Books and Habits, from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn Part 14

C'est moi qui suis l'esprit de l'atre!

Le gaz, de sa langue bleuatre, Leche plus doucement le bois; La fumee en filet d'albatre, Monte et se contourne a ma voix.

La bouilloire rit et babille; La flamme aux pieds d'argent sautille En accompagnant ma chanson; La buche de duvet s'habille; La seve bout dans le tison.

Pendant la nuit et la journee Je chante sous la cheminee; Dans mon langage de grillon J'ai, des rebuts de son ainee, Souvent console Cendrillon.

Quel plaisir? Prolonger sa veille, Regarder la flamme vermeille Prenant a deux bras le tison, A tous les bruits preter l'oreille, Entendre vivre la maison.

Tapi dans sa niche bien chaude, Sentir l'hiver qui pleure et rode, Tout bleme, et le nez violet, Tachant de s'introduire en fraude Par quelque fente du volet!

This poem is especially picturesque, and is intended to give us the comfortable sensations of a winter night by the fire, and the amus.e.m.e.nt of watching the wood burn and of hearing the kettle boiling. You will find that the French has a particular quality of lucid expression; it is full of clearness and colour.

"Blow on, cold wind! pour down, O rain. I, in my soot-black palace, laugh at both rain and wind; and while waiting for winter to pa.s.s I remain in my corner by the fire dreaming.

"It is I that am really the spirit of the hearth! The gaseous flame licks the wood more softly with its bluish tongue when it hears me; and the smoke rises up like an alabaster thread, and curls itself about (or twists) at the sound of my voice.

"The kettle chuckles and chatters; the golden-footed flame leaps, dancing to the accompaniment of my song (or in accompaniment to my song); the great log covers itself with down, the sap boils in the wooden embers ("duvet," meaning "down," refers to the soft fluffy white ash that forms upon the surface of burning wood).

"All night and all day I sing below the chimney. Often in my cricket-language, I have consoled Cinderella for the snubs of her elder sister.

"Ah, what pleasure to sit up at night, and watch the crimson flames embracing the wood (or hugging the wood) with both arms at once, and to listen to all the sounds and to hear the life of the house!

"Nestling in one's good warm nook, how pleasant to hear Winter, who weeps and prowls round about the house outside, all wan and blue-nosed with cold, trying to smuggle itself inside some c.h.i.n.k in the shutter!"

Of course this does not give us much about the insect itself, which remains invisible in the poem, just as it really remains invisible in the house where the voice is heard. Rather does the poem express the feelings of the person who hears the cricket.

When we come to the subject of gra.s.shoppers, I think that the French poets have done much better than the English. There are many poems on the field gra.s.shopper; I scarcely know which to quote first. But I think you would be pleased with a little composition by the celebrated French painter, Jules Breton. Like Rossetti he was both painter and poet; and in both arts he took for his subjects by preference things from country life. This little poem is ent.i.tled "Les Cigales." The word "cigales," though really identical with our word "cicala," seldom means the same thing. Indeed the French word may mean several different kinds of insects, and it is only by studying the text that we can feel quite sure what sort of insect is meant.

Lorsque dans l'herbe mure ancun epi ne bouge, Qu'a l'ardeur des rayons crepite le frement, Que le coquelicot tombe languissament Sous le faible fardeau de sa corolle rouge,

Tous les oiseaux de l'air out fait taire leur chants; Les ramiers paresseux, au plus noir des ramures, Somnolents, dans les bois, out cesse leurs murmures Loin du soleil muet incendiant les champs.

Dans le ble, cependant, d'intrepides cigales Jetant leurs mille bruits, fanfare de l'ete, Out frenetiquement et sans treve agite Leurs ailes sur l'airaine de leurs folles cymbales.

Tremoussantes, deboutes sur les longs epis d'or, Virtuoses qui vont s'eteindre avant l'automne, Elles poussent au del leur hymne monotone Que dans I'ombre des nuits retentisse encore.

Et rien n'arretera leurs cris intarissables; Quand on les cha.s.sera de l'avoine et des bles.

Elles emigreront sur les buissons brules Qui se meurent de soif dans les deserts de sable.

