Here is an entry that shows how Hearn, sometimes over the
course of many years, never forgot his inspirational origins. First, for those
who follow Hearn’s Cincinnati career, we undoubtedly remember his posthumous
satirical obituary for his short-lived paper Ye Giglampz titled simply: Giglampz.
This article appeared on October 4th, 1874, in the Cincinnati Enquirer; and as other Hearnologists have
pointed out, there is a short quotation from this article that self-describes
the young ambitious journalist in satirical detail stating:
“Now, in those days there was a young man connected with the
Daily Enquirer whose tastes were
whimsically grotesque and arabesque. He was by nature a fervent admirer of
extremes. He believed only in the Revoltingly Horrible or the Excruciatingly
Beautiful. He worshiped the French School of sensation, and reveled in
thrusting a reeking mixture of bones, blood and hair under people’s noses at
breakfast time. To produce qualms in the
stomachs of other people affords him especial delight. To borrow the
picturesque phraseology of Jean Paul Richter, his life-path was ever running
down into vaults and out over graves. He was only known to fame by the name of “The
Ghoul.”
In the first sentence, we have the descriptors “grotesque
and arabesque.” And, as you might likely already know, Hearn was a great
admirer, in his youth, of Edgar Allan Poe. Could it be any wonder then that we
find Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
to be the title of a two-volume collection, published in 1840, of Poe’s works
which included stories like The Fall of
the House of Usher, MS. Found in a Bottle, and Ligeia? No. The connection is so vivid, giving us even the very
title of the volumes the young Hearn adored so.
At the risk of making this entry too long, I will provide one
more fascinating connection in Hearn’s life.
So far in my eyes the most mesmeric translation done by
Hearn was his version of Theophile Gautier’s Clarimonde, a short story included in Hearn’s collection of Gautier
titled One of Cleopatra’s Nights and
Other Fantastic Romances. Although not published until 1882—Hearn then
living in New Orleans—we can know, from the descriptions by his Cincinnati
friends, that he labored tirelessly at translating Gautier while working at the
Cincinnati Enquirer. This means his
translations of Gautier were started before 1875 when Hearn was unjustly fired
from the newspaper. In fact, from his letters out of New Orleans, we know that
Hearn was merely trying to finish his translation of the last story in that
collection of Gautier he had been working on (King Candaules). This might mean
that Clarimonde was finished before
even 1875. Why does this matter? Time elapse!
In the year 1894, Hearn’s most famous book from Japan was
published, titled Glimpses of Unfamiliar
Japan. To this day, it is perhaps his most well-known work. Yet, in the
text of his later-lamented translations of Gautier, in the tale Clarimonde, a sentence catches our eyes:
“And gazing I felt opening
within me gates that had until then remained closed; vents long
obstructed became all clear, permitting glimpses of unfamiliar perspectives
within; life suddenly made itself visible to me under a totally novel aspect.”
