The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-11-17
WRITES
BOOK ON HAWAII
CONTINUED from Page One.)
Emerson's Introduction.

Doctor Emerson s introduction explains
interesting book better than it can be
otherwise explained. He says, in part:
HHThisA book is for the greater part a
collection of Hawaiian songs and poetic
pieces that have done service from
time immemorial as the stock supply
of the hula. The descriptive portions
have been added, not because the poet
zeal parts could not stand by them
selves, but to furnish the proper set
ting and to answer the questions of
those who want to know.
'Now, the hula stood for very much
to the ancient Hawaiian; it was to
him in place of our coneert-hall and
lecture-room, our opera and theater,
and thus became one of his chief means
of social enjoyment. Besides this, it
kept the communal imagination in liv-
ing touch with the nation legendary
past. The hula had songs proper to
itself, but it found a mine of mex
haustible wealth in the epics and won
der-myths that celebrated the doings
of the volcano goddess PETE and her
compeers. Thus in the cantillations of
the oldtime hula we find ready-made
anthology that includes every species
of composition in the whole range of
Hawaiian poetry. This epic of Pele
was chiefly a more or less detached
series of poems forming a story ad-
dressed not to the closet-reader, but to
the eye and ear and heart of the as
sembled chiefs and people; and it was
sung. The Hawaiian song, It's note of
II. b,r4
must be noted that in every species of
Hawaiian poetry, mele-whether epic
or eulogy or prayer, sounding through
them all we shall find the lyric note.
"The most telling record of a .peo-
ple's intimate lie is the record which
it unconsciously makes in its songs.
This record which the Hawaiian peo-
pie have left for themselves is full and
specific. When, therefore, we ask what
emotions stirred the heart of the old
time Hawaiian as he approached the
great themes Of life and death, of am
bition and jealousy, of sexual passion,
of romantic love, of conjugal love, and
parental love, what his attitude toward
nature and the dread forces Of earth
quake and storm, and the mysteries OF
spirit and the hereafter, we shall find
our answer in the songs and prayers
and recitations of the hula.
The hula, it is true, has been un-
fortunate in the mode and manner OF
its introduction to us mOderns. An
institution of divine, that IS, religious,
origin. the hula in modern times has
wandered so far and fallen so low that
foreign and critical esteem has come
to associate it with the rOtous and
passionate ebullitions of POlynesian
kings and the amorous pOsturing of
their voluptuaries. We must make a
Just distinction. however, between the
gestures and bodily cOntorti0ns pre-
sented by the men and women, the
actors in the hula, and their uttered
words. 1.-THE voice is Jacobs voice,
but the hands are the hands Of Esau-'
In truth, the actors in the hula no
longer suit the action to the word.
The utterance harks back TO the golden
age; the gesture is trumped up by the
passion Of the hour. or dictated by the
master o. the hula. TO whom the real
meaning of the old bards Is ofttlmes
q sealed casket
whatever indeIicacv attaches in
modern times to some of the gestures
and contorti0ns Of the hula dancers, the
oldtImes hula songs in large measure
were Entainted with grossness. II
there ever were Polvnesian Arcadia,
and if il were possible for true re-
ports Of the doings and sayings of the
Polynesians to- reach rs frsm that
happy land-reports Of their joys ana