Lafcadio Hearn Quotes

Forget trying to pass for normal. Follow your geekdom. Embrace nerditude. In the immortal words of Lafcadio Hearn, a geek of incredible obscurity whose work is still in print after a hundred years, “Woo the muse of the odd.” You may be a geek. You may have geek written all over you. You should aim to be one geek they'll never forget. Don't aim to be civilized. Don’t hope that straight people will keep you on as some sort of pet. To hell with them. You should fully realize what society has made of you and take a terrible revenge. Get weird. Get way weird. Get dangerously weird. Get sophisticatedly, thoroughly weird, and don't do it halfway. Put every ounce of horsepower you have behind it. Don't become a well-rounded person. Well-rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a pufferfish.

Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become a study for archaeologists...but it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.

The Shadow-maker shapes forever.

We owe more to our illusions than to our knowledge

Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element - direct observation. Do not learn anything about this subject of mine - the French Revolution. Learn instead what I think that Enicharmon thought Urizen thought Gutch thought Ho-Yung thought Chi-Bo-Sing thought Lafcadio Hearn thought Carlyle thought Mirabeau said about the French Revolution.

But I confess that "my mind to me a kingdom is"--not! Rather it is a fantastical republic, daily troubled by more revolutions than ever occurred in South America ...

The tea ceremony requires years of training and practice ... yet the whole of this art, as to its detail, signifies no more than the making and serving of a cup of tea. The supremely important matter is that the act be performed in the most perfect, most polite, most graceful, most charming manner possible.

Perhaps, after trillions of ages burning in different dynasties of suns, the very best of me may come together again.

The poet or the story-teller who cannot give the reader a little ghostly pleasure at times never can be either a really great writer or a great thinker.

Then came upon an incredible essay by Lafcadio Hearn, something entitled “Gaki,” detailing the curious Japanese belief that insects are really demons or the ghosts of evil men.

also in the boom of the big bell there is a quaintness of tone which wakens feelings, so strangely far-away from all the nineteenth-century part of me, that the faint blind stirrings of them make me afraid, - deliciously afraid. never do I hear that billowing peal but I become aware of a striving and a fluttering in the abyssal part of my ghost, - a sensation as of memories struggling to reach the light beyond the obscurations of a million million deaths and births. I hope to remain within hearing of that bell... and, considering the possibility of being doomed to the state of a jiki-ketsu-geki, I want to have my chance of being reborn in some bamboo flower-cup, or mizutame, whence I might issue softly, singing my thin and pungent song, to bite some people that I know.

There is scarcely any great author in European literature, old or new, who has not distinguished himself in his treatment of the supernatural. In English literature, I believe there is no exception from the time of the Anglo-Saxon poets to Shakespeare, and from Shakespeare to our own day. And this introduces us to the consideration of a general and remarkable fact, a fact that I do not remember to have seen in any books, but which is of very great philosophical importance: there is something ghostly in all great art, whether of literature, music, sculpture, or architecture. It touches something within us that relates to infinity

It may remain for us to learn,... that our task is only beginning; and that there will never be given to us even the ghost of any help, save the help of unutterable unthinkable Time. We may have to learn that the infinite whirl of death and birth, out of which we cannot escape, is of our own creation, of our own seeking;--that the forces integrating worlds are the errors of the Past;--that the eternal sorrow is but the eternal hunger of insatiable desire;--and that the burnt-out suns are rekindled only by the inextinguishable passions of vanished lives.

considering the possibility of being doomed to the state of a Jiki-ketsu-gaki, I want to have my chance of being reborn in some bamboo flower-cup, or mizutame, whence I might issue softly, singing my thin and pungent song, to bite some people that I know.

Learn instead what I think that Enicharmon thought Urizen thought Gutch thought Ho–Yung thought Chi–Bo–Sing thought LafcadioHearn thought Carlyle thought Mirabeau said about the French Revolution.

If you see your neighbor's beard on fire, water your own. --Martinique proverb

We owe more to our illusions than to our knowledge.

Learn instead what I think that Enicharmon thought Urizen thought Gutch thought Ho-Yung thought Chi-Bo-Sing thought Lafcadio Hearn thought Carlyle thought Mirabeau said about the French Revolution.