Sur l'arbuste effeuille, sur les chardons fletris Qui laissent s'envoler leur blanche chevelure, On reverra l'insecte a la forte encolure, Pleine d'ivresse, toujours s'exalter dans ses cris.

Jusqu'a ce qu'ouvrant l'aile en lambeaux arrachee, Exaspere, brulant d'un feu toujours plus pur, Son oeil de bronze fixe et tendu vers l'azur, II expire en chantant sur la tige sechee.

For the word "encolure" we have no English equivalent; it means the line of the neck and shoulder--sometimes the general appearance of shape of the body.

"When in the ripening grain field not a single ear of wheat moves; when in the beaming heat the corn seems to crackle; when the poppy languishes and bends down under the feeble burden of its scarlet corolla,

"Then all the birds of the air have hushed their songs; even the indolent doves, seeking the darkest part of the foliage in the tree, have become drowsy in the woods, and have ceased their cooing, far from the fields, which the silent sun is burning.

"Nevertheless, in the wheat, the brave gra.s.shoppers uttering their thousand sounds, a trumpet flourish of summer, have continued furiously and unceasingly to smite their wings upon the bra.s.s of their wild cymbal.

"Quivering as they stand upon the long gold ears of the grain, master musicians who must die before the coming of Fall, they sound to heaven their monotonous hymn, which re-echoes even in the darkness of the night.

"And nothing will check their inexhaustible shrilling. When chased away from the oats and from the wheat, they will migrate to the scorched bushes which die of thirst in the wastes of sand.

"Upon the leafless shrubs, upon the dried up thistles, which let their white hair fall and float away, there the st.u.r.dily-built insect can be seen again, filled with enthusiasm, even more and more excited as he cries,

"Until, at last, opening his wings, now rent into shreds, exasperated, burning more and more fiercely in the frenzy of his excitement, and with his eyes of bronze always fixed motionlessly upon the azure sky, he dies in his song upon the withered grain."

This is difficult to translate at all satisfactorily, owing to the mult.i.tude of images compressed together. But the idea expressed is a fine one--the courage of the insect challenging the sun, and only chanting more and more as the heat and the thirst increase. The poem has, if you like, the fault of exaggeration, but the colour and music are very fine; and even the exaggeration itself has the merit of making the images more vivid.

It will not be necessary to quote another text; we shall scarcely have the time; but I want to translate to you something of another poem upon the same insect by the modern French poet Jean Aicard. In this poem, as in the little poem by Gautier, which I quoted to you, the writer puts his thought in the mouth of the insect, so to say--that is, makes the insect tell its own story.

"I am the impa.s.sive and n.o.ble insect that sings in the summer solstice from the dazzling dawn all the day long in the fragrant pine-wood. And my song is always the same, regular as the equal course of the season and of the sun. I am the speech of the hot and beaming sun, and when the reapers, weary of heaping the sheaves together, lie down in the lukewarm shade, and sleep and pant in the ardour of noonday--then more than at any other time do I utter freely and joyously that double-echoing strophe with which my whole body vibrates. And when nothing else moves in all the land round about, I palpitate and loudly sound my little drum. Otherwise the sunlight triumphs; and in the whole landscape nothing is heard but my cry,--like the joy of the light itself.

"Like a b.u.t.terfly I take up from the hearts of the flowers that pure water which the night lets fall into them like tears. I am inspired only by the almighty sun. Socrates listened to me; Virgil made mention of me. I am the insect especially beloved by the poets and by the bards. The ardent sun reflects himself in the globes of my eyes. My ruddy bed, which seems to be powdered like the surface of fine ripe fruit, resembles some exquisite key-board of silver and gold, all quivering with music. My four wings, with their delicate net-work of nerves, allow the bright down upon my black back to be seen through their transparency. And like a star upon the forehead of some divinely inspired poet, three exquisitely mounted rubies glitter upon my head."

