The Sandman (1816) by E.T.A. Hoffmann

The fantastic stories of E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) were very influential during the whole 19th c., being adapted into such ballets as Coppelia and The Nutknacker, as well as Schumann's piano work Kreisleriana - and not to forget the opera The Tales of Hoffmann by Offenbach. Hoffmann (1776-1822) was one of the major authors of the Romantic movement. Besides a writer of fantastic stories, he also was a composer (he has left us an excellent symphony, piano sonatas, an opera, etc.), a music critic, a painter, and in daily life a jurist. Born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), Hoffmann served in the Prussian bureaucracy in the Polish provinces until the defeat of Prussia by Napoleon in 1806. He then turned to his chief interest, music, and held positions as a music director, conductor and critic in Bamberg and Dresden. It was around this time that he changed his third baptismal name Wilhelm into "Amadeus" out of respect for Mozart. In 1814 he was appointed to the court of appeal in Berlin, and he became a Councillor in 1816. 

[E.T.A. Hoffmann]

It is in his later years that Hoffmann was mainly active as a writer, publishing two novels and about 50 stories. Hoffmann combined fantastic elements with realistic descriptions and examinations of character and psychology. He showed both the tragic and grotesque sides of human nature with great irony. The contrast between Hoffmann's daily life as a bureaucrat and the ideal world of his art forms the object of several stories as well.

"The Sandman" is one of the eight stories included in Nachtstücke ("Night Pieces," translated as Hoffmann’s Strange Stories or Weird Tales) from 1817. "The Sandman" not only introduces the horrific titular character, but also brings a woman who is in reality an automatic doll on stage. It was one of the core texts studied by Freud in his essay "Das Unheimliche" (The Uncanny).

Nathanael, the protagonist, is warned as a child about the Sandman, who throws sand in the eyes of children who will not go to sleep, so that the eyes fall out and can be collected by the Sandman. The sinister Coppelius comes to conduct experiments with Nathanael's father; Nathanael sees Coppelius and associates him with the Sandman. Nathanael is discovered as he observes Coppelius and his father conducting alchemical experiments; Coppelius wants to burn his eyes out, but the father saves him. Nathanael's father is later killed by an explosion during one of Coppelius's visits - there is a suggestion that Coppelius was responsible for the sudden death of the father.

[Illustration by Hoffmann for "The Sandman"]

Later in the story, when Nathanael is living as a student in rooms in a different city than his hometown, Coppelius reappears in the guise of Coppola, an Italian trader in lenses. Coppola calls to sell his wares, and offers "pretty eyes," which reawakens Nathanael's childish fear of the Sandman. However, it turns out that Coppola has lenses and spectacles to sell, and also small telescopes, and Nathanael buys one of these from him.

Nathanael lives opposite the house of Spalanzani, his physics professor, who has a daughter, Olimpia. Only a brief glimpse of the young woman is enough to make a strong impression on Nathanael. Nathanael becomes obsessed by watching Olimpia through his telescope, although her fixed gaze and motionless stance disconcert him.

Olimpia has been created by Spalanzani (a double of the father) and Coppola (the double of Coppelius). Spallanzani gives a big party at which his daughter is presented in public for the first time. Nathanael is invited, and becomes enraptured by Olimpia, who plays the harpsichord, sings and dances. Her stiffness of movement and coldness of touch appear strange to many of the company. But Nathanael repeatedly dances with her, impressed by her perfect rhythm, and eventually tells her of his passion for her, to which Olimpia replies only "Ah, ah!"

Eventually Nathanael determines to propose to Olimpia, but when he arrives at her rooms he finds an argument in progress between Spallanzani and Coppola, who are fighting over the body of Olimpia and arguing over who made the eyes and who made the clockwork. This fight between the two "fathers" repeats the fight that Coppelius and Nathanael's father had over Nathanael himself, when he was discovered spying on their experiments. Coppola wins the struggle, and makes off with the lifeless and eyeless body, while the injured Spallanzani urges Nathanael to chase after him and recover the automaton to which he has devoted so many years of his life. The sight of Olimpia's eyes lying on the ground drives Nathanael mad, and he flies at the professor to strangle him. He is pulled away by others and, in a state of insanity, is taken to an asylum.

Nathanael recovers, and he is about to marry his fiancee Clara, the sister of his friend Lothar, who has been corresponding with him while waiting patiently. They ascend the tower of the town hall in their hometown to enjoy the view of the surrounding countryside. Nathanael pulls out his spy glass, and he sees Clara through the lens. Used to seeing Olimpia through the spyglass, madness strikes Nathanael again, and he tries to hurl Clara from the steeple. She is saved by her brother Lothar, but in the crowd that gathers below the sinister Coppelius appears, and upon seeing him Nathanael cries "pretty eyes!" and leaps over the railing to his death.

The spy-glass is a kind of symbol for the revelation of a hidden secret, a tool that reveals the uncanny. It allows Nathanael to gain access to the repressed parts of his own past.

Because for Freud, the source of the uncanny is tied to the idea of being robbed of one's eyes (loss of the eyes = fear of castration). In "The Sandman," Coppelius, the "bad" father, interferes with all love relationships. He is the powerful, castrating father who supplants (kills) the good father who first protects Nathanael's "eyes."

The fear of the loss of the eyes in the story re-invokes the castration complex as part of infantile sexuality. What is uncanny here is the return of something in psycho-sexual history that has been overcome and forgotten. The uncanny arises due to the return of repressed infantile material.

Hoffmann also works with doubles, as we saw. The double (doppelganger) finds its source in the narcissism of the child, its self-love. In early childhood this produces projections of multiple selves. By doing this the child insures its immortality. But when it is encountered later in life, after childhood narcissism has been overcome, the double invokes a sensation of the uncanny - a return to a primitive state.

Freud also mentions alternative meanings for the double: it represents everything that is unacceptable to the ego, all its negative traits that have been suppressed; and on the other hand, it also embodies all those utopian dreams, wishes, hopes that are suppressed by the reality principle, by the encounter with society.

[Repliee Q2, an uncannily lifelike robot,
developed by Osaka University]

Of course the doll Olimpia, which so eerily resembles a human being, is also a double - a double and therefore a false reflection of humanity. The more dolls and robots resemble us humans, or in other words the more realistic they are, the more uncanny they become. The article about the uncanny in Wikipedia is illustrated with a photo of Repliee Q2, a surprisingly lifelike robot developed by Osaka University.

Nathanael struggles his whole life against post-traumatic stress which comes from a traumatic episode with the Sandman in his childhood experience. Until the end of the story it remains open whether this experience was real, or just a dream of the young Nathanael. Hoffman consciously leaves the reader uncertain.

All in all, "The Sandman" is a seminal work not only in German literature, but much wider in Western culture and psychology. Why is this great writer, E.T.A. Hoffmann, almost unknown in the anglophone world?

"Der Sandman" is our of copyright; see here for the English translation by J. T. Bealby published in 1885. The ideas about Freud in the last part of my article were inspired by Lecture Notes: Freud, "The Uncanny" .

 The Custom of the Country (1913) by Edith Wharton

In 1913, Edith Wharton wrote a novel called The Custom of the Country, in which  the country is America and the custom is divorce. It is the first novel to portray America in all its materialistic harshness and superficial commercialism, the ultimate novel of capitalism and commodification. The ruthless anti-heroine, Undine Spragg, is the spoiled, ignorant, shallow, amoral, and utterly selfish product of the economically booming American hinterland; she is named after a hair-curler her father “put on the market the week she was born,” which is a reminder of her humble origins as she begins her social climb. Undine is about to rise to the top of wealth and status by a series of shrewd marriages, using her good looks as a commodity. She aggressively pursues her ambition of getting a husband who can fund the lifestyle that she has read about in society columns.

