TŌKYŌ, August, 1897.
DEAR HENDRICK,--As for Miss Josephine's letter, I believe that I cannot
answer it at all: it was so sweet that I could only sit down quietly
and think about it,--and I feel that any attempt to answer it on paper
would be no use. There is only one way that it ought to be adequately
answered, and that way I hope that you will adopt for my sake.
It was a more than happy little romance--that which you told me of,
and makes one feel new things about the great complex life of your
greater world. The poetry of the story makes a singular appeal to
me now--possibly because in this Far East such loving sympathy is
non-existent (at least outside of the household). Artistic life depends
a great deal upon such friendships: I doubt whether it can exist without
them, any more than butterflies or bees could exist without flowers.
The ideal is created by the heart, no doubt; but it is nourished only
by others' faith and love for it. In all this great Tōkyō I doubt
if there is a man with an ideal--or a woman (I mean any one not a
Japanese); and so far as I have been able to hear and see there are
consequently no friendships. Can there possibly be friendships where
there is no aspirational life? I doubt it very much.
I must eat some humble pie. My work during the past ten months has been
rather poor. Why, I cannot quite understand--because it costs me more
effort. Anyhow I have had to rewrite ten essays: they greatly improved
under the process. I am trying now to get a Buddhist commentary for
them--mostly to be composed of texts dealing with preëxistence and
memory of former lives. I took for subjects the following:--Beauty is
Memory;--why beautiful things bring sadness;--the riddle of touch--i.
e., the _thrill_ that a touch gives;--the perfume of youth;--the reason
of the pleasure of the feeling evoked by bright blue;--the pain caused
by certain kinds of red;--mystery of certain musical effects;--fear of
darkness and the feeling of dreams. Queer subjects, are they not? I
think of calling the collection "Retrospectives." It might be dedicated
to "E. B. W.,"--I fancy that I should do well to use the initials only;
for some of the essays might be found a little startling. But when the
work will be finished I cannot tell.
[Illustration]
In this Tōkyō, this detestable Tōkyō, there are no Japanese
impressions to be had except at rare intervals. To describe to you the
place would be utterly impossible,--more easy to describe a province.
Here the quarter of the foreign embassies, looking like a well-painted
American suburb;--near by an estate with quaint Chinese gates
several centuries old; a little further square miles of indescribable
squalor;--then miles of military parade-ground trampled into a waste
of dust, and bounded by hideous barracks;--then a great park, full of
really weird beauty, the shadows all black as ink;--then square miles of
streets of shops, which burn down once a year;--then more squalor;--then
rice-fields and bamboo groves;--then more streets. All this not
flat, but hilly,--a city of undulations. Immense silences--green and
romantic--alternate with quarters of turmoil and factories and railroad
stations. Miles of telegraph-poles, looking at a distance like enormous
fine-tooth combs, make a horrid impression. Miles of water-pipes--miles
and miles and miles of them--interrupt the traffic of the principal
streets: they have been trying to put them underground for seven
years,--and what with official trickery, etc., the work makes slow
progress. Gigantic reservoirs are ready; but no water in them yet. City
being sued by the foreign engineer (once a university professor) for
$138,000 odd commission on plans! Streets melt under rain, water-pipes
sink, water-pipe holes drown spreeing men and swallow up playful
children; frogs sing amazing songs in the street.--To think of art or
time or eternity in the dead waste and muddle of this mess is difficult.
The Holy Ghost of the poets is not in Tōkyō. I am going to try to
find him by the seashore.
[Illustration]
The other night I got into a little-known part of Tōkyō,--a street
all ablaze with lanterns about thirty feet high, painted with weird
devices. And I was interested especially by the insect-sellers. I bought
a number of cages full of night-singing insects, and am now trying to
make a study of the subjects. The noise made by these creatures is very
much more extraordinary than you could imagine; but the habit of keeping
them is not merely due to a love of the noise in itself. No: it is
because these little orchestras give to city-dwellers the _feeling_ of
the delight of being in the country,--the sense of woods and hills and
flowing water and starry nights and sweet air. Fireflies are caged for
the same reason.
This is a refinement of sensation, is it not?--only a poetical people
could have imagined the luxury of buying summer-voices to make for them
the illusion of nature where there is only dust and mud. Notice also
that the singers are _night-singers_. It is no use to cage the cicadæ:
they remain silent in a cage, and die.
In this horrid Tōkyō I feel like a cicada:--I am caged, and can't
sing. Sometimes I wonder whether I shall ever be able to sing any
more,--except at night?--like a bell-insect which has only _one_ note.
What more and more impresses me every year is the degree to which the
writer is a creature of circumstance. If he can make the circumstance,
like a Kipling or a Stevenson, he can go on forever. Otherwise he is
likely to exhaust every motive in short order, to the same extent that
he depends on outer influence.
There was a little under-ripple of premonition in that very sweet letter
from Miss Josephine,--just the faintest suggestion of a thought that the
future might hold troubles in its shadow. Now I suppose that for none
can the future be only luminous; but that you will have a smooth and
steady current to bear you along to the great sea appears to me a matter
of course. I do not imagine there will be rocks and reefs and whirlpools
for you. You have both such large experience of life as it is, and of
the laws and the arts of navigating that water, that I have no anxiety
about you at all. Such little disillusions as you may have should only
draw you nearer together. But there is the sensation of being afraid
for somebody else--one has to face that; and the more boldly, perhaps,
the less the terror becomes. It is worse in the case where one would be
helpless without the other. But I imagine that your union is one of two
strong independent spirits--each skilled in self-guidance. That makes
everything so much easier.
One thing you _will_ have to do,--that is, to take extremely good care
of yourself for somebody else's sake. Which redounds to my benefit; for
I really don't know what I should do without that occasional wind of
sympathy wherewith your letters refresh me. I keep telling my wife that
it would be ever so much better to leave Tōkyō, and dwell in the
country, at a very much smaller salary, and have peace of mind. She says
that nowhere could I have any peace of mind until I become a Buddha, and
that with patience we can become independent. This is good; and my few
Japanese friends tell me the same thing. But perhaps the influence from
40 Kilby Street, Boston, is the most powerful and saving of all.
An earthquake and several other things (I _hate_ earthquakes)
interrupted this letter. It is awfully dull, I know--forgive its
flatness....
Ever, dear H., your
LAFCADIO.