A BACKWATER OF THE NINETIES.*
WHEN one remembers the extraordinary enthusiasm of the nineties for collecting and publishing short stories, it seems strange that a belated ripple from those days should have found its way unobserved into the second decade of the twentieth century. Karma, and other Stories appeared in various American magazines some thirty years ago. They are now published for the first time in book form, and it is interesting to treat them as the work of a contemporary writer. Karma, the longest story in the book, is full of contradictions. In form it closely resembles the type of short story which is being written in France to-day by such writers as M. Henri Duvernois and M. Edmond Jaloux ; but in spirit it belongs to another ago. In addition to a plot, the story of the nineties, like an epigram, was required to carry a sting in its tail. The modern French conte obeys no such convention. It may be " en roman. sacrif i" or a mere episode torn from its context in life, a poetical fancy, or perhaps the subjective thoughts of some quite ordinary person. This last description partly applies to Karma. In Karma Lafcadio Hearn writes of the triumph of ideal love with a child-like earnest- ness which is somehow unconvincing. Tchohov in one of his tales describes the failure of ideal love, and with greater artistry convinces the reader that ideal love cannot fail. Yet Karma, if it does not ring true in this respect, is interesting for other reasons. Unlike most of Hearn's work, it is intensely personal, • 'Canna, and other Stories and Essays. By Lafeadio Hearn. London: 9. (1. Ilurran. lee. net.]
if not autobiographical ; and to write it Hearn changed his prose rhythm from the exquisite flow of the Japaidisse tales to
a breathless Allegro Appassionato. The reader Is carried irre- sistibly to the end in a bewildering rush of words, and not until he has reached the end does he realize that there are many things in the story that he cannot accept. The hero's Tenny- sonian pose, the atmosphere of the Idylls of the King in a modern setting, the perfection of Karma herself—though that is eminently desirable—are the properties of a dead era. This is a typical passage, lacking perhaps restraint, but effective when contrasted with its setting in the story:— "Who does not know that luminous hour of Love's illusion, when the woman beloved seems not a woman—never of earth, never shaped of the same gross substance forming man—but a creature apart, unique, born of some finer, subtler, pearlier life t In her the lover no longer beholds the real : she has become to him so wonderful that he cannot guard his secret— that he feels anger when questioned friends declare their inability to see those marvels which he discerns in her. And then, with this exquisite delirium of the senses, mysterious above aught else In the all-circling mystery of life ; with this wondrous bewitchment, sung of since song found voice, yet ever uninter- pretable save as the working magic of that Will wherefrom, as ether-dartings from a sun-burning, are souls thrilled out ; —with the astonishment of woman's charm thus made divine— the miracle of her grace and purity of being—there comes to the lover a cruel sense of his own unworthiness. . . . What are you that she should make you her chosen of all men—accept her fate from you ? What are you that she should ever caress you— suffer you to touch her, to learn her thought, to seek the infinite in her oyes, to know the sweet, warm, soft shock of her kiss 1 " Ream's fondness for extravagant phrases brings him into difficulties a few linos later, when " Eidolon " and " sleazy " occur in uncomfortable proximity. The other four stories in the book are more simply told and make a far deeper impression on the reader. Hearn evidently had the golden gift of writing fairy tales. The Old Woman who Lost her Dumpling and The
Boy who Drew Cats are perfect of their kind.
Equally fascinating is The First Muezzin, a study
of Bilali-bin-Rabah, the Abyssinian servant of Mohammed. Hearn's religious adventures peculiarly fitted him to write on this subject. Bills], if tradition be accepted, was one of the world's great singers, " a baritone of extraordinary range and volume," and the first to chant the Islamics Adzdn at Medina. Hearn tells many tales of the negro-singers of those times. One taken from Gentius' translation of Gulistan recalls the Arabic custom of encouraging camels on the march by means of songs. A traveller in the desert was entertained by an Arab who apparently had lost all his camels. Before taking food the traveller asked his host to pardon a small negro-slave who seemed to be in disfavour. The Arab replied :-
"This slave is a rascal ; he hath lost all my riches and reduced me to desperate straits . . . this slave is gifted with a most sweet voice • and having made him conductor of my camels, he so excited them to exertion by the charm of his singing that in one day they made a three days' journey ; but upon being relieved of their loads at the end of the voyage, they all died.'
In the " luminous atmosphere of tradition " Hearn was at home.
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