[Edith Wharton by Edward Harrison May]

At the beginning of the novel, her nouveau riche parents have moved Undine from Apex, the Midwestern town she grew up, to a hotel in New York. She spends her days shopping and gossiping with her mother’s manicurist, reading tabloids, and pining to know the people she reads about. Her great break, socially speaking, comes when she meets the Ralph, from a patrician New York family. After a brief courtship she marries him, only to notice that his finances are too restricted to give her the wealthy life she is dreaming of. She goes on to have an extramarital affair, divorces Ralph, moves to Paris, marries a French Count, divorces him as well and finally, he marries an American millionaire - who happens to be a boy from her hometown - which means that at least she is now socially on the same level as her husband, which was not the case with her previous two marriages, where she could not keep up with her new environment.

The institution of marriage changed dramatically in Wharton’s lifetime. Divorce rates in the US doubled between 1880 and 1900 and by 1920 had more than doubled again. This was due to new laws in Western states. And if you lived in a state with stricter laws, like New York, you could go out west to get a divorce, which is exactly what Undine does. “Cool” is the word Wharton most frequently uses to describe Undine’s reactions to men. After her marriage to Ralph, Undine even approaches adultery coolly. Love, for her, is a commodity.

As a social climber who uses serial marriage to get the material things she wants, Undine seems rather disagreeable, but on the other hand she is also a hilarious and often delightful character to read about. Whether or not the reader likes her, she entertains, and is vivid on the page.

“The Custom of the Country” is by no means the earliest novel in which marriages are dissolved, but it is the first novel in the Western canon to put serial divorce at its center, and in so doing it sounds the death knell of the “marriage plot” that had invigorated countless narratives in centuries past (think Jane Austen). The once high stakes of choosing a spouse are dramatically lowered when a bad choice can easily be undone by divorce. “The Custom of the Country,” which is a story of mistakes without lasting consequences, ends with the cartoonish spectacle of Undine’s marrying the soon-to-be richest man in America and still not being satisfied.

The Custom of the Country is in the public domain and available at Gutenberg.

Chita: A Memory of Last Island (1889) by Lafcadio Hearn

In the fall of 1877, Lafcadio Hearn left his newspaper work in Cincinnati and moved to the exotic southern city of New Orleans. He would live for nearly a decade in New Orleans, writing for several newspapers, but also studying local customs and writing a cookbook about Creole cuisine. Hearn wrote editorials, and cultural reviews, for example about Zola; he also translated some French literature. In other articles he introduced Buddhism. The large number of his writings on New Orleans and its environs, also include the city's Creole population, impressionistic descriptions of places and characters, and Louisiana Voodoo. Hearn's writings for national publications, such as Harper's Weekly and Scribner's Magazine, helped create New Orleans' popular reputation as a place with a distinct culture more akin to that of Europe and the Caribbean than the rest of North America. During the time he lived there, Hearn was little known, and even now he is little known for his writing about New Orleans except by local cultural devotees.

[Lafcadio Hearn in 1889]

Harper's sent Hearn to the West Indies as a correspondent in 1887. He spent two years in Martinique (before traveling on to Japan, his final and most important destination) and in Martinique he wrote and published the novella based on his stay in New Orleans: Chita, a Memory of Last Island. Last Island (Isle Dernière) was a barrier island and a pleasure resort popular with wealthy vacationers southwest of New Orleans on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. It was destroyed by the Last Island Hurricane of August 10, 1856. Over 200 people perished in the storm. Every structure on the island including the hotel, a large, two-story wooden structure of considerable strength, was destroyed. Today only small pieces of several smaller islands remain and the only population consists of seabirds.

Lafcadio Hearn used these basic historical facts to create Chita, a minor masterpiece that is by turns is mysterious and tragic. In the aftermath of the hurricane, a Spanish fisherman (Feliu) wades into the Gulf to pick through debris. Among the bodies, he finds one that is still alive, a young Creole girl. Her parents are presumed to have died in the storm.

[Hearn's former home on Cleveland Avenue in New Orleans
is now a registered historic place.]

Raised by the fisherman's family, Chita grows into a strong, independent young woman. Her story is counterpointed by that of her lost father, Julien, a doctor who thinks that his daughter is dead and, as a result, devotes himself to helping others in need. When he comes to Last Island to help stem a yellow fever epidemic, he encounters Chita...

Chita has been written in the lush, ornately aesthetic style of the 1890s. It blends fact with fiction in a haunting tale that is both impressionistic in its evocation of nature and realistic in its characterizations and depictions of life in the bayou of South Louisiana. There is a strong sense of place in this novella. Yet the extinction of the island also serves as a warning: without care, even the most serene beauty may be savored only for a short time.

It is a mystery why this beautiful novella by Hearn is today so utterly forgotten...

Annotated online edition in Louisana Anthology. Chita at Gutenberg.

 A Journey Round My Room (1794) by Xavier De Maistre

"The wise traveler travels only in imagination." A Journey Round My Room is a remedy against the terrors of modern mass tourism. No road-network is as vast as that of the imagination.

[Xavier de Maistre]

Xavier de Maistre (1763 – 1852) was born to an aristocratic family at Chambéry in Southeastern France (Savoy). He was the younger brother of noted philosopher and counter-revolutionary Joseph de Maistre and, when young, served in the army of Piedmont-Sardinia. It may be said that de Maistre became a writer by chance. When a young officer at Alexandria, in Piedmont, in 1790, he was arrested for dueling. Having been sentenced to remain in his quarters for forty-two days he composed his fantasy "Voyage autour de ma chambre" ("Voyage Around My Room"). He added some chapters later, but did not judge the work worthy of being published; however, his brother read the manuscript and had it printed (1794).

The delightful essay (or whatever it is) is filled with delicate observations, in which humor and spontaneous wit are wedded to a gentle and somewhat dreamy philosophy. The one room is the writer's eternal, infinite expedition space.

Imprisoned in his room for six weeks, the author looks at the furniture, engravings, etc., as if they were scenes from a voyage in a strange land. He praises this voyage because it does not cost anything, and for this reason it is strongly recommended to the poor, the infirm, and the lazy. His room is a long square, and the perimeter is thirty-six paces.

"When I travel in my room, I seldom keep to a straight line. From my table I go towards a picture which is placed in a corner; thence I set out in an oblique direction for the door; and then, although on starting I had intended to return to my table, yet, if I chance to fall in with my arm-chair on the way, I at once, and most unceremoniously, take up my quarters therein."

Later, proceeding North, he encounters his bed, and in this way he lightheartedly continues his "Voyage". Xavier de Maistre globetrotters from piece of furniture to piece of furniture, there is nothing so trivial or it provides an excursion into the mind. His room leads him to reflections about painting, about the influence of clothes on character, on revolution, progress in science, and fashion.

This work is remarkable for its play with the reader's imagination, along the lines of Laurence Sterne, whom Xavier admired. But Xavier de Maistre is not nearly as rowdy as Sterne, he is more jovial: truly a room-sized Sterne.

A slightly melancholy tone prevails in his travelogue, he raises his gaze to
a pleasant object, but in order not to be overcome by melancholy, he often quickly has to seek distraction in a digression, a short essay, a word to the reader.

Voyage autour de ma chambre enjoyed great popularity well into the nineteenth century, as the numerous editions prove - not to speak of the many parodies based upon it.

Voyage autour de ma chambre is in the public domain, as is the English translation A Journey Round My Room, which was published in 1871.

