Lafcadio Hearn's Romanticism [Cafe Romanticism 23]

[Cafe Romanticism]
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Starting this autumn, a TV drama based on the lives of Lafcadio Hearn and his wife began airing on NHK.

While Hearn (Lafcadio Hearn) is famous primarily for his ghost stories, he was actually a distinguished man of letters whose numerous works and lectures on English literature at the University of Tokyo were truly excellent.

I have also been collecting some of Lafcadio Hearn's works for some time, but good books from the Meiji era are now quite expensive and difficult to obtain.

The title 'Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation' might be slightly misleading; it refers not to nationalism or State Shinto, but to the gods of indigenous nature worship.

He was moved by the sincere heart of reverence the Japanese people held for the sanctity of nature.

This year, I decorated with spider lilies that bloomed late, to remember Hearn, who loved the shadows of Japanese nature. For the tea utensils and cake plate, I chose Oribe ware from around the end of the Edo to the Meiji period.

Old Oribe is pottery possessing the most characteristic Japanese beauty; its distortions and grass-style paintings must have surely surprised Westerners who only knew of delicate and precise colored porcelain.

Although not widely known, he was the professor of English literature at the University of Tokyo before Natsume Soseki, and he seems to have been very popular with students, with many coming to audit his classes from other departments as well.

Perhaps as a reaction to Hearn being fired, his successor, Natsume Soseki, had a terrible reputation for teaching only grammar. Hearn, a foreign employee, was dismissed simply for cost-cutting reasons, but since the University of Tokyo at the time was primarily a university for training bureaucrats, perhaps they were troubled by having such lofty art taught. Soseki himself was troubled by the heavy burden of succeeding Hearn, which seems to have been one of the factors that worsened his mental breakdown, which is quite pitiful.

With the NHK drama as an opportunity, several new books related to Hearn were lined up in bookstores. The commentary on Hearn by Masayuki Ikeda, who lives in Kamakura, is interesting, and I have bought several of them. Both of the books in the photo are also supervised by Mr. Ikeda.

Hearn visited Kamakura and Enoshima immediately after arriving at Yokohama Port, and the travelogue from that time is truly moving.

Benzaiten is enshrined on Enoshima, but her true identity is that of beautiful goddesses and water deities such as Ichikishimahime and Seoritsuhime. For Hearn, who had roots in the Greek island of Lefkada as his name suggests, the sights and faith he witnessed on Enoshima must have reminded him of the Aphrodite and Odysseus praised by Sappho, and of the paradise of his distant homeland.

In his 'Lectures on English Literature,' Hearn is not merely discussing ghosts and spirits. Rather, he focuses more on Romantic poets represented by Wordsworth and Coleridge. According to Hearn, the spirit most to be valued through literature is the 'soul of Romanticism,' and all the great poets in literary history belong to this lineage.

Furthermore, he rejects the view that treats Romanticism merely as a reaction against Classicism. Instead, he argues that in order to prevent Romanticism from being misunderstood and literature from degenerating, a Classical reaction is sometimes also necessary for a true Romantic movement.

The emergence of outstanding poets such as Shakespeare, Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge is only possible through the embodiment of this spirit of Romanticism.

The confusion surrounding Romanticism, as pointed out by Hearn, seems to be present in the world of classical music as well. The trend of Romantic music is not limited to Paris or Vienna. In England, too, the tradition of Romantic music, represented by composers like Elgar and Vaughan Williams, has been passed down continuously. The German composer Max Bruch also traveled to England and fully expressed his spirit of Romanticism there. The flourishing of orchestral music within England is likely due in large part to Bruch's contributions.

This time, I would like to introduce Bruch's overture 'Odysseus'.

Many of Bruch's pieces feature simple melodies, yet they possess both beauty and majesty, enriching one's spiritual world. Both Bruch and Hearn, after leaving their homelands and crossing the sea, found beauty in a mythical world rooted in nature and ethnicity. As I live in Kamakura, I too must strive to reclaim the sanctity of my homeland while listening to such pure music.

Since Bruch and the English Romantics have many hidden masterpieces, I will likely have many opportunities to introduce them in the future.

[Cafe Romanticism]
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