Books and Habits, from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn

This book gathers the lectures that Lafcadio Hearn gave to Japanese students at the University of Tokyo, with an introduction by John Erskine. Erskine presents them as an interpretation of Western civilization for the East, touching on ethics, literature and the kinship he finds between the Greeks and the Japanese. Hearn speaks as a teacher who wants his listeners to understand not only English books but the habits of mind and feeling behind them. The lectures move freely from subject to subject. Hearn begins with the Western reverence for women and with love in English poetry, from Tennyson and Rossetti to Browning and Keats, including poems on the ideal future wife. He then turns to shorter verse, to French sonnets on Japanese subjects, and to the English Bible from Jerome to the King James version. The Norse "Havamal" and the question of morality "beyond man," with the ants as his example, follow. Poems about insects lead to the Finnish "Kalevala" and to medieval romance, chiefly "Amis and Amile." The book closes with William Cory's "Ionica" and with Greek idyls and mimes, especially Theocritus and Herodas. A reader gains the experience of being taught by a perceptive and sympathetic guide. Hearn explains why English poetry says what it does, and also why it is silent on some subjects, such as insects. He compares East and West with candour, defends old moral ideas and old stories, and shows how close reading reveals human nature. The book gives lasting pleasure to anyone who wants to read poetry more carefully.

Hearn's lectures return most often to English poetry, and above all to love as its governing theme. He explains the dominance of love in English verse through Western marriage and the Western reverence for women, which he traces to Northern peoples, the Virgin Mary, chivalry and the Renaissance. He defends love as an idealising passion, illustrating it with Tennyson's "Maud," Thompson's "Atalanta's Race," and poems by Rossetti, Browning, Keats, Wordsworth, Byron and others. He also notes that Eastern poetry rarely treats the ideal future wife. His method is to present and gloss poems for Japanese students, setting Western feeling against Eastern habits of mind. A second concern is the wider inheritance behind English letters. Hearn follows the English Bible from Jerome's Vulgate through Tyndale to the King James version, praising its literary greatness and condemning the exact but unpoetic later revision. He finds enduring English character in the Norse "Havamal," and he urges Japanese poets to learn from the Finnish "Kalevala." Greek poetry, from Theocritus to William Cory's "Ionica," serves as a model of close attention to human nature. He defends medieval romance, notably "Amis and Amile," for its moral lessons. He also asks why English verse has so few insect poems, blaming Christian dogma and Descartes, and he rejects Nietzsche while finding in the ants a selfless society beyond morality.

Reading unit 1 — Introduction to On Love in English Poetry. John Erskine's introduction presents Hearn's lectures to Japanese students at the University of Tokyo as an interpretation of Western civilization for the East, touching on ethics, literature and Greek and Japanese kinship. Hearn then names the Western attitude toward women as the students' greatest obstacle, tracing its quasi-religious reverence to Northern peoples, the Virgin Mary, chivalry and the Renaissance. Turning to English poetry, he explains love's dominance through Western marriage, defends love as idealising passion, and illustrates it with Tennyson's "Maud" and Thompson's "Atalanta's Race."

Reading unit 2 — On Love in English Poetry to Meet We No Angels, Pansie?. Lafcadio Hearn's lectures here turn to love in English poetry. He first describes love as a feeling of old acquaintance, then examines Rossetti, O'Shaughnessy, Tennyson, Patmore, Browning, Hugo and Keats, noting love's persistence beyond death, its memories, and its illusions. He then considers poems on the ideal future wife, by Edwin Arnold, Crashaw, Christina Rossetti and William Cory, a theme he says Eastern poetry rarely treats. The lectures close with poems idealizing women, including Thomas Ashe's "Pansie," Wordsworth, Carew, Byron, Hood and Browning, the last showing a lover's illusion.

Reading unit 3 — Evelyn Hope to The Bible in English Literature. This part of the book gathers Lafcadio Hearn's lectures on poetry and the English Bible. He presents Browning's "Evelyn Hope," Ben Jonson's "The Triumph," and Hartley Coleridge's portrait of the solitary-hearted woman. He then surveys the shortest forms of English poetry, praising a few examples and blaming English's imperfection for their scarcity. Next he considers foreign poems on Japanese subjects, especially Heredia's sonnets, "Le Samourai" and "Le Daimio." The section closes by tracing the English Bible, from Jerome's Vulgate through Tyndale to the King James version.

Reading unit 4 — The Bible in English Literature to Beyond Man. Hearn first follows the English Bible from the Bishops' Bible and the Douay version to the King James version, praising its literary greatness and condemning the exact but unpoetic later revision, then advises students which books and aids to read. He next turns to the Norse "Havamal," whose counsel on caution, speech, restraint, common sense, friendship and reserve reveals enduring English character, and compares it with Gracian's worldly wisdom. Finally, in "Beyond Man," he rejects Nietzsche and finds a state beyond morality in the ants.