(Incorporates material from Wikipedia)

 The Semi-Attached Couple (1860) by Emily Eden

Emily Eden (1797–1869) belonged to the English aristocracy. Born in Westminster, she was the seventh daughter of William Eden, 1st Baron Auckland, and his wife Eleanor Elliot (and the great-great-great-aunt of Prime Minister Anthony Eden). In her late thirties, she and her sister Fanny traveled to India, where her brother George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland, was in office as Governor-General from 1835 to 1842. The accounts she wrote about India were later collected in the volume Up The Country (1867). While the emphasis was on travel descriptions and local color, Eden also paid attention to the major political events that occurred during her brother's term of office.

Emily Eden never married and was financially well enough off not to need to write, but did so out of passion. She wrote two successful (but now forgotten) novels: The Semi-Detached House (1859) and The Semi-Attached Couple (1860). The latter was written in 1829, but not published until 1860. Both have a comic touch that critics have compared with that of Jane Austen, who was Emily Eden's favorite author.

[Emily Eden]

The resemblance to Jane Austen is mentioned by every reviewer and indeed the writing style is very Austen-esque in tone and wit, while the social satire is just as sharp. But in other aspects the comparison is to the disadvantage of Eden, whose novels lack the depth and complexity of Austen's best work. On top of that, as many readers have complained, it is difficult to keep her characters apart - simply because Eden's characterization is poor, or in most cases, totally absent. She is wholly focused on plot and dialogue and leaves the secondary characters as vague phantoms. That is especially problematic when also the names are almost the same, as in "Lord Beaufort" and "Colonel Beaufort." I started making a character list but gave that up as futile when I noticed that at their first appearance characters were not at all introduced. Just reading on helped, however, enough to enjoy the basic story.

Another difference (but this one is not negative, on the contrary) is that the main plot starts where most books by Austen leave off: with the wedding and the aftermath: two people who do not know each other at all, trying to be husband and wife - in this respect I was reminded of Middlemarch by George Eliot.

The Semi-Attached Couple concerns two neighboring families, the Douglases and the Eskdales. The Eskdales are a Lord and Lady, one rung higher on the social ladder than Mr and Mrs Douglas. Mrs Douglas is the clearest character among the older generation, a woman who is full of hilarious snide comments, much like Mrs. Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, only with a sharper tongue.

The star of the novel is Helen, the youngest and most beautiful daughter of the Eskdales. She is about to be married to the super-wealthy Lord Teviot, who is considered quite a catch: "With five country houses—being four more than he could live in; with 120,000l. a year—being 30,000l. less than he could spend; . . .and the good looks of the poorest of younger brothers—what could he want but a wife?"

They marry too quickly after meeting and then have trouble getting to know each other afterwards. Helen has led a sheltered existence with her family and isn't quite ready to leave her home at 18 years of age; she is also frightened by Lord Teviot's passion for her. He in his turn becomes jealous of the influence her family has over his wife, feels there is lack of affection on her side, and frequently lets his temper get the best of him. One thing leads to another and the marriage appears doomed. Their problems are dissected with glee by opportunistic acquaintances who want to widen the rift between them for their own purposes.

The worst of these acquaintances is Lady Portmore, who is one of many invitees to a huge marathon house party Lord Teviot gives just after the marriage at his estate. Lady Portmore acts as the most important person in the world by slyly criticizing and even slandering all others - a bit like Caroline Bingley or Lady Catherine de Bourgh from Jane Austen's novels. Below is an example of conversation between Lady Portmore and Lord Teviot. Lady Portmore asks:

"Is that Helen's new horse she is riding? "

"No; Miss Forrester is on Selim." (answers Lord Teviot)

"Well, I wonder Helen did not prefer your gift. I am sure that from sentiment I should never allow any human being but myself to ride a horse that had been given to me by the person I loved best in the world."

"That is an interesting and romantic idea; but as I shall probably have the honour of furnishing Lady Teviot's stud to the end of our days, it is not very likely that she will refuse to lend a horse to her friends when they come."

"Oh dear, no, that would be selfish; and you know how I hate selfishness. I often say there is nobody thinks so little of self as I do. Still I wonder Helen did not ride Selim."

Lord Teviot was silent.

Of course, this being a Jane Austen type novel, in the end everything comes right, different from Middlemarch where two marriages end in shambles. It is a fun read with lots of wit and satire (there is also the description of a local election, which called Trollope to mind) - an outcome for all Austen fans who are starving for more books in the same style.

The Semi-Attached Couple is in the public domain and (like Eden's other novel) available for download at Wikisource.

  Iras: A Mystery (1896) by Theo Douglas [H.D. Everett] 

In the late 19th c., at the height of British colonialism, the theme of the Egyptian mummy was very popular in English fiction. In fact this was a form of reverse colonialism: "intrusive, exploitative actions perpetrated by British colonialists invited reciprocal mental and physical invasions from the female colonized subject," as it is stated in the academic literature. It was a way to show the anxiety felt by Victorian England regarding its colonial subjects (this is also beautifully explored in the novel The Hidden Force by the Dutch author Couperus, regarding the former Dutch colony of Indonesia). Some of the most extreme expressions of this topic in England are novels like The Beetle by Richard Marsh, or Pharos, The Egyptian by Guy Boothby. Iras: A Mystery is a much more soft and even tender evocation of the same subject, perhaps because it was written by a woman.

Theo Douglas was the pseudonym of H.S. Everett (1851-1923). Born as Henrietta Dorothy Huskisson in Gillingham in Kent into a military family, aged 18 she married solicitor Isaac Edward Everett. She began writing in 1896 at the age of forty-four and from then until 1920 she published 22 books under the pseudonym Theo Douglas. Although she also wrote historical novels, at least half of Everett's novels were based on fantasy and supernatural themes. 

That is also the case with the present novel, Iras: A Mystery (1896). The Egyptologist Ralph Lavenham is back in London after many years working in Egypt, but is still continuing his investigations into Egyptian antiquities. In order to study mummification techniques, he asks an associate in Egypt to provide him (illegally) with a completely intact mummy. He is living in rented rooms, but these include a studio where he has space to unwrap the new mummy, so that his artist friend Knollys can make exact drawings. But already before the new mummy arrives he has some strange experiences: he now and then sees an ancient Egyptian man who regards him with a threatening look in his eyes. This apparition appears at a party in a salon, but also outside in town; when he follows it, it disappears into the crowd.

Then the mummy arrives - making Ralph's landlady angry, as she doesn't fancy having a dead body in her house. At night, when he is alone, Ralph unwraps the mummy - he already has been told it is the body of a female. To his surprise, the body has not been mummified but only wrapped up, and when he takes those wraps away he causes a beautiful woman to awaken from suspended animation. She just swings a supple, blank arm out of her sarcophagus, and sighs when she sees Ralph: "My Master!"

If life would be that easy, it might become boring - but we probably have to do here with the "Sleeping Beauty" syndrome - the man that wakes her up from her death trance is the one she will love till the end of her days.

So the two fall in love, and this is described in a tasteful way. But the landlady is an obstacle on the road to happiness, so Ralph buys some warm clothes for the woman he has decided to call "Iras" and leaves with her for Scotland, to obtain an on the spot marriage by declaration. After that, they keep traveling in Scotland, although it is the wrong season, and finally they end up in a terrible snowstorm. 

 

By then, the Egyptian who has appeared to Ralph and who seems to be an angry discarded suitor of the mummified lady, makes more appearances and each time manages to steal one of the seven amulets fastened to Iras' necklace. Each time, she looses some of her vital force and in the end will revert to being a mummy again...  

Although the tale contains a lot of mambo-jumbo, the love story is remarkably pure and of an ethereal beauty...  And the possibility that Ralph has hallucinated everything remains an open possibility, so also the scientifically minded (among whom myself) can be happy. The novel has been described as a strange blending of psychology and Egyptology, but above all it is a wonderful love story.

