quotes:

"I feel like a white granular mass of amorphous crystals -- my formula appears to be isomeric with Spasmotoxin. My aurochloride precipitates into beautiful prismatic needles. My Platinochloride develops octahedron crystals, -- with a fine blue florescence. My physiological action is not indifferent. One millionth of a grain injected under the skin of a frog produced instantaneous death accompanied by an orange blossom odor."

"All good work is done the way ants do things, little by little."

 
Wikipedia: Lafcadio Hearn
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Lafcadio Hearn, aka Koizumi Yakumo.
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Lafcadio Hearn, aka Koizumi Yakumo.

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (June 27, 1850 - September 26, 1904), also known as Koizumi Yakumo (小泉八雲) after gaining Japanese citizenship, was an author, best known for his books about Japan. He is especially well-known for his collections of Japanese legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things.

Biography

Early life

Hearn was born in Lefkada (the origin of his middle name), one of the Greek Ionian Islands. He was the son of Surgeon-major Charles Hearn (of King's County, Ireland) and Rosa Antonia Kassimati [1], who had been born on Kythera, another of the Ionian Islands. His father was stationed in Lefkada during the British occupation of the islands. Lafcadio was initially baptized Patricio Lefcadio Tessima Carlos Hearn in the Greek Orthodox Church.

Hearn moved to Dublin, Ireland, at the age of six. Artistic and rather bohemian tastes were in his blood. His father's brother Richard was at one time a well-known member of the Barbizon set of artists, though he made no mark as a painter due to his lack of energy. Young Hearn had a rather casual education, but in 1865 was at Ushaw Roman Catholic College, Durham. He was injured in a playground accident in his teens, causing loss of vision in his left eye.

Emigration

The religious faith in which he was brought up was, however, soon lost, and at 19 he was sent to live in the United States of America, where he settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. For a time, he lived in utter poverty, which may have contributed to his later paranoia and distrust of those around him. He eventually found a friend in the English printer and communalist Henry Watkin. With Watkin's help, Hearn picked up a living in the lower grades of newspaper work.

Through the strength of his talent as a writer, Hearn quickly advanced through the newspaper ranks and became a reporter for the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, working for the paper from 1872 to 1875. With creative freedom in one of Cincinnati's largest circulating newspapers, he developed a reputation as the paper's premier sensational journalist, as well as the author of sensitive, dark, and fascinating accounts of Cincinnati's disadvantaged. He continued to occupy himself with journalism and with out-of-the-way observation and reading, and meanwhile his erratic, romantic, and rather morbid idiosyncrasies developed.

While in Cincinnati, he married Alethea ("Mattie") Foley, a black woman, an illegal act at the time. When the scandal was discovered and publicized, he was fired from the Enquirer and went to work for the rival Cincinnati Commercial.

In 1874 Hearn and the young Henry Farny, later a renowned painter of the American West, wrote, illustrated, and published a weekly journal of art, literature, and satire they titled Ye Giglampz that ran for nine issues. The Cincinnati Public Library reprinted a facsimile of all nine issues in 1983.

In the autumn of 1877, Hearn left Cincinnati for New Orleans, Louisiana, where he initially wrote dispatches on his discoveries in the "Gateway to the Tropics" for the Cincinnati Commercial. He lived in New Orleans for nearly a decade, writing first for the Daily City Item and later for the Times Democrat. The vast number of his writings about New Orleans and its environs, many of which have not been collected, include the city's Creole population and distinctive cuisine, the French Opera, and Voudou. His writings for national publications, such as Harper's Weekly and Scribner's Magazine, helped mold the popular image of New Orleans as a colorful place with a distinct culture more akin to Europe and the Caribbean than to the rest of North America. His best-known Louisiana works are Gombo Zhèbes, Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs in Six Dialects (1885); La Cuisine Créole (1885), a collection of culinary recipes from leading chefs and noted Creole housewives who helped make New Orleans famous for its cuisine; and Chita: A Memory of Last Island, a novella based on the hurricane of 1856 first published in Harper's Monthly in 1888.

Harper's sent Hearn to the West Indies as a correspondent in 1889. He spent two years in the islands and produced Two Years in the French West Indies and Youma, The Story of a West-Indian Slave (both 1890).

Later life in Japan

Lafcadio Hearn, shown with Setsu Koizumi and their first son. Note the way he is facing - he always preferred to be photographed this way so that his left eye could not be seen.
Enlarge
Lafcadio Hearn, shown with Setsu Koizumi and their first son. Note the way he is facing - he always preferred to be photographed this way so that his left eye could not be seen.