Reading unit 5 — Beyond Man to Some Poems about Insects. Lafcadio Hearn opens with ants, a society of sexless, selfless workers and soldiers in which sex is voluntarily suppressed, and asks whether humanity might reach such unselfishness, setting this hope against Nietzsche. He then argues that morality remains sound, that evolutionary "new ethics" merely explains old rules, that asceticism served mankind, and that loyalty and tolerance matter. Finally he turns to poems about insects: the butterfly as soul in Coleridge, Wordsworth and Browning, then Tennyson's dragon-fly, Blake's and Emerson's poems, and crickets.

Reading unit 6 — Some Poems about Insects to MA LIBELLULE. This part of the book gathers Hearn's lectures on insects in poetry. He asks why English verse has so few such poems, unlike Japanese poetry, and examines Keats, Tennyson, Holmes, Freneau and Stetson's satire "A Conservative." He discusses the myth of Arachne and Cooke's poem, then blames Christian dogma, Descartes and ancient taboos, including Beelzebub and the beetle, for the silence, which science has since eased, as Whittier's ants show. He then treats Solomon and the ants, Gray's ode, French poems on the dragonfly and grasshopper, and Lovelace.

Reading unit 7 — THE GRASSHOPPER to The Most Beautiful Romance of the Middle Ages. This part of the book opens with Hearn's gloss on a pretty, artificial old poem to the grasshopper, tracing its conceits to Greek poetry, Shakespeare's time, Tennyson and Longfellow. It then turns to the Finnish "Kalevala," shaped by Lönnrot from folk songs: its parallel, alliterative verse, heroes such as Kullervo, Wainamoinen, Ilmarinen and Lemminkainen, its moral counsel and nature poetry, and its influence on "Hiawatha." Hearn urges Japanese poets to learn from it. A final section defends medieval romance for its moral lessons, illustrated by a tale of diamond statues.

Reading unit 8 — The Most Beautiful Romance of the Middle Ages to MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH. Lafcadio Hearn closes an "Arabian Nights" tale, in which a king regains his beloved, to honour the virtuous woman, then turns to medieval romance, chiefly "Amis and Amile," a story of friendship tested by leprosy, in which the children slain for a friend's cure are restored. He prefers the French version to the English. He then introduces William Cory's "Ionica," discussing "Mimnermus in Church," Greek acceptance of transience, Cory's personal poems, his Greek translations, the idyl, and a scholar's suffering from want of affection.

Reading unit 9 — Old Greek Fragments to INDEX. This part of the book draws on Lafcadio Hearn's lectures about Greek pastoral and dramatic poetry. Hearn uses Theocritus's fifteenth idyl, in which Gorgo and Praxinoe attend a festival of Adonis in Alexandria, to argue that great literature comes from close study of human nature. He also discusses Herodas's "Mimes" and the tenth idyl, where the peasant Battus praises the flute-girl Bombyca. He distinguishes three kinds of idyl, notes Roman and modern imitations, explains "amoebæan," and urges careful rereading. The Index section lists no entries.

The book belongs to the Victorian age, the long reign of Queen Victoria, when society prized a high standard of personal conduct and an emphasis on morality that spurred reform while also limiting some people's liberty. It was a time of widening literacy, with childhood education becoming near-universal in Great Britain for the first time, and of great scientific and technological progress. Britain was then the leading world power, its empire still expanding. The material supplies no more detail about the publication year itself, so this wider picture is the setting against which the lectures must be read. Hearn's lectures answer that setting from an unusual angle. Delivered to Japanese students at the University of Tokyo, they are, in John Erskine's presentation, an interpretation of Western civilization for the East. Their attention to moral feeling suits an age that valued conduct, and their reverence for poetry suits an age of spreading literacy. Hearn names the Western attitude toward women as the greatest obstacle for his students, and he traces its almost religious reverence to Northern peoples, the Virgin Mary, chivalry and the Renaissance. He explains the dominance of love in English poetry through Western marriage, and he illustrates it with Tennyson, Browning and others. A later group of lectures turns to the English Bible. Together these lectures carry Victorian ideals of love, ethics and literature across a cultural divide.

Read today, in this edition, these lectures are best taken as a document of a particular act of translation. Hearn, a Greek and Irish writer, translator and teacher who became a Japanese citizen, addressed Japanese students at the University of Tokyo and tried to interpret Western civilization for the East. His own life suits that task. He was born on Lefkada, raised in Dublin, worked as a journalist in Cincinnati and New Orleans, and then settled in Japan. A modern reader may value him less as a neutral authority than as someone standing between cultures, explaining one to the other. The book's touches on ethics, literature and the kinship of Greek and Japanese thought make it a record of that exchange as much as a course in poetry. The claims themselves now invite more questioning than they once might have. Hearn names the Western attitude toward women as his students' greatest obstacle. He traces its quasi-religious reverence to Northern peoples, the Virgin Mary, chivalry and the Renaissance. He then argues that love dominates English poetry because of Western marriage, and he defends love as an idealising passion. Today we can read his examples, from Tennyson's "Maud" to poems of the ideal future wife and of idealised women, both as literary criticism and as evidence of the habits of feeling he wished to explain. The digital era has widened what counts as literature, and it lets us hold his generalisations at a distance while still enjoying the poems he chose.