Iras: A Mystery is in the public domain and available at Google Books.

Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife (1870) by Adolphe Belot

Adolphe Belot was the envy of his contemporaries Émile Zola and Gustave Flaubert: his books, unlike theirs, were best-sellers. He specialized in popular fiction that provided readers with just the right mix of indecency and morality. But as is the fate of most "bestsellers," his work is now forgotten, while Flaubert and Zola shine higher than ever in the literary firmament...

Adolphe Belot (1829–90) was born in Guadeloupe, studied and practiced law in France, and became a playwright and novelist in Paris. The money he made from his many potboilers supported the rather extravagant lifestyle he led.

[Adolphe Belot]

One of Belot's most interesting books is Mademoiselle Giraud, ma femme (published in 1870 with a preface by Zola), which tells of the suffering of a hopelessly naive young man (the wealthy Adrien Giraud) whose ravishing new bride, Paule, will not agree to consummate the marriage. She locks her bedroom door and from the first night they are together, the husband has to sleep on the sofa in his study. Without for a moment imagining what could be the true cause of Paule's behavior, Adrien engages in a battle of wills with his new bride. He knows she has a close girlfriend (the Countess Berthe de Blangy) from the time they were at convent school, but 150 years ago that apparently didn't ring any bells. On top of that, he is really very much in love with her, also for her strong and independent character. He tries everything to bring her to reason: he uses all arguments he can think of; he forbids her to leave the house, visit her parents, or meet anyone else, alternately employing patience, seduction, trickery, tears, and violence - all unsuccessfully. At a certain time she stealthily leaves the house to go to an apartment in a downtown neighborhood and he stalks her to her assignment, thinking he has caught her: she must be in love with another man... but it turns out differently.

Eventually, when he decides to travel to be away from his wife for while, in Nice he happens to meet the Count de Blangy, the man who in fact is the husband of his wife's "inseparable friend," Berthe (with thanks to the conventions of the popular novel, where coincidence reigns supreme). From him he learns, to his amazement, that their wives are lovers... 

We are then two-thirds into the novel. So far, the story of the naive husband has been quite funny and interesting, but now 19th c. "morality" has to be served, so the novel goes downhill. The husbands decide to separate their wives geographically by traveling in opposite directions with them (wives are by 19th c. law required to follow their husbands). Adrien and Paule end up in Oran, in the French colony of Algeria (a city which later would become the setting of both The Pest by Albert Camus and The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles); Paule seems to gradually forget her Sapphic love, but in a last twist Berthe locates Paule and seduces her once again. In the meantime, the writer has suddenly made the so far fighting fit Paule ill, so that he can easily kill her off by the end of the book - in 19th c. literature, all transgressing women (Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, Effi Briest, etc) are condemned to capital punishment by their loving authors.

The characters of the protagonists also change: from a witty, bantering woman (whom Adrien quite likes) the writer turns Berthe into a cunning seductress; Paule is initially a headstrong young woman but becomes an impressionable victim; and the passive and utterly naive Adrien develops some strategic notions.

Despite this weak finale, the novel is quite interesting and deserves to be read. Although the author clearly shared his society's reprehensible views on sex and gender, Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife is recognized today as an important work of both French literature and of the history of sexuality. It also reveals tensions in nineteenth-century French society not apparent in canonical works of high culture. But above all: this highly original and ultimately tragic work of fiction from an underappreciated writer of nineteenth century France is great fun to read.

Mademoiselle Giraud, ma femme (1870) is in the public domain. This is also true for the English translation published in 1892 as Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife, which is available at Google Books.

The Cardinal's Snuff-box (1898) by Henry Harland

There is only one word to characterize this novel: "delicious" - like a glass of first-class champagne. It is a beautifully written, understated, sensitive love story with quiet, bantering humor. Set in Italy, it reads like one long, languid summer day.

The now forgotten Henry Harland (1861-1905) was born in Connecticut and educated in New York. In the 1880s Harland started his literary career by under pseudonym writing sensation novels. In 1889 he took the wise step of moving to London, where he came under the influence of the Aesthetic movement of the 1890s. He now began writing under his own name and became the founding editor of the famous magazine of the Aesthetic Movement, The Yellow Book. Harland worked together with such luminaries as Edmund Gosse, Arthur Symons, Aubrey Beardsley, and Frederic Rolfe. But Harland's own writing, mainly short stories, was still not very successful at that time. In retrospect, The Yellow Book was typical for its time: the contributions show all the weaknesses of the typical Nineties style. Harland was a dedicated editor and he behaved entirely like a decadent writer in this period, until the magazine closed down in 1897.

[Illustration from the novel]

And then Harland enters upon his third, his most successful period as a writer. The Cardinal's Snuff-Box, although now forgotten, achieved a wide readership and became Harland's most famous novel. In 1900 (the year of publication) and in 1901 it sold 100,000 copies. And Harland hit his stride, for this was followed by two more interesting novels, The Lady Paramount (1901) and My Friend Prospero (1903). His last novel, The Royal End (1909), was unfinished when he died in 1905 at Sanremo, Italy, after a prolonged period of tuberculosis.

Here is the basic plot. A young English writer, Peter Marchdale, lives in Italy, where he approaches the Duchessa Beatrice (an Alma Tadema-esque, ethereal being, who is also English and a widow), with whom he has fallen in love. He has seen her before in France and England, without ever having spoken to her, and he has made her into the idealized heroine of one of his novels. He now has rented a cottage for the summer next to the castle where she resides and makes her acquaintance from their neighboring gardens. The novel that Peter has written under an assumed name plays an important role in their rapprochement - the Duchessa also has read the book and they put on a kind of masquerade game with it - is he the writer and is he really in love with the heroine? As a typically inhibited Englishman, he hesitates to be open about this and so there is a temporary estrangement between them. Beatrice's uncle, Cardinal Udeschini from Rome, is also staying at the castle and he uses a trick with his snuff-box to prepare the scene where they finally come together. A happy ending is inevitable - but we already knew that from the luminous tone on which this novel started.

[Illustration from the novel]

The conversations often have a nonsensical quality, like Oscar Wilde-light. A good example is the story of the Howling Cow. When Peter Marchdale is suffering from heartbreak, his old maid, Marietta, points out a cow to him whose calf has just been taken away by the farmer. 

“Would you like to have a good laugh, Signorino?” Marietta enquired.

“Yes,” he answered, apathetic.

“Then do me the favour to come,” she said.

She led him out of his garden, to the gate of a neighbouring meadow. A beautiful black-horned white cow stood there, her head over the bars, looking up and down the road, and now and then uttering a low distressful “moo.”

“See her,” said Marietta.

“I see her. Well—?” said Peter.

“This morning they took her calf from her—to wean it,” said Marietta.

“Did they, the cruel things? Well—?” said he.

“And ever since, she has stood there by the gate, looking down the road, waiting, calling.”

“The poor dear. Well—?” said he.

“But do you not see, Signorino? Look at her eyes. She is weeping—weeping like a Christian.”

Peter looked-and, sure enough, from the poor cow's eyes tears were falling, steadily, rapidly: big limpid tears that trickled down her cheek, her great homely hairy cheek, and dropped on the grass: tears of helpless pain, uncomprehending endurance. “Why have they done this thing to me?” they seemed dumbly to cry.

“Have you ever seen a cow weep before? Is it comical, at least?” demanded Marietta, exultant.

“Comical—?” Peter gasped. “Comical—!” he groaned....

But then he spoke to the cow.

“Poor dear—poor dear,” he repeated. He patted her soft warm neck, and scratched her between the horns and along the dewlap.

“Poor dear—poor dear.”

The cow lifted up her head, and rested her great chin on Peter's shoulder, breathing upon his face.

