The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1890-04-12
CONCERNING BOOKS.
by E. cAvAzzA.

Two Years in the French West indies. By
Lafcadio Hearn. Perhaps no living Ameri-
can writer deserves more completely than does
Mr.. Hearn the enviable name of artist. For
art fabricates the image, inspired with life,
of ideas and of Impressions; and he who
works with flexible and brilliant mastery of
material, making others see and feel what be
himself has seen and felt, things beyond the
common insight, is half reporter, half crea-
tor Of these things. Fascinating as is Mar
tinque-the island called Des Rerenants
because those who have once visited it can
not rest for the longing to return there-one
must bring esthetic sensitiveness like that of
Mr.. Hearn in order to see its beauties as he
az Sind them The yihEatiye sympalhy. the
cision and brilliance of description in his
volume are no less than marvellous 1t is
revel of tropical light and color, led. however
by an art so conscientious that not false
note is struck, not movement is exagger-
ated.
MIR. Hearn's manner hardly finds COM
parison in this country; it is akin to the
delicately just studies of the foremost mod
ern Frenchmen. Gay de Maupassant, for ex-
ample, or Alphonse Daudet. There is in it
also distinctly tropical element, as if by
some inheritance from faraway ancestor,
or like the desire of the pine for the palm
possession or privation, the result is some
times the same.
The diary of Mr.. Hearn's voyage to Mar
Unique is admirable in its delicately shaded
monotony of passage by sea, where the
calm phenomena of the ocean and the sky
aoptr 4nd mil
on shipboard, alone occupy the traveller. How
wildly he has been able to transfer his i'm
pressions The eye of the reader is filled
with the blueness of the water, as it deepens
from azure to ultramarine, like blue glass,
liquefed sky (the fellow Yoyager from Grade
loupe maintains this is not blue, wait for
the West Indian seas y the ocean borrows
no more from the sky, it glows bluer
and bluer; strange and violent splendor,
indigo, blazing azure (He of Guadeloupe adj
mits that it begins to become blue). Now a
flaming, dazzling lazulite, lastly an opulent
pansy hue, black-blue, less wonderful from
very weight of color From this rapid and
insufficient shorthand note of an extended
description, one will be able to understand
how this reiteration Of blue succeeds in
touching the optic nerve itself by way of the
Imagination.
Disembarked at the tropics, Mr.. Hearn
proves himself an observer whom nothing
escapes. he has an elasticity of vision
which ranges easily from the most minute to
the greatest objects, together with style,
flexible. adaptable, full of life, emotional,
radiant, dramatic, expanding into brilliant
lyric expression, or restrained to tense COM
pactness, endowed with a singular instinct
for the inherent beauty of words. In the
midst of the dubious and chary April of
New England, with its belated snowstorms
and keen winds, one is comforted and en-
couraged in reading of the tropic glow and
generosity of the West Indian islands; of the
gorgeously clad, tender eyed women; the
luminous seas; the mephitic forests where
seeming pink lichen or russell fallen bough
suddenly takes life as fatal serpent. the |
opaline mountains; the porteuses, 1.-THE girls |
with heavy loads CT strange fruits, or of |
small wares upon their heads; the coolies |
with rings and pendants from forehead and |
nose and lips; the southern moon appearing |
white above its faint, rosy dawn, hushing all |
the creatures Of night; the wild supersti- |
lions brought long ago from Africa; the
oVerpowering influence of the climate, like
the fascination that tiger is said to exert
upon It's victim; and lastly the dissolving
view Oh Island after island as the steamship
bears the voyager toward ''the dream-gray
majesty before us,-reaching away, through
measureless mazes Of masting, into remote
ness all vapor-veiled- mighty perspective
of New York harbor." New York: Harper
e. Brothers. Portland: Lcring, Short &
Harmon. Price $1,000
Maria. A South American Romnace. Bv
Jorge Isaac. One half Of the New World
ioes not know how the other half lives If
\ citizen Of the United States were suddenly
Jailed upon to give his impression of that
section Of the continent lying south of the
Lsthmus OF Panama, the question would be
apt to be answered by statistics as to exports
IL hides or by vague imagination Of sombre-
ros, and fierce rides over interminable plains.
Of course, if he has been so fortunate as to
meet some of the gentlemen composing the
fan-American delegation, his reply would
Nc somewhat more intelligent in detsil-but
.ne TACT remains that the real life of the two
Americas a, Is mutually unknown. Something
i I'M these reflections is made by Mr.. Thomas
JanVier In his pleasant introduction to Senior
Isaac romance; and he adds the astound-
ing information that American literature
was born and nurtured in the Spanish colo
MES. a Hst OF ZIG volumes published IN
Mexico, ends twenty years before the land.
ing Of the Pilgrims at Plymouth; and seven
ty years ago a catalogue, almost exclusively
of Mexican authors, was printed, represent