It is an atmosphere peculiar to the place; and, because of it, the sunshine in Horai is whiter than any other sunshine, - a milky light that never dazzles, - astonishingly clear, but very soft. This atmosphere is not of our human period: it is enormously old, - so old that I feel afraid when I try to think how old it is; - and it is not a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen. It is not made of air at all, but of ghost, - the substance of quintillions of quintillions of generations of souls blended into one immense translucency, - souls of people who thought in ways never resembling our ways.

Nature has no consolation for us. Out of her formlessness issues forms which return to formlessness,——that is all. The plant becomes clay; the clay becomes a plant. When the plant turns to clay, what becomes of the vibration which was its life? Does it go on existing viewlessly, like the forces that shape spectres of frondage in the frost upon a window-pane?

Beware of first-hand ideas!” exclaimed one of the most advanced of them. “First-hand ideas do not really exist. They are but the physical impressions produced by love and fear, and on this gross foundation who could erect a philosophy? Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element — direct observation. Do not learn anything about this subject of mine — the French Revolution.Learn instead what I think that Enicharmon thought Urizen thought Gutch thought Ho-Yung thought Chi-Bo-Sing thought Lafcadio Hearn thought Carlyle thought Mirabeau said about the French Revolution. Through the medium of these ten great minds, the blood that was shed at Paris and the windows that were broken at Versailles will be clarified to an idea which you may employ most profitably in your daily lives. But be sure that the intermediates are many and varied, for in history one authority exists to counteract another. Urizen must counteract the scepticism of Ho-Yung and Enicharmon, I must myself counteract the impetuosity of Gutch. You who listen to me are in a better position to judge about the French Revolution than I am. Your descendants will be even in a better position than you, for they will learn what you think I think, and yet another intermediate will be added to the chain. And in time” — his voice rose — “there will come a generation that had got beyond facts, beyond impressions, a generation absolutely colourless, a generation ‘seraphically free From taint of personality,’ which will see the French Revolution not as it happened, nor as they would like it to have happened, but as it would have happened, had it taken place in the days of the Machine.

Eίμαι εγώ ένας;. Είμαι μια και μόνη ψυχή;. Όχι, εγώ είμαι ένα πλήθος, ένα ασύλληπτο πλήθος. Είμαι γενεά των γενεών. αιώνας των αιώνων. Αμέτρητες είναι οι φορές. που η συρροή όλων αυτών που είμαι. σκορπίστηκε στο άπειρο. για να συγκεντρωθεί και πάλι. ΄Ισως, αφού στο μεταξύ καώ. Επί τρισεκατομμύρια αιώνες. στις διάφορες δυναστείες των ήλιων. τα καλύτερα από αυτά που είμαι. θα μπορέσουν να σμίξουν και πάλι.

More important than learning to speak Japanese when you come to Japan is learning to speak silence. My neighbors seem most at home with nonverbal cues, with pauses and the exchange of formulae. What is the virtue of speaking Japanese, Lafcadio Hearn noted, if you cannot think in Japanese?

Υπάρχουν ανθρώπινα τριζόνια, που χρειάζεται να φάνε την ίδια την καρδιά τους, για να μπορέσουν να τραγουδήσουν.

upon the civilization of the world. The best one can do is to estimate, as intelligently as possible, the national characteristics of the peoples engaged,

..and Umétsu remembered that goblins were wont to assume feminine shapes after dark, in order to deceive and destroy men.

Can we ever hope for a Natural History with colored plates that will show us how the world appears to the faceted eyes of a dragon-fly?

Well dressed to-day; only a langouti tomorrow. --Mauritius proverb

Let those who want to hatch hatch their own eggs. ----Martinique proverb

Spoon goes to bowl's house; bowl never goes to spoon's house. --Haitian proverb

Woo the muse of the odd.

Whoever pretends not to believe in ghosts of any sort, lies to his own heart. Every man is haunted by ghosts... thought most of us (poets excepted) are unwilling to confess the acquaintance.

On the Gulf side of these islands you may observe that the trees—where there are any trees—all bend away from the sea; and, even of bright, hot days when the wind sleeps, there is something grotesquely pathetic in their look of agonized terror. A group of oaks . . . I remember as especially suggestive: five stooping silhouettes in line against the horizon, like fleeing women with streaming garments and wind-blown hair,—bowing grievously and thrusting out arms desperately northward as to save themselves from falling. And they are being pursued indeed;—for the sea is devouring the land.