“Yes, you know that we are companions in misery, don't you?” he said. “They have taken my calf from me too—though my calf, indeed, was only a calf in an extremely metaphorical sense—and it never was exactly mine, anyhow— [...]

“All the same,” insisted Marietta, “it is very comical to see a cow weep.”

“At any rate,” retorted Peter, “it is not in the least comical to hear a hyaena laugh.”

[Henry Harland]

The Cardinal's Snuff-Box is pastel colored, admittedly; but these are the colors
of an aesthetic, symbolist era, which unfortunately has been lost now. The presence of the Cardinal adds a Catholic touch, but Harland, like many of his contemporaries, was only interested in the aesthetic aspect of the church. When they are talking about a marriage in church and Peter Marchdale sighs that you don't just become a Catholic, that it requires a great deal of spiritual preparation, the Duchessa exclaims that it is on the contrary the simplest thing in the world. “Easy!” she exclaimed. “Why, you've only to stand still and let yourself be sprinkled. It's the priest who does the work."

The Cardinal's Snuff-box is Harland's masterwork, a delightfully buoyant novel of Italian life, airy as foam, and lighthearted as a rococo concert.

The novel can be downloaded here from Gutenberg.

 

Shirasu, whitebait of sardines

Shirasu, Whitebait of sardines. シラス。

In principle, shirasu could be the immature fry of any fish, but in practice this is always from sardines. Very tender, the entire fish is eaten.

Shirasu that have been cooked with salt and then dried, are called chirimenjako 縮緬雑魚。Chirimenjako is drier and somewhat harder than shirasu.

Shirasu is eaten in two ways:

• Shirasu-gohan, shirasu "as is" over white rice;
• Shirasu to daikon no aemono, a dressed dish (aemono) of shirasu and grated daikon (daikon oroshi), flavored with soy sauce.

 

 [Shirasu gohan]

Kushikatsu

Kushikatsu are bite-sized, battered and deep-fried foods served on bamboo skewers. A popular Osaka dish. Reputedly developed there as an easier way to eat deep-fried pork cutlets. But now as ingredients anything that can be skewered can in fact be used. Popular are chicken, pork, beef, shrimp, squid, fried fish, shiitake, eggplant, asparagus, potato, sweet potato, lotus root and so on.

 

[Kushikatsu skewers]

Before eating the skewer can be dipped in a thick sauce (based on Japanese Worcester cause). As other people use the same dip sauce, you are only allowed to dip once, before taking the first bite from your skewer. Sometimes cabbage leaves are eaten with the skewers.

 

[Dip sauce and cabbage for Kushikatsu]

There are special kushikatsu restaurants, but the dish is also available in izakaya and sometimes sold from street stalls.

Daizu, Soybeans

Soybeans. Lit. "big bean." The bean of beans in Japan.

Rich source of protein, vitamin and minerals. Contains the same amount of protein by weight as meat, but without the fat. Called "the meat of the earth" (daichi no niku). Soybeans were grown in China 4,000 years ago and crossed to Japan about 2,500 years ago.

Soybeans find many uses in Japanese cuisine. In the first place as a raw material for such diverse products as miso, soy sauce, tofu, yuba, soy milk, natto and so on.

Soybeans themselves are used in various dishes, for example by simmering them with kelp and shiitake mushrooms (daizu no nimono), or by stir-frying them with black hijiki seaweed in oil (hijiki-mame). Soybeans are also used in salads and can be prepared as tempura for a delicious beer snack.

A variant is the beautiful, shiny black soybean (kuromame), which is a regular item at o-sechi-ryori (special dishes eaten at New Year). Black soybeans contain B vitamins, iron and calcium. The beans are handled gently to keep them whole. They are usually cooked in a sweet syrup with konbu and then eaten cold. They are readily available in the supermarket. Black soybeans are also used to make tea, bean coffee, jam and tofu, to name a few of its many uses.

[Soy beans]

Dishes:

• Daizu no nimono, soy beans simmered with konbu and shiitake
• Hijiki-mame, soybeans with hijiki sauteed in oil with soy and sugar
• Eda-mame, fresh green soy beans eaten out of the pod.
• Moyashi or soy bean sprouts are used in various grilled foods.
• Soy beans can also be used in salads.
• They can be used in tempura, resulting in a beer snack.

Photo soy beans: via Wikimedia Commons

Maitake (Mushrooms)

Maitake ("dancing mushroom") is one of the major culinary mushrooms in Japan (Grifola frondosa). Its Japanese name goes back to the fact that people who found this precious mushroom used to dance for joy. In English it is also known as "Hen of the Woods" because a clump of maitake looks a bit like the fluffed-up feathers of a hen.　

[Maitake]

An autumn fungus, maitake grows in clusters on the base of oak, beech or chestnut trees. It is a parasite of the tree, from which it gets its nutrients, but it does not harm the tree and tends to grow every year in the same spot. Maitake have characteristic gray-brown, wavy caps, which form large clusters of rosettes. The caps are 2 to 10 cm, the clusters can be 15 to 60 cm broad. It is not unusual for the whole maitake to weigh 4 or 5 kilos.

The flesh of maitake is firm and white and has a mild taste. In Japan it is used in rice dishes (maitake gohan, rice with maitake), soups and simmered dishes.

Maitake was originally harvested from the wild, but since in 1979 cultivation techniques were developed, it is now grown by inoculating the mycelium into plastic bags filled with sawdust. After the mycelium runs out of food an opening is made in the bag so that the fruiting body can form.

Maitake has been an ingredient in Chinese and Japanese medicine for centuries and is said to have many health benefits.

Wakame, seaweed

Seaweed. Undaria pinnitifida. わかめ、若布、和布。

Wakame has a high dietary fiber content. It is brown and can be found on rocky shores and in bays in the temperate zones of Japan. Wakame can also be cultivated and is usually harvested from May to June.

[Wakame]

Wakame is cut before use. It can be used both fresh or in dried form. It is rich in vitamins and minerals and has a high iodine content.

According to folk wisdom it is effective in treating hair loss or giving a nice shine to your hair.

Uses:

• In miso soup
• In suimono (clear soup)
• As wakame soup.
• In seaweed salads (wakame-sarada)
• In vinegared dishes (sunomono)
• In ramen, soba or udon ("Wakame-udon" etc.)
• In chazuke ("wakame-chazuke")

Photo own work

Japanese Food Dictionary

Shiitake (Mushrooms)

Shiitake (Lentinus edodes) are the best known of Japanese fungi.

Can easily be preserved by drying. Extensively cultivated.

Named after a tree called "shii," the chestnut-oak (Pasania cuspidata), plus "take," "mushroom; shiitake are cultivated in spring and autumn by inoculating the logs of this tree.

[Shiitake]

Native to China and Japan. The second most cultivated mushroom in the world. Packed with health-promoting qualities.

Fresh shiitake are dark brown. The mushroom is best when the velvety caps are still a bit curled under. Shiitake have a distinctive, "woodsy" flavor. They are full of amino acids and thus, umami. Shiitake add depth and flavor to every dish.

Inner meat is beige. When the caps are used whole, often a decorative cross is carved into them. Large caps can also be cut in half. Chopped into small pieces for use in soups.

Fresh shiitake is eaten as tempura, in hotpot dishes, but also as-is, just lightly salted or brushed with oil and then grilled. The dried ones are in the first place used for making stock - vegetarian stock can be made by adding them to kelp instead of katsuobushi. Usually, only the caps are eaten - the stems are used for stews or stock.

