Lafcadio Hearn Quotes

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn in Greek Πατρίκιος Λευκάδιος Χερν , known also by the Japanese name Koizumi Yakumo , was an international writer, known best for his books about Japan, especially his collections of Japanese legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. In the United States, Hearn is also known for his writings about the city of New Orleans based on his ten-year stay in that city.

✵ 27. June 1850 – 26. September 1904

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Lafcadio Hearn: 14 quotes0 likes

Famous Lafcadio Hearn Quotes

“The Shadow-maker shapes forever.”

“The time of illusion, then, is the beautiful moment of passion; it represents the artistic zone in which the poet or romance writer ought to be free to do the very best that he can.”

Source: Out of the East, Books and Habits, p. 23.

“Whatever doubts or vexations one has in Japan, it is only necessary to ask one's self: "Well, who are the best people to live with?"”

Letter to Ernest Fenollosa, August 1891, cited from Elizabeth Bisland (ed.) Life and Letters (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922) vol. 2, p. 160.

“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.”

Source: Out of the East, pp. 156–7.

“But what is after all the happiness of mere power? There is a greater happiness possible than to be lord of heaven and earth; that is the happiness of being truly loved.”

Source: Out of the East, Books and Habits, p. 70.

“Japanese affection is not uttered in words; it scarcely appears even in the tone of voice; it is chiefly shown in acts of exquisite courtesy and kindness.”

"Of the Eternal Feminine" (1893), cited from Out of the East; and, Kokoro (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922) p. 79.

Lafcadio Hearn Quotes

“Any idealism is a proper subject for art.”

Source: Out of the East, Books and Habits, p. 22.

“My friends are much more dangerous than my enemies. These latter – with infinite subtlety – spin webs to keep me out of places where I hate to go, – and tell stories of me to people whom it would be vanity and vexation to meet; – and they help me so much by their unconscious aid that I almost love them.”

Letter to Ernest Fenollosa, December 1898, cited from Elizabeth Bisland (ed.) Life and Letters (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1923) vol. 3, p. 147.

“How sweet Japanese woman is! All the possibilities of the race for goodness seem to be concentrated in her.”

Letter to Basil Hall Chamberlain, cited from Basil Hall Chamberlain Things Japanese (London: Kegan Paul, 1891) p. 453.

“To denounce Hearn is the same thing as a denunciation of Japan. Lafcadio Hearn was as Japanese as haiku.”

Yone Noguchi Lafcadio Hearn in Japan (London: Elkin Mathews, 1910) p. 20.
Criticism

“He is the writer in our language who can best be compared with Hans Christian Andersen and the brothers Grimm.”

Malcolm Cowley, in Henry Goodman (ed.) The Selected Writings of Lafcadio Hearn (New York: Citadel Press, 1949) p. 15.
Criticism

“Mr Hearn began really to count as a writer only when his Hellenic qualities of mind, stunted at first by the conditions of life in North America, were at last developed among a people distinguished by somewhat of that instinctive feeling for beauty which formed an incomparable element in the genius of ancient Greece. His æsthetic sense luxuriated in a land where fineness of taste is still a common characteristic. Through the gate of their art he entered, not only into the ways of life of the Japanese, but into their moods and their religion.”

Edward Wright, [The Romance of the Outlands, The Quarterly Review, 203, 47–72, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044092529163;view=1up;seq=77] July 1905, p. 63
Criticism

“Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under a lava flood of taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become only a study for archaeologists. Its condition is so bad that when I write about it, as I intend to do soon, nobody will believe I am telling the truth. But it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.”

Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn.

“They are hideous Golgothas, these old intermural cemeteries of ours. In other cities cemeteries are beautiful with all that the art of the gardener and sculptor can give....There the horror is masked. Here it glares at us with empty sockets. The tombs are fissured, or have caved in, or have crumbled down into shapeless bricks and mortar...[and] crawfish undermine the walls to feast upon what is hidden within.”

Lafcadio Hearn, Creole Sketches, ed. Charles Woodward Hutsun (1880; Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1924), p. 136. Lafcadio Hearn referring to the cemeteries in New Orleans.

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