1. What the book says. Books and Habits gathers Lafcadio Hearn's lectures to Japanese students at the University of Tokyo, offered, in John Erskine's introduction, as an interpretation of Western civilization for the East. Its central argument is that a literature cannot be understood apart from the feelings and habits behind it, so Hearn begins with the Western reverence for women, which he traces to Northern peoples, the Virgin Mary, chivalry and the Renaissance, and which he treats as the key to love's dominance in English poetry. The lectures follow no single plan but move through related subjects. Love poems, including those on the ideal future wife, give way to the shortest forms of verse, foreign poems on Japanese themes, and the history of the English Bible. Hearn then takes up the Norse "Havamal" as a mirror of English character, and Nietzsche set against the ants, whose selfless society raises questions of ethics. Poems about insects, the Finnish "Kalevala," medieval romance such as "Amis and Amile," William Cory, and Theocritus and Herodas complete the book. Throughout, Hearn urges careful reading and close study of human nature.

2. Deeper context. Hearn's method rests on the assumption that literature is a transcript of feeling and habit, so that a foreign reader must first learn the emotional customs behind a poem before its words can mean anything. This is why he begins with the Western attitude toward women, which he calls the students' greatest obstacle. He treats Japanese students as intelligent outsiders who need the key to a civilization, and Erskine's introduction confirms that the lectures serve as an interpretation of West for East. The works are linked less by plan than by recurring concerns. Love, idealisation, and illusion run from Tennyson and Browning to Cory's regret, while the ants and insect poems test where human feeling ends and another order of life begins. The Norse "Havamal," the Bible, the "Kalevala," and medieval romance suggest that national character is inherited from older sources and can be learned from them. Implied rather than stated is Hearn's quiet comparison of Japan with the West: his remark on Greek and Japanese kinship, his urging of Japanese poets to learn from Finnish song, and his regret at English silence on insects all invite the students to measure their own tradition against what they read.

Lafcadio Hearn was born on 27 June 1850 in Lefkada and died on 26 September 1904 (writer, novelist, screenwriter, poet, literary critic).

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) was a Greek and Irish writer, translator, and teacher who helped introduce the culture and literature of Japan to the Western world. Born on the Greek island of Lefkada, he was taken to Dublin, where his mother, his father, and finally his father's aunt, his appointed guardian, all abandoned him. At nineteen he emigrated to the United States and worked as a newspaper reporter, first in Cincinnati and then in New Orleans, where he spent a decade and wrote works that remain well known. He was then sent as a correspondent to Martinique for two years. In 1890 he went to Japan, where he stayed for the rest of his life, took the name Yakumo Koizumi, became a Japanese citizen, and married Setsuko Koizumi, with whom he had four children. His collections of legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan, gave unprecedented insight into Japanese culture.

Not established. No portrait with a verified licence was used. Details that the consulted sources do not state (for example education or family) are not supplied here.

Sources. Wikidata Q313638 — Lafcadio Hearn; Wikipedia — Lafcadio Hearn; Open Library — Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn; Wikipedia — 1896 in literature; Wikipedia — Victorian era. Identifiers: VIAF 12034, ISNI 0000000121171376, LCCN n79073520, OPENLIBRARY OL5991559A, GND 11870933X.

Hearn's lectures endure because they show a gifted teacher translating one civilization for another. Across the book, he returns to a few large concerns: love and the idealising of women in English poetry, the moral force of the English Bible and the Norse "Havamal," and the neglected poetry of insects. He also turns to Greek idyls, the Finnish "Kalevala" and medieval romance such as "Amis and Amile." His method is steady. He reads closely, compares East and West, and argues that great literature grows from close study of human nature. His ants, set against Nietzsche, show him thinking boldly about ethics and unselfishness. His reflections on why English verse is so silent about insects, which he blames on Christian dogma, Descartes and old taboos, remain suggestive. For readers today, the book's chief value is its warmth and its habit of attentive rereading. It lets us see poems through the eyes of a teacher who addressed Japanese students. Its limits are equally plain. These are lectures, so they move by enthusiasm and anthology, and some judgments are firmly of their time. This is clearest in his confident claims about morality, "new ethics" and the Western attitude toward women. Even so, they still send us back to the poems themselves.