Haiku Travels (30): Shiki and Dogo Red Light District (Matsuyama)

Haiku Travels

Matsuyama (Dogo Onsen)

red light district -

ten steps away

autumn wind

iro sato ya | juppo hanarete | aki no kaze

Shiki

[Hogonji Temple]

Dogo Onsen, in the outskirts of Matsuyama, is one of Japan's oldest spa baths, and is characterized by a heavy wooden, late 19th c. public bath house, which is almost like a castle. Inside, the baths come in several classes, the highest consisting of private rooms. The baths themselves, filled with colorless and odorless water, are rather small - even the economy class bath -, so it can get crowded. Natsume Soseki, in his popular novel Botchan, has the hero swim around in it, but that seems quite a feat.

Famous spas in Japan usually also have their red light districts. On a fine day in October 1895 Shiki and Soseki visited Dogo Spa. After enjoying a bath, they walked through the street of Dogo's small red light district and ended up in a temple, Hogonji. Shiki knew that Hogonji was famous for its association with Ippen, the founder of the Ji sect of Buddhism, who had been born here in 1239. In the haiku he remarks on the incongruity of finding the red light district of the spa town so close to a sacred place. The haiku stone stands in the grounds of Hogonji and the characters on the monument are a copy of Shiki's handwriting. All that is left of the red light district today are a few small bars that don't look particularly flourishing, so there need be no hesitation in visiting this area. The street with the bars leads right up to the temple, as if it were a monzenmachi, "street before the gate."

[Bars near Hogonji]

Anyway, as the bath is invariably overrun by noisy tourists, it is better to head out for the Matsuoka Shiki Memorial Museum in Dogo Park for a cultural experience...

winter dryness -
reflected in the mirror
the shadow of a cloud

fuyu kare ya | kagami ni utsuru | kumo no kage

just as high
as the firebell
the winter trees!

hangane to | narande takaki | fuyugi kana

With its white tile walls and aquamarine copper roof, the Shiki Memorial Museum is quite an elegant presence. It is dedicated to the life and work of Masaoka Shiki, the "Father of Modern Haiku." There are documents, photos, manuscripts, haiku slips and letters on view, by Shiki and his circle, to document the poet's life and work. There is also a life-sized model of the Gudabutsuan, where Shiki and Soseki shared a house for 50 days. The museum stands in Dogo Park, just five minutes on foot from the baths, where we also find several haiku stones. The first one we review, fittingly has poems by both Matsuoka Shiki and Natsume Soseki.

[Shiki Memorial Museum]

The first one is by Shiki and was written in 1895 when he stayed in Gudabutsuan in Matsuyama. The second one, by Soseki, dates from a year later and was written when he paid a visit to Shiki, who had by then moved to Tokyo. They do not originally form a set, but were probably combined on the stele because of their shared wintry images. Both poems are quite straightforward and seem in no need of further commentary.

New Year's Day -
one line of Emperors
and Mt. Fuji

gantan ya | ikkei no tenshi | fuji no yama

This haiku is by Naito Meisetsu (1847-1926), another Matsuyama haiku master. It is a celebration of the New Year, in a rather nationalistic vein, mentioning the unbroken tradition of the imperial house and Mt. Fuji as the two most characteristic symbols of Japan. Although by no means the best haiku of Meisetsu, it became the first kuhi (haiku monument) that was set up in Matsuyama. That was already in 1918 - the first kuhi for Shiki would only be set up in 1933.

[Dogo Onsen]

lying down
I have a butterfly land on me
the open air bath!

nekoronde | tefu tomaraseru | soto-yu kana

After the solemnity of the above haiku by Meisetsu, we turn to Issa for something in a lighter vein. Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827) was one of Japan's foremost haiku masters from the Edo period and his work is known for compassion with small animals. In a true Buddhist sense, Issa felt that all creation was one. Issa visited Matsuyama twice, in 1795 and 1796, and seems to have enjoyed the baths. During his second visit, he even stayed for half a year, lodging with Kurita Chodo, a local sake brewer and also haiku poet. At that time, there apparently was an open-air bath attached to Dogo Spa (it is also visible on old maps). While Issa lies down comfortably in the hot water, a butterfly comes by and (by keeping still?) Issa has it perch down on him. Could there be a more beautiful image?

First Haiku Stone:
The haiku stone stands in the grounds of Hogonji Temple. Grounds free. 5 min on foot from Dogo Onsen streetcar stop.

Other Haiku Stones:
All other haiku stones mentioned above stand in the grounds of the Shiki-Kinen Museum in Dogo Park, Matsuyama. The museum is 5 min on foot from the Dogo Onsen streetcar stop.

Links to Matsuyama and Ehime
Homepage of Matsuyama; Guide to Ehime Prefecture.

Notes:
For Shiki, read Masaoka Shiki, Selected Poems translated by Burton Watson (Columbia Univ. Press) and Masaoka Shiki, by Janine Beichman (Kodansha, reprint 1986). The Matsuyama Municipal Shiki-Kinen Museum has published the attractive If Someone Asks... Matsuoka Shiki's Life and Haiku.

Natsume Soseki's Botchan has been translated by Alan Turney and is available from Kodansha.

Index Haiku Travels

 

Gobo, burdock

Burdock root. Arctium lappa. ごぼう。

Prized for its crunchy texture and earthy flavor. Rich in dietary fiber, keeps the bowels in healthy condition. Best in autumn, but in fact harvested twice a year, May-Sept and Oct-Feb. The texture of burdock is unique.

The skin is the best part of the root, so do not scrape, but scrub with a stiff brush to clean. Has a tendency to taste bitter, so place in vinegar after cutting (also to avoid discoloration). Good-quality roots are firm and straight.

[Gobo]

The Japanese are probably the only people who make culinary use of gobo.

Uses:

• Kinpira-gobo, chopped burdock root cooked in soy and sesame oil. A popular dish named after a strong mythical hero
• Yawata-maki, a slender burdock around which a split eel has been diagonally wrapped (nowadays beef is also often used)
  
• Kobu-maki, burdock wrapped in kelp
• Yuba-maki, burdock wrapped in yuba
• Burdock salad (a modern development with mayonnaise, available in supermarkets)
• Burdock as tempura (cut into fine strips)
• Used in yanagawa-nabe, a pot of loaches boiled in soy sauce with scrambled egg
• Or in dojo-jiru, loach soup seasoned with miso
• Great in soups, produces deeply flavored dashi

Photo own work.

Japanese Food Dictionary

Konnyaku

Konnyaku is the gelatin-like paste made from a tuberous plant (Amorphophallus konjac, かんにゃく、蒟蒻), in English sometimes called "Konjac." Another, less pleasant translation is "Devil's tongue."

Konnyaku is the name of a tuberous plant and the product made from its root. The tuber is rinsed, peeled, sliced, dried and ground into a powder. That powder is next mixed with water until it becomes a gelatin-like paste. Then as a coagulating agent lime is added and the paste is formed into firm but elastic blocks and cakes. These are then boiled, and finally cooled in cold water.

[Konnyaku]

Konnyaku is grown in Gunma, Tochigi and Fukushima. It grows on mountain slopes and after three years bears a large trumpet-shaped flower. This flower, by the way, led to the English name "devil's tongue.". The root is usually dug up after about 3 years, when it is 2.5 kilos heavy.

More than 2,000 years ago konnyaku was introduced from China as a medicine. From the 13th c. on (Kamakura period) it became a popular vegetarian food among priests at Zen temples. In the 17th c. it became generally popular as a meat substitute in soups among commoners.

Konnyaku is devoid of calories and therefore forms an excellent diet food. Rich in dietary fiber, it helps relieve constipation. Itself tasteless, it takes on the taste of the ingredients with which it is served. It has a chewy character and should always be boiled briefly before eating.

 

[Konnyaku in natural form]

Konnyaku can have various colors: made from peeled roots it is pale white (its natural look), from unpeeled roots and usually with the addition of hijiki seaweed it takes on a grayish dark color (its most common look). When chili peppers are added, it has a red color and when green tea powder is added, green. Types of flavored konnyaku are also on the market.

