KŌBE, Autumn, 1895.
DEAR HENDRICK,-- ... It has often occurred to me to ask whether you
think other men feel as I do about some things--you yourself, for
example. Work with me is a pain--no pleasure till it is done. It is not
voluntary; it is not agreeable. It is forced by necessity. The necessity
is a curious one. The mind, in my case, eats itself when unemployed.
Reading, you might suggest, would employ it. No: my thoughts wander,
and the gnawing goes on just the same. What kind of gnawing? Vexation
and anger and imaginings and recollections of unpleasant things said
or done. _Unless somebody does or says something horribly mean to me,
I can't do certain kinds of work_,--the tiresome kinds, that compel a
great deal of thinking. The exact force of a hurt I can measure at the
time of receiving it: "This will be over in six months;" "This I shall
have to fight for two years;" "This will be remembered longer." When I
begin to think about the matter afterwards, then I rush to work. I write
page after page of vagaries, metaphysical, emotional, romantic,--throw
them aside. Then next day, I go to work rewriting them. I rewrite and
rewrite them till they begin to define and arrange themselves into a
whole,--and the result is an essay; and the editor of the _Atlantic_
writes, "It is a veritable illumination,"--and no mortal man knows why,
or how it was written,--not even I myself,--or what it cost to write it.
Pain is therefore to me of exceeding value betimes; and everybody who
does me a wrong indirectly does me a right. I wonder if anybody else
works on this plan. The benefit of it is that a _habit_ is forming,--a
habit of studying and thinking in a way I should otherwise have been too
lazy-minded to do. But whenever I begin to forget one burn, new caustic
from some unexpected quarter is poured into my brain: then the new pain
forces other work. It strikes me as being possibly a peculiar morbid
condition. If it is, I trust that some day the power will come to do
something really extraordinary--I mean very unique. What is the good of
having a morbid sensitive spot, if it cannot be utilized to some purpose
worth achieving?
There was a funny suicide here the other day. A boy of seventeen threw
himself on the railroad track and was cut to pieces by a train. He left
a letter to his employer, saying that the death of the employer's little
son had made the world dark for him. The child would have nobody to play
with: so, he said, "I shall go to play with him. But I have a little
sister of six;--I pray you to take care of her."
Ever affectionately,
LAFCADIO HEARN.