In 1890, Hearn went to Japan with a commission as a newspaper correspondent, which was quickly broken off. It was in Japan, however, that he found his home and his greatest inspiration. Through the goodwill of Basil Hall Chamberlain, Hearn gained a teaching position in the summer of 1890 at the Shimane Prefectural Common Middle School and Normal School in Matsue, a town in western Japan on the coast of the Sea of Japan. Most Japanese identify Hearn with Matsue, as it was here that his image of Japan was molded. Today, The Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum (小泉八雲記念館) and Lafcadio Hearn's Old Residence (小泉八雲旧居) are still two of Matsue's most popular tourist attractions. During his 15-month stay in Matsue, Hearn married Setsu Koizumi, the daughter of a local samurai family, and became a naturalized Japanese, taking the name Koizumi Yakumo.

In late 1891, Hearn took another teaching position in Kumamoto, Kyushu, at the Fifth Higher Middle School, where he spent the next three years and completed his book Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894). In October 1894 he secured a journalism position with the English-language Kobe Chronicle, and in 1896, with some assistance from Chamberlain, he began teaching English literature at Tokyo (Imperial) University, a post he held until 1903. On September 26, 1904, he died of heart failure at the age of 54.

In the late 19th century Japan was still largely unknown and exotic to the Western world. With the introduction of Japanese aesthetics, however, particularly at the Paris World's Fair in 1900, the West had an insatiable appetite for exotic Japan, and Hearn became known to the world through the depth, originality, sincerity, and charm of his writings. In later years, some critics would accuse Hearn of exoticizing Japan, but as the man who offered the West some of its first glimpses into pre-industrial and Meiji Era Japan, his work still offers valuable insight today.

Legacy

The Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi adapted four Hearn tales into his 1965 film, Kwaidan.

Several Hearn stories have been adapted by Ping Chong into his trademark puppet theatre, including the 1999 Kwaidan and the 2002 .

Hearn's life and works were celebrated in The Dream of a Summer Day, a play that toured Ireland in April and May 2005, which was staged by the Storytellers Theatre Company and directed by Liam Halligan. It is a detailed dramatization of Hearn's life, with four of his ghost stories woven in.

Yone Noguchi is quoted as saying about Hearn, "His Greek temperament and French culture became frost-bitten as a flower in the North."[2]

There is also a cultural center named for Hearn at the University of Durham.

Hearn was a major translator of the short stories of Guy de Maupassant[3].

In Ian Fleming's You only Live Twice, James Bond retorts to his nemesis Blofeld's comment of "Have you ever heard the Japanese expression kirisute gomen?" with "Spare me the Lafcadio Hearn, Blofeld."

Books written by Hearn on Japanese subjects

  • Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894)
  • Out of the East: Reveries and Studies in New Japan (1895)
  • Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life (1896)
  • Gleanings in Buddha-Fields: Studies of Hand and Soul in the Far East (1897)
  • Exotics and Retrospectives (1898)
  • Japanese Fairy Tales (1898) and sequels
  • In Ghostly Japan (1899)
  • Shadowings (1900)
  • Japanese Lyrics (1900) - on haiku
  • A Japanese Miscellany (1901)
  • Kottō: Being Japanese Curios, with Sundry Cobwebs (1902)
  • Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1903) (which was later made into the movie Kwaidan by Masaki Kobayashi)
  • Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904; published just after his death)[1]
  • The Romance of the Milky Way and other studies and stories (1905; published posthumously)

References

  1. ^ Hearn's Parents
  2. ^ Yone Noguchi
  3. ^ Lafcadio Hearn Bibliography

Further reading

  • Bisland, Elizabeth, The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn (2 vols., 1906)
  • Bronner, Milton, editor, Letters from the Raven: Being the Correspondence of Lafcadio Hearn with Henry Watkin (1907)
  • Cott, Jonathan. Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn (1991)
  • Gould, G. M. Concerning Lafcadio Hearn (1908)
  • Hearn, Lafcadio, Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn,S. Frederick Starr, editor (University Press of Mississippi, 2001)
  • Hearn, Lafcadio. Lafcadio Hearn's America, Simon J. Bronner, editor (2002)
  • Kennard, Nina H., Lafcadio Hearn; containing some letters from Lafcadio Hearn to his half-sister, Mrs. Atkinson (1912)
  • Lurie, David. "Orientomology: The Insect Literature of Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904)," in JAPANimals: History and Culture in Japan's Animal Life, ed. Gregory M. Pflugfelder and Brett L. Walker, University of Michigan Press, 2005.
  • Noguchi, Yone. Lafcadio Hearn in Japan (1910)
  • Pulvers, Roger. Lafcadio Hearn: interpreter of two disparate worlds, Japan Times, January 19 2000

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