Konnyaku is used in oden (winter hotpot with various ingredients) and simmered dishes. Coated with miso it is like dengaku (originaly dengaku is made from tofu). White or colored varieties are used as vegetarian sashimi ("yama fugu") - these are often eaten with sweet miso sauce.

Thinly sliced into fine, gelatinous noodles it is called shirataki ("white waterfall") and used in sukiyaki. Sliced into slightly thicker strings it is called ito-konnyaku ("string konjac") and used in nabemono (hotpots).

Onibaba by Shindo Kaneto

The film Onibaba (1964) by expressionist director Shindo Kaneto came as a shell shock when I saw it for the first time. It is an aggressive masterwork from the heyday of Japanese cinema that hits you squarely in the face – in a most pleasant way. Just as its contemporary The Woman in the Dunes by Teshigahara is completely dominated by shifting sands, so Onibaba is in the grip of fields of waving long susuki grass.

“I was enslaved by the waving susuki field,” says director Shindo. The grass hides beauty and savagery, terror and death, and supports the attempt at survival in times of war by a few poor peasants.

[Poster of the film Onibaba]

A mother and her daughter-in-law hide out here to kill stray, wounded samurai and sell their weapons and armor on the black market. The bodies are dumped unceremoniously in a deep hole in the center of the grassy realm.

Then a young man of the village returns and reports the son and husband killed. He and the young woman, now widow, are sexually attracted to each other and meet in scenes of violent eroticism – the grass now becomes the swaying of sexual impulses.

The mother fears she will loose her livelihood if the daughter-in-law leaves her and tries to shock her away from her lover by donning a demon mask she has stolen from a samurai she kills for the purpose.

Thus she becomes the Onibaba, the “Devil Woman,” of the title. But there is a catch: she is not able to remove the mask anymore, and when she finally succeeds with the help of the young woman, after much pulling and wringing, her face is terribly disfigured...

The film is shot in fierce contrasts of black and white, extreme close-ups are mixed with long shots, long silences alternate with the thundering sound of drums. It is the kind of minimalist art film that invites thick tomes of commentary, but I would say, see it for yourself... Driven by primal emotions, dark eroticism, a frenzied score by Hikaru Hayashi, and stunning images both lyrical and macabre, Kaneto Shindo’s chilling folktale Onibaba is a singular cinematic experience.

Haiku Travels (29): Basho and Akashi (Hyogo)

 

Haiku Travels

Akashi (Hyogo)

octopus traps -

brief dreams

under the summer moon

tako-tsubo ya | hakanaki yume wo | natsu no tsuki


蛸壺やはかなき夢を夏の月

Basho

[Uonotani mall in "tako town" Akashi]

 

The city of Akashi, which is mentioned at the end of Basho's Knapsack Notebook (Oi no Kobumi) was the furthest west Basho ever traveled. He spent the night here after visiting the beach of Suma (see my post about Basho and Suma). The trip started in November 1687 and ended in May 1688; Basho was accompanied by his disciple Tokoku.

Akashi is a historic castle town located on the Akashi Strait in the Seto Inland Sea, west of Kobe. The remains of the castle built in 1618 by Ogasawara Tadazane are now a popular cherry blossom viewing spot and are located just north of Akashi Station. Akashi already figures in a waka by 7th century poet Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, considered as "the god of poetry" in Japan - and by extension of literature and scholarship. In Akashi also stands the Kakinomoto Shrine (founded 887), commemorating an early Heian belief that Hitomaro's spirit came to rest in Akashi. The shrine is a 5 min walk from Hiromaru-mae Station on the Sanyo Dentetsu line.

Akashi also appears in The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. Another legendary figure with whom Akashi has been associated is swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, who, when Akashi Castle was being built, may have worked here as a town planner.

[Octopus in a trap]

Today Akashi is mainly famous as a fishing port - due to the strong current, the fish here is of high quality and the town has a fish market in the form of a 350 m long covered street with more than 100 specialized shops called Uonotana ("fish shelf"). The fish here is so fresh that you can sometimes see the live octopus crawling out of their plastic containers to shoot away! Akashi is also known for the superior quality of its red sea bream (madai) - elegant traditional restaurants in the whole country only serve Akashi sea bream. Sea bream was in the past considered as the King of Fish and has, thanks to its reddish color (and name which resembles "medetai," "lucky"), an auspicious nature. It used to be the most popular fish on sushi before the advent of tuna, and still is a fish that is often eaten salt-grilled, with head and tail attached, on New Year's Day.

But the star of the Uonotana market is Akashi-dako, Akashi octopus. Akashi-dako are known for their thick, firm tentacles, and they have rather lean flesh with a sweet taste. Tako also features in Akashi's most famous B-gourmet dish, Akashi-yaki. Akashi-yaki is a variant of Osaka's tako-yaki. Small pieces of octopus are placed inside a ball-shaped mold containing a mixture of flour and eggs and this is then fried. Akashi-yaki is eaten by dipping in a thin soup (that, plus the addition of eggs to the dough, are the major differences with tako-yaki).

[Octopus pots lying on the quay of a fishing port]

At an overnight stop in Akashi Basho wrote one of his greatest haiku, cited at the top of this page. Octopus traps are unglazed earthenware pots used for catching octopus. These heavy pots which are left on the sea floor for days at a time. Octopuses enter and remain inside, using the pot as shelter and protection. No bait is used. When the pot is raised, the octopus will not normally try to escape.

Sitting in the pot at the bottom of the sea, the octopus enjoys a brief, pleasant dream, without realizing its pending fate. The summer moon shines innocently over the whole scene - an apt comparison for the human condition: also for us life is short like a summer dream...

[Awaji Island and the Akashi Strait Bridge, "splitting the bay of Suma and the sea of Akashi to the right and left"]

snail
divide your horns
between Suma and Akashi

katatsuburi | tsuno furiwake yo | Suma Akashi

蝸牛 角ふりわけよ 須磨明石

Basho also wrote a playful poem about the border between Settsu and Harima provinces. A snail crossing the border line is half in Settsu (Kobe-Suma) and half in Harima (the Akashi-Himeji area), jokes Basho. In the Knapsack Notebook, Basho does not quote this haiku, but he alludes to the situation by writing "As if reaching out a hand, the island of Awaji splits the bay of Suma  and the sea of Akashi to the right and left. Du Fu's vista of Wu and Chu (two neighboring states in ancient China) to the east and south may have been like this, but a truly learned man would have been able to think of many such resemblances."

The snail probably makes its appearance because the chapter called Suma in the Genji Monogatari says that Suma and Akashi are so close that one can "crawl" from one to the other.

[Akashi Port]

Basho's Knapsack Notebook has been translated in Basho's Journey, The Literary Prose of Matsuo Basho, by David Landis Bamhill (2005, State University of New York Press). My citation is from page 43.

[Except the first photo, which is my own, all photos in this post are from Wikimedia Commons]

Index Haiku Travels

 

"Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan" by Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) had one life-long obsession: the quest for the odd, the exotic and the monstrous. Born in Greece from an Irish father serving in the British military and a Greek mother, his first name recalled Lefkada, the island of his birth. At age two he was brought to Ireland and discarded by both parents whose marriage soon broke up - he would never meet them again. Hearn was brought up with Christian severity by a wealthy great-aunt who mostly sent him away to boarding schools - also one in France, which gave Hearn his excellent command of that language; interestingly, he was a classmate of Guy de Maupassant, and maintained a life-long interested in French literature. In a fight at school in the U.K., Hearn lost the sight in one eye and this made him look rather grotesque: he had to go through life with one blind eye and one bulging, staring eye and was very myopic. He was also painfully introverted. The strictly religious upbringing gave him a strong dislike of organized religion and later in life Hearn professed himself as a pagan, harking back to both his Greek heritage and beliefs he encountered in Japan.