How divine the coming of the morning,—the coming of the Sun,—exorcising the shadowy terrors of the night with infinite restoration of color! I look upon the woods, and they are not the same: the palms have vanished; the cypresses have fled away; trees young and comely and brightly green replace them. A hand is laid upon my shoulder,—the hand of the gray Captain: 'Go forward, and see what you have never seen before.' Even as he speaks, our boat, turning sharply, steams out of the green water into—what can I call it?—a flood of fluid crystal,—a river of molten diamond,—a current of liquid light?

I an individual—an individual soul! Nay, I am a population—a population unthinkable for multitude, even by groups of a thousand millions! Generations of generations I am, aeons of aeons! Countless times the concourse now making me has been scattered, and mixed with other scattering. Of what concern, then, the next disintegration? Perhaps, after trillions of ages of burning in different dynasties of suns, the very best of me may come together again.

outcome of the present struggle between Russia and Japan, its significance lies in the fact that a nation of the East, equipped with Western weapons and girding itself with Western energy of will, is deliberately measuring strength against one of

The Russian people have had literary spokesmen who for more than a generation have fascinated the European audience. The Japanese, on the other hand, have possessed no such national and universally recognized figures as Turgenieff or Tolstoy. They need an interpreter. It

Now see," she says: "each stands only by help of the other. One by itself cannot stand. Therefore the ji is like mankind. Without help one person cannot live in this world; but by getting help and giving help everybody can live. If nobody helped anybody, all people would fall down and die.

It may remain for us to learn … that our task is only beginning, and that there will never be given to us even the ghost of any help, save the help of unutterable and unthinkable Time. We may have to learn that the infinite whirl of death and birth, out of which we cannot escape, is of our own creation, of our own seeking;—that the forces integrating worlds are the errors of the Past;—that the eternal sorrow is but the eternal hunger of insatiable desire;—and that the burnt-out suns are rekindled only by the inextinguishable passions of vanished lives. — LAFCADIO HEARN, OUT OF THE EAST

Βλέπω τα παλιωμένα σκαριά που φτάνουν από τα απόμακρα τροπικά λιμάνια κι ανεβαίνω μυστικά στις κουπαστές τους. Όταν ξεδιπλώνουν τις κατάλευκες φτερούγες τους για να πετάξουν μακριά από δώ, στο Νότο, η ψυχή μου -αυτή η ψυχή που έχω- τα ακολουθεί με τη σκέψη της. Κάποια μέρα θα κρυφτώ στον ίσκιο ενός πανιού, στην κουλούρα ενός σχοινιού και θα σαλπάρω για πάντα μαζί τους.

There is no loss-because there is not any Self that can be lost. Whatsoever was, that you have been;- whatsoever is, that you are;- whatsoever will be, that you must become. Personality!- individuality!- the ghosts of a dream in a dream! Life infinite only there is; and all that appears to be is but the thrilling of it, -sun, moon, and stars, -earth, sky, and sea,-and Mind and Man, and Space and Time. All of them are shadows. The shadows come and go;- the Shadow-Maker shapes forever.

[...] carpenter still builds according to Shinto tradition: he dons a priestly costume at a certain stage of his work, performs rites, and chants invocations, and places the new house under the protection of the gods. But the occupation of the swordsmith was in old days the most sacred of the crafts: he worked in priestly garb, and practiced Shinto rites of purification while engaged in the making of a good blade. Before his smithy was then suspended the rope of rice straw, which is the oldest symbol of Shinto; none even of his family might enter there, or speak to him; and he ate only of food cooked with holy fire [...]

Blue vision of depth lost in height, - sea and sky interblending through luminous haze. The day is of spring, and the hour morning. Only sky and sea, - one azure enormity... In the fore, ripples are catching a silvery light, and threads of foam are swirling. But a little further off no motion is visible, nor anything save color: dim warm blue of water widening away to melt into blue of air. Horizon there is none: only distance soaring into space, - infinite concavity hollowing before you, and hugely arching above you, - the color deepening with the height. But far in the midway-blue there hangs a faint, faint vision of palace towers, with high roofs horned and curved like moons, - some shadowing of splendor strange and old, illumined by a sunshine soft as memory.

