The Forging of a Writer: Lafcadio Hearn in Cincinnati

3 41t \ 1 The Forging of a Writer Lafcadio Hearn in Cincinnati John Clubbe it 9 t'. nt> f f the many travelers who have visited and written about Cincinnati during its 0more than two hundred years of existence , none has left more probing, piquant, and even seatidalous observations about the city than 1 \ FC I> IC) 1 ILRN Lafcadio Hearn ( 18501904 ) Ifhis greatest fame U. ut 1873 lies as a ghoulish interpreter of the city's underside , Hearn also limned its cultural scene Most Lafcadio Hearn, ca 1873, The Life and Letters oflafcad/ o Hearn ( 1906) CINCINNATIMUSEUM travelers passed through Cincinnati quickly, but CENTER CINCINNATI HISTORICAL SOCIETY LIBRARY Hearn remained for over eight years from 1869 to 1877, and his stay had significant repercussions in his own life and for Cincinnati Along with the Now,in those days there was Beecherssisters Harriet and Catharine, father a young man connected with Lyman and brother Henry Wardhe remains the Daily Enquirel whose tastes the bestknown writer associated with Cincinnati were whimsically grotesque and But whereas the Beechers had little specifically to arabesque, He was by nature a say about the city,Hearn had a great deal. Uncle fervent admirer of extremes He Tomk Cabin draws upon Harriet Beecher Stowe's believed only in the Revoltingly experiences of Cincinnati but does not address ltS fl#{, 1 't Horrible or the Excruciatingly 5, life directly,while Hearn' s essays,by contrast,offer i{} 1* i f ; i. Beautiful He worshipped the ' *# the fullest account of Cincinnati during a timeFrench school of sensation,and .» the mid187Os when the city was undergoing reveled in thrusting a reeking t, ' rapid change Although historians have intermiti '2 Lk',. ar mixture of bones,blood and hair tently recognized the value and extent of his Cin5 Lt-: C under people' s noses at breakfast cinnati writingswell over four hundred essays, St time He was only known to sketches,or notesthey are still little known to tri:,= 2 fame by the name of " The Ghoul " Linannatians an d largely unknown to the larger American public They remain,to this day,unsurLafcadio Hearn, ' passed for their perspicuity and Insight Through Fttoj. selfdescription in 18741 them the city comes vibrantly alive 2 i.. =.., 5 1kt{' 95'1''' . 2», 1 4,'P'. t' 4{* '* 4 *3 ht. ' w = THE FORGING OF A WRITER Hearn ended his life a professor of English literature at the University of ToliI kyo and briefly at Waseda University. He achieved personal happiness as well, 1 1 marrying a Japanese woman,with whom It. he had four children. The Japanese of today recognize Hearn as the most acute and understanding foreign interpreter of I , 111 their customs, legends, and traditions. Achieving in their day wide popularity both in Japan and in the Western world, Hearn' s Japanese books have maintained their appeal. Almost all of them,in print 1-* f' :- C both in Japan and in the United States, continue to attract new readers. This paper makes an additionalclaim: 4. Namely,that Hearn' s American experiences ,particularly the years he spent in 1 Cincinnati,enabled him to become the Lafcadio Hearn s In Ghostly Japan 1899) UNCINNAT, writer he became in Japan.' Ihe transition MUSEUMCENTER CINCINNATIH STOR CAL SOCI[ TY LIBRARY from youth to first manhood can be decisive . Hearn in Cincinnati underwent an astonishing maturation. Arriving in the city a bewildered, penniless youth of nineteen, he departed a grown man of twentyseven , a respected if controversial reporter whose revelatory journalism had attracted local and even national attention. His . journalism reflected the enthusiasm and exuberance of a young writer encountering the richness and variety of the world around him. lhe city fostered the maturation of Hearn the man and Hearn the journalist. In Cincinnati his writing underwent its first flowering;when he left,he was already an author of marked, if unusual, distinction. His Cincinnati work may not often rise to the level of the mature masterpieces he wrote in Japan but it can be dazzling in its own right. Much of it remains surprisingly readable. In hindsight ,Hearn' s early work is what we might expect it to be: The achievement of a writer of vast promise who...