[Lafcadio Hearn]

After Hearn's great-aunt was swindled out of her money, Hearn had to start fending for himself, and at age 19 he crossed over to the United States to seek his fortune in the New World, where he ended up in Cincinnati. After working as a proof reader, he started doing journalistic work, finally becoming a reporter for the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, achieving local fame for his lurid accounts of murders and other sensational crimes. At this time, already, Hearn was drawn to anecdote and exoticism. A relationship with an African-American woman, illegal at the time, led to his dismissal as editorial writer and, enticed by the exotic South, in 1877 Hearn moved to New Orleans, where during the next ten years he wrote for several papers, such as the Times-Democrat. His main interests were the Creole population and its culture, including its cuisine – Hearn even wrote a Creole cookbook. He wrote odd fantasies and arabesques for the paper and also contributed articles and sketches to national magazines, such as Harper's and Scribner's; in addition to publishing his first creative works: the novella Chita (about a tsunami that destroys an island in the Gulf of Mexico, sweeping everybody away, the only survivor a child clinging to the dead body of its mother), Stray Leaves from Strange Literature, a retelling of stories from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Buddhist legend, etc., as well as translations from the lushly decadent French author Théophile Gautier.

Hearn loved the dilapidated streets and crumbling wooden houses of the Creole town, the vestiges of French and Spanish culture, the ancestor worship and the voodoo ceremonies. But the South was modernizing, too, having recovered from the Civil War, as was symbolized by the World Fair of 1884 held in the city. Incidentally, the World Fair also became Hearn's first deeper acquaintance with Japan - he dedicated several articles to the Japanese pavilion and the fine workmanship of the crafts on display and befriended Hattori Ichizo, who was in charge of the Educational Exhibit. But all the newfangled electric lights brought on by the Fair meant that the Creole City was losing its charm and in 1887 Hearn left for more exotic climes. He was sent by Harper's as a correspondent to the West Indies and lived for two years in St. Pierre on Martinique, which led to two books about these exotic islands, one a travelogue and the other the novel Youma.

Then in 1890 Hearn had the chance to travel to Japan to write a series of articles, but once there, he liked the country so much that with the help of Basil Hall Chamberlain, the well-known English Professor at Tokyo Imperial University with whom Hearn had been corresponding, he stayed on and started working in various teaching jobs. His first teaching job was in Matsue, a town with an old history, rich in legends and folklore, in Western Japan on the Japan Sea coast – a place exactly after Hearn's heart. During his 15-month stay in Matsue, he married Koizumi Setsu, the daughter of a local samurai. Later, he became a naturalized Japanese with the name Koizumi Yakumo. The stay in then still heavily traditional Matsue was formative: Hearn developed into the collector of miscellany, the transcriber of local lore, countless bits of information from the old Japan that was fast being discarded by the Japanese themselves. He wrote about Buddhist festivals, fireflies, the Japanese smile, women's hair, any traditional subject that intrigued him.

[Hearn and his wife, Koizumi Setsu]

After a further teaching job in Kumamoto (a matter-of-fact modernizing city Hearn was not so fond of) and a stint as journalist in Kobe, in 1896 Hearn could move to Tokyo where he received a prestigious teaching position at Tokyo University (thanks again to the help from his friends). Hearn, an extremely hard worker who had ruined his health with his frenetic journalistic jobs and fits of extreme poverty in the U.S., died in 1904 of heart failure, aged only 54 years.

Hearn's first book about Japan, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, was published in 1894 and until his death, every year a new book would follow, including the famous Kwaidan (1903). In these books, Hearn concentrated on folklore, ghost stories, insects, quaint things and, of course, graves. Hearn became known to the world by his writings about Japan, and is more famous in Japan than in the West, where critics accuse him of treating his adopted country in an exotic way. True, Hearn was not a great original author, he was a re-teller, an interpreter of other cultures for a Western public. But his hunting for strange pieces of literature from the whole world reminds me of Borges; while his writings, mostly short, diverse, about any topic that happened to strike his fancy, are like a superior blog.

Hearn has always been honored in Japan because of his reverence for the Japanese tradition, for which he even gave up his own culture, although much of that tradition was in the process of being discarded by the Japanese themselves. In contrast to other foreigners in Japan at that time, he was not arrogant and did not look down on the Japanese - on the contrary, he disliked the Western community and evaded it as much as possible. Hearn lived in his own imagination and his many books provide fascinating vignettes about old customs and quaint lore, about the odd, the exotic and the monstrous - subjects Hearn sought after for his whole life. But as the selections below show, in Japan Hearn also found happiness. They are not only interesting as glimpses of Japanese culture, but also as Hearn's visions of the bizarre.

My favorite book by Hearn is Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, originally published in two volumes in 1894, because Hearn's observations about Japan, just after his arrival in both Yokohama and Matsue, are the freshest. Take for example "My first Day in the Orient". Hearn had long been in love with Japanese culture before he arrived in Yokohama on April 4, 1890, and here he describes his first impressions of the country during a ride by kuruma (rickshaw) out of the European quarter of Yokohama into the Japanese town. Also today's reader can still experience that "first charm of Japan, intangible and volatile as a perfume."

In "The Chief City of the Province of the Gods" Hearn describes his arrival in Matsue, the capital of remote Shimane Prefecture. Hearn received a position as teacher English and arrived there on August 30, 1890. This essay gives his first impressions of the city he loved most in Japan. Other impressive essays are for example "In the Cave of the Children's Ghosts," "In a Japanese Garden" (in which Hearn describes the garden of a samurai house he rented in Matsue, now open to the public as "Lafcadio Hearn's Residence" together with a neighboring "Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum"), the strange "Of Women's Hair" and "From Hoki to Oki" about his visit to the Oki Islands.

In the pages of this book are the customs, the superstitions, the charming scenery, the revelations of Japanese character, and all the other elements that Lafcadio Hearn found so bewitching. Here, for example, are essays on such subjects as the Japanese garden, the household shrine, the festivals, and the bewildering Japanese smile—all aspects of Japanese life that have endured in spite of the changes that have taken place during the modernization of Japan. The Japanese character and the Japanese tradition are still fundamentally the same as Hearn found them to be, and for this reason, his writing is still extremely revealing to modern readers.

Hearn's work is in the public domain. Below is a list of his books about Japanese culture, starting with "Glimpses:"

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan I, 1894

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan II, 1894
Out of the East: Reveries and Studies in New Japan, 1895, Hearn's second Japan book; especially the sketch "The Dream of a Summer Day" is beautiful.
Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life, 1896; I like "At a Railway Station" in this third volume.

Gleanings in Buddha-Fields: Studies of Hand and Soul in the Far East, 1897.

Exotics and Retrospectives, 1898 - here "Fuji-no-Yama" is very good, as well as "The Literature of the Dead".

In Ghostly Japan, 1899 - I like "Fragment".

Shadowings, 1900 - excellent pieces are "The reconciliation," "Kimiko" and "Semi".

A Japanese Miscalleny, 1901 - great stories are "Of a Promise Broken" and "The Story of Kogi the Priest"; a superior essay is "Dragonflies."

Kotto: Being Japanese Curios, with Sundry Cobwebs, 1903.
Kwaidan, 1903, is of course very famous, also thanks to the film by Kobayashi Masaki from 1965; I prefer "The Story of Mimi-nashi Hoichi".
And Hearn's final book is the posthumously published The Romance of the Milky Way, 1905, in which "A Letter from Japan" is of particular interest.