These are fair examples of the French manner of treating the interesting subject of insects in poetry. If you should ask me whether the French poets are better than the English, I should answer, "In point of feeling, no." The real value of such examples to the student should be emotional, not descriptive. I think that the j.a.panese poems on insects, though not comparable in point of mere form with some of the foreign poems which I have quoted, are better in another way--they come nearer to the true essence of poetry. For the j.a.panese poets have taken the subject of insects chiefly for the purpose of suggesting human emotion; and that is certainly the way in which such a subject should be used. Remember that this is an age in which we are beginning to learn things about insects which could not have been even imagined fifty years ago, and the more that we learn about these miraculous creatures, the more difficult does it become for us to write poetically about their lives, or about their possible ways of thinking and feeling. Probably no mortal man will ever be able to imagine how insects think or feel or hear or even see. Not only are their senses totally different from those of animals, but they appear to have a variety of special senses about which we can not know anything at all. As for their existence, it is full of facts so atrocious and so horrible as to realize most of the imaginations of old about the torments of h.e.l.l. Now, for these reasons to make an insect speak in poetry--to put one's thoughts, so to speak, into the mouth of an insect--is no longer consistent with poetical good judgment. No; we must think of insects either in relation to the mystery of their marvellous lives, or in relation to the emotion which their sweet and melancholy music makes within our minds. The impressions produced by hearing the shrilling of crickets at night or by hearing the storm of cicadae in summer woods--those impressions indeed are admirable subjects for poetry, and will continue to be for all time.

When I lectured to you long ago about Greek and English poems on insects, I told you that nearly all the English poems on the subject were quite modern. I still believe that I was right in this statement, as a general a.s.sertion; but I have found one quaint poem about a gra.s.shopper, which must have been written about the middle of the seventeenth century or, perhaps, a little earlier. The date of the author's birth and death are respectively 1618 and 1658. His name, I think, you are familiar with--Richard Lovelace, author of many amatory poems, and of one especially famous song, "To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars"--containing the celebrated stanza--

Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore; I could not love thee, Dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.

Well, as I said, this man wrote one pretty little poem on a gra.s.shopper, which antedates most of the English poems on insects, if not all of them.

THE GRa.s.sHOPPER

O Thou that swing'st upon the waving ear Of some well-filled oaten beard, Drunk every night with a delicious tear Dropt thee from heaven, where now th'art rear'd!

The joys of earth and air are thine entire, That with thy feet and wings dost hop and fly; And when thy poppy works, thou dost retire To thy carved acorn-bed to lie.

Up with the day, the Sun thou welcom'st then, Sport'st in the gilt plaits of his beams, And all these merry days mak'st merry men Thyself, and melancholy streams.

A little artificial, this poem written at least two hundred and fifty years ago; but it is pretty in spite of its artifice. Some of the conceits are so quaint that they must be explained. By the term "oaten beard," the poet means an ear of oats; and you know that the grain of this plant is furnished with very long hair, so that many poets have spoken of the bearded oats. You may remember in this connection Tennyson's phrase "the bearded barley" in the "Lady of Shalott," and Longfellow's term "bearded grain" in his famous poem about the Reaper Death. When a person's beard is very thick, we say in England to-day "a full beard," but in the time of Shakespeare they used to say "a well filled beard"--hence the phrase in the second line of the first stanza.

In the third line the term "delicious tear" means dew,--which the Greeks called the tears of the night, and sometimes the tears of the dawn; and the phrase "drunk with dew" is quite Greek--so we may suspect that the author of this poem had been reading the Greek Anthology. In the third line of the second stanza the word "poppy" is used for sleep--a very common simile in Elizabethan times, because from the poppy flower was extracted the opiate which enables sick persons to sleep. The Greek authors spoke of poppy sleep. "And when thy poppy works," means, when the essence of sleep begins to operate upon you, or more simply, when you sleep. Perhaps the phrase about the "carved acorn-bed" may puzzle you; it is borrowed from the fairy-lore of Shakespeare's time, when fairies were said to sleep in little beds carved out of acorn sh.e.l.ls; the simile is used only by way of calling the insect a fairy creature. In the second line of the third stanza you may notice the curious expression about the "gilt plaits" of the sun's beams. It was the custom in those days, as it still is in these, for young girls to plait their long hair; and the expression "gilt plaits" only means braided or plaited golden hair. This is perhaps a Greek conceit; for cla.s.sic poets spoke of the golden hair of the Sun G.o.d as illuminating the world. I have said that the poem is a little artificial, but I think you will find it pretty, and even the whimsical similes are "precious" in the best sense.

CHAPTER XII

NOTE ON THE INFLUENCE OF FINNISH POETRY IN ENGLISH LITERATURE