The art department proper I thought much inferior to that of the Tokyo Exhibition of 1890. Fine things there were, but few. Evidence, perhaps, of the eagerness with which the nation is turning all its energies and talents in directions where money is to be made; for in those larger departments where art is combined with industry,—such as ceramics, enamels, inlaid work, embroideries,—no finer and costlier work could ever have been shown. Indeed, the high value of certain articles on display suggested a reply to a Japanese friend who observed, thoughtfully, "If China adopts Western industrial methods, she will be able to underbid us in all the markets of the world." "Perhaps in cheap production," I made answer. "But there is no reason why Japan should depend wholly upon cheapness of production. I think she may rely more securely upon her superiority in art and good taste. The art-genius of a people may have a special value against which all competition by cheap labor is vain. Among Western nations, France offers an example. Her wealth is not due to her ability to underbid her neighbors. Her goods are the dearest in the world: she deals in things of luxury and beauty. But they sell in all civilized countries because they are the best of their kind. Why should not Japan become the France of the Further East?

A very successful method of dragon-fly-catching..is to use a captured female dragon-fly as a decoy. One end of a long thread is fastened to the insect's tail, and the other end of the thread to a flexible rod. By moving the rod in a particular way the female can be kept circling on her wings at the full length of the thread; and a male is soon attracted. As soon as he clings to the female, a slight jerk of the rod will bring both insects into the angler's hand. With a single female for lure, it is easy to capture eight or ten males in succession

A che pro disegnare l'Impossibile? Perché è la verità, forse velata e mascherata, ma eterna.

[...], es kommt von der fast rhythmischen Wiederkehr einzelner Vokale, die - so will mir scheinen - gewisse Gedanken ausdrücken sollen und Äußerungen einer tierhaften Sprache sind. Das Ganze ist ein Gesang - ein Gesang voll Gefühlen und Begriffen, die nichts Menschliches an sich haben und uns deshalb vollkommen unfassbar bleiben müssen. - Hunde jedoch verstehen offenbar, was dieser Gesang bedeutet, denn sie antworten, obgleich meilenweit weg, durch die Finsternis der Nacht. - Oft muss ich mein Gehör aufs Äußerste anstrengen, um ihre Antwort noch zu vernehmen, so groß ist die Entfernung. Der Worte - wenn man hier von 'Worten' reden darf -, die der Gesang enthält, sind nur wenige, aber, nach der Erregung zu schließen, die sie in Hundekreisen hervorrufen, müssen sie überaus inhaltsreich sein. Vielleicht dreht es sich da um Dinge, die sich auf Gerüche beziehen, auf Aushauche, Einflüsse, Ausstrahlungen, die unsern stumpfen menschlichen Sinnen verschlossenes Land bedeuten. - Vielleicht um feine Anregungen, für die es keinen Namen gibt, - um Impulse und Anreize, die der Vollmond in den Geistern der Hunde zum Leben erweckt.

The clay pot wishes to laugh at the iron pot. --Trinidad proverb

And as we sat there in the silence with the stars burning in the purple deeps of the summer night above us, we dreamed of the kites which children of a larger growth fly in the face of heaven—toys of love and faith—toys of ambition and of folly—toys of grotesque resolve and flattering ideals—toys of vain dreams and vain expectation—the kites of human Hope, gaudy-colored or gray, richly tinseled or humbly simple—rising and soaring and tossing on the fickle winds of the world, only to become entangled at last in that mighty web of indissoluble and everlasting threads which the Weird Sisters spin for all of us.

Then a scream of steam, a mighty jolt; and the thunder-rattle recommences, and the train again begins to rock in mad storms of dust and smoke, and the red sun ignites a stupendous conflagration behind the pillars of the pines. At last, under the moon, there is another shriek of steam; the wheels slacken, rumble jerkingly, then roll slowly and silently, as if muffled, with occasional squeak, and pause with a final shock; while through hastily opened windows and doors, a strong cool air dashes in,—the breath of the great St. Johns River, sweetened by mingling with the mightier breath of the sea, and bearing with it scent of orange flowers and odors of magnolia. And in the purple night, under the palpitation of stars, Jacksonville opens all her electric eyes.

A most extraordinary device for catching dragon-flies is used by the children of the province of Kii. They get a long hair, - a woman's hair, - and attach a very small pebble to each end of it, so as to form a miniature "bolas"; and this they sling high into the air. A dragon-fly pounces upon the passing object; but the moment that he seizes it, the hair twists round his body, and the weight of the pebbles brings him to the ground.

