The San Francisco call., 1897-01-24

yel1OW 4Rlle hilOuS illt uhkSQ lWlgSf
The broken banana leaves chant in silence
eve are content with sadnessr'
The immovable hillside cabin is dumb
enwrapped by the thousand autumn
voices.
Hush! A maiden's sobs! Are they the
rippe-tears OF the iriendless brook
breaking the stiffness?
ooh, my love, my love, am herep' Imurmur,
but hear no reply in the darkness.
-, ,ALLEYRAND once remarked that Ian
1ES guage was USED to conceal thought, and
MIN one is apt TO recall this saying after the
OA0 first reading OF Yone Noguchis volume
of "monologue," entitled seen and Unseen"
II a further acquaintance with the poems con-
vinces Us that there is a good deal 10 be said
on both sides OF the question the fact remains
that the most obvious things have not been
said at all. Those who have professed TO see
q very deep and vital significance in tnis
strange Jumble OF words should remember
that words, too, are vital, that their character
Is built up by the consent OF untold genera
,tions OF men and that no one has the right to
wrest the Lie out OF them by any unwarranta-
bic use. Hear what that critic who was strong
IN this if he weak IN much else has to say:
p 1.-THE material the painter or the sculptor uses
is meRger in comparison with that OF words.
Words have not merely music as sweet as that
OF YloI or Lutte, color as ricn ana vivid any
that makes lovely for US the canvas OF the
Venetian or the Spaniard, and plastic form no
less sure and certain than that which reveals
itself in marble or in bronze, but thought and
passion and spirituality are theirs also-are
theirs, indeed alone"
How dare one writer ignore the essential
being of word gained by this universal con-
sent? Why will critics forget that art has re-
quirements aS well capabilities and that it
is not only form OF expression, but the most
adequate, lucid and beautiful form as well {?
But form OF any kind is no part OF these pro-
ducuons. They are more vague than jelly
fish. They make what Mr.. Gosse calls 'lItera-
ture in the condition of protoplasm" They
are so loose and disjointed that they are easily
nodded into any shape and viii give forth
just as much meaning as the individual
reader puts into them; and this is no
doubt the secret of their attraction for some
very intelligent people, This is the gst of
Mr.. Gosse's explanation of Walt Whitman's
charm, and it seems to apply with equal force
10 Yone Noguchi But the mere fact of
vagueness sufficient to charm reader into
seeing a reflection of his own thought is
hardly q warrant as to the exec Hence of g
piece OF writing. 1t might so easily be only
utter nonsense after all. If our minds are bent
upon 1t we can discover a profound ethical
significance in that delightful rhyme OF our
childhood,
Four and twenty blsckbrds baked in pie,
as q recent phtlologist has with delicate irony
pointed out.
It would seem comparatively easy TO be
merely unintelligibie, and many of US without
even aspiring TO be poets might write such
lines as;
Fading lips Of love-dead rose sing Of passed dam
ses' sadness (or pleasure?) colored juicy cheeks.
Frankly, however, it is not as easy as it
One Of ha Nth ,vbio
Nordau would have classified the author OF
this. Among the ranks Of his "degeneRate'
how he would have hurled his choicest adjec-
tIves hysterical, egomaniacal at his defense
less head. With what scorn would he have
regarded "the deep, deepless deepness in the
beginning; "the gray-boned wind" "the
saber-cornered wind? In truth. one is
tempted TO ask, why gray -boned"? and why
"sabercO cOrnered"? We are used to q wind with
sharp edge, even to a wind with teeth, but
why accnstom ourselves to a geometrfcally
shaped wind with corners? These are the
places where we are halEinclned TO think II
all q huge joke and ourselves the more FOOLS
for taking it seriously. And we remember
that the editor of these poems was the author
of the Purple cow" and the man who would
rather have fingers than toes" that delight
fully inconseq quential nonsense, which many
wise peopie took to be burlesque cn this
very sort of writing.
And then we read little farther till we
come to
matchless Mistress Moon in a chamber of un-
fathomable peace,
And our unbelief changes to a mood halfway
between pleasure ana perplexity. Again, we
read:
When am lost in the deep body Of the mist on
the hill
The word seems built with me as its pillar.
And again:
Dreamy peace dwelt with me whose magic vapors
inciosed me- softly as lovers shadows,
And we come to believe that while enthusiasts
are undoubtedly seeing in the poems q good
deal Of what they themselves take there, the
people who reject them as absolute nonsense
are probably quite as much mistaken on the
other side.
ANY reader with even a slight knowledge of
oriental literature and mysticism has some
undeIs landing OF Noguchrs point of view, and
without this 1t is hopeless TO attempt the
poems. Even the readers ofFitzgerald'y partly
occidentslized Omar have more chance here.
What lover OF the Rubeiyst, when he recalls
some little talk awhile Of me and thee
There was-and then no more OF thee and me-
has not more tolerance for "When l come
back to me-" "When the future shall be the
past" al come back TO me-" or Il go on TO
me, >" Shall be as me,' "Wnat do l mean by
me7 l. whom the god made al first for
me-?
If we have pondered with the Persian mys-
tics on the RELATIVELY OF everything morbid and
the unreelity Of all outward aspects. we see
what he would arrive at when he says:
The world is round; no-headed, o-footed;
Having no left side, right sidei
And 10 say Goodness is to say BADNESS
Ard Tladu fe m
The world is SO filed with names; often the
necessity is forgotten. often the difference is
named.
The name is nothing!
East is west.
West is east.
south is north
North is south.
The good man stands in the world like an un-
known god in somewhere where Goodness, Bad
ness Wisdom, FoolIshness eet face to face at the
diVisionless border between them.
There is TO many minds peculiar fascina-