It is not made of air at all, but of ghost,—the substance of quintillions of quintillions of generations of souls blended into one immense translucency,—souls of people who thought in ways never resembling our ways. Whatever mortal man inhales that atmosphere, he takes into his blood the thrilling of these spirits; and they change the sense within him,—reshaping his notions of Space and Time,—so that he can see only as they used to see, and feel only as they used to feel, and think only as they used to think. Soft as sleep are these changes of sense; and Horai, discerned across them, might thus be described:—

My faith is that we must wish to become the total universe with its thousands of millions of worlds,_ and more than the universe or a myriad of universes,- and more even than Space and Time.

Even so,—a million years after we shall have ceased to view the sun,—will the gladness and grief of our own lives pass with richer music into other hearts—there to bestir, for one mysterious moment, some deep and exquisite thrilling of voluptuous pain.

As for the wine in the cups, it looked like water; but, as it tasted all right, what did its looks signify?

The sun is gone; the topaz-light is gone; and Cha stops to light his lantern of paper; and we hurry on again, between two long lines of painted paper lanterns suspended before the shops: so closely set, so level those lines are, that they seem two interminable strings of pearls of fire. And suddenly a sound — solemn, profound, mighty — peals to my ears over the roofs of the town, the voice of the tsurigane, the great temple-bell of Nogiyama. All too short the day seemed. Yet my eyes have been so long dazzled by the great white light, and so confused by the sorcery of that interminable maze of mysterious signs which made each street vista seem a glimpse into some enormous grimoire, that they are now weary even of the soft glowing of all these paper lanterns, likewise covered with characters that look like texts from a Book of Magic. And I feel at last the coming of that drowsiness which always follows enchantment.

Blue vision of depth lost in height, - sea and sky interblending through luminous haze. The day is of spring, and the hour morning. Only sky and sea, - one azure enormity...

JAPAN AN ATTEMPT AT INTERPRETATION BY LAFCADIO HEARN

Even among the Japanese themselves, no scientific knowledge of their own history is yet possible; because the means of obtaining that knowledge have not yet been prepared,—though mountains of material have been collected.

the history of ethics and aesthetics,—all these and many other matters remain obscure.

Našao je zemlju izlazećeg sunca pa je pšenično zrno, koje je neplodno, bacakano vetrom, najzad naišlo na grudu zemlje koja će ga primiti da uhvati koren i da se razvije.

Well, for a considerable time after you were born, you had no such reason for rejoicing in your form. You were then a mere cabbage-insect, a hairy worm; and you were so poor that you could not afford even one robe to cover your nakedness; and your appearance was altogether disgusting. Everybody in those days hated the sight of you.

New Orleans is a place that actually resembles no other city on the face of the earth, yet it recalls vague memories of a hundred cities.

Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit.

If China adopts Western industrial methods, she will be able to underbid us in all the markets of the world." "Perhaps in cheap production," I made answer. "But there is no reason why Japan should depend wholly upon cheapness of production. I think she may rely more securely upon her superiority in art and good taste. The art-genius of a people may have a special value against which all competition by cheap labor is vain.

Symptoms of kitsune-tsuki varied. There are descriptions of “afflicted persons who ate gravel, ashes, hair, or combs, wandered the mountains and fields making piles of stones, jumped into rivers or ran into the mountains, etc.”29 In 1894, Lafcadio Hearn wrote, “Strange is the madness of those into whom demon foxes enter. Sometimes they run naked shouting through the streets. Sometimes they lie down and froth at the mouth, and yelp as a fox yelps.”30 Kitsune-tsuki (and other forms of possession) persisted throughout Hearn’s time, and similar phenomena are still occasionally identified today. But during the Meiji period, modern Western medicine was called on to redefine fox possession as a form of mental illness treatable by psychiatrists.

Saygıdeğer Efendim, işlediğim suçu isteyerek yapmadım. Tek kabahatim, inanılmaz derecede aptal oluşumdur. Aptal doğmuşum ben. Karmam böyle! Durmadan yanlış yapıyorum, elimde değil. Yine de aptallık yüzünden adam öldürmek çok kötü. Bunun cezasını çekmeliyim. Öte yandan, siz beni öldürdüğünüzde intikam alınmış olacaksa da, öldürülmek yüzünden ortaya çıkan öfke yeni bir intikam nedeni doğuracaktır. Kötülük kötülükle cezalandırılıyorsa, bu böyledir...