Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904)

I migliori:
La storia di Aoyagi
e
Il sogno di Akinosuké.

"... essi sottolineano l'ambiguità del rapporto che sussiste ancora adesso in Giappone tra l'uomo e la natura. Quest'ultima, ritenuta sacra, è comunque oggetto di un controllo minuzioso - basti pensare ai giardini o anche agli spazi verdi coperti di aceri e ciliegi in modo da creare, quasi artificialmente, un sentimento della stagione - a volte perfino di una distruzione pura e semplice."
(pagina 11)

Canzone del Mare e della Cessazione

"Sul Vasto Mare della Cessazione,
Pur se i Venti dei Sei Desideri e delle Cinque
Corruzioni giammai soffiano,
La superficie di quell'abisso sempre però
è coperta
Dai marosi del Conseguimento della
Realtà-in-Sé."
(pagina 111)… (mais)

From a Goodreads Review:

Lafcadio Hearn lived a kind of loose cannonball life, but both interesting and productive. Born half Greek on an Ionian island to a British military doctor and local woman, he grew up there, in Ireland, England, and France with little or no home life. Deserted by his parents and ultimately by all his relatives, he was sent to America where he struggled to survive but eventually became a newspaperman in Cincinnati. He married an African-American woman for a couple of years, but they separated. He then worked ten years in New Orleans and reported from Martinique for a couple of years as well. He translated works of Zola, Maupassant, and Flaubert into English. Sent to Japan as a correspondent, he fell in love with the country, became a Buddhist, married a Japanese, changed his name and became a citizen. He taught English in the provinces, but eventually wound up a professor at Tokyo Imperial University, dying of a heart attack at age 54 in 1904 after 14 years in Japan. If I were you, I’d read any of his interesting writings on all these places where he lived or his collections of ghost stories and other tales. I probably wouldn’t read this particular volume.
The reason I say this is that Japan basically flummoxed him. Westerners had scarcely begun to delve into Japanese history or culture. Anthropology was quite new and had nothing written on Japan yet. I found this book in the tone of “Wow! These people are so strange and different. You will never understand them, no matter what. You may love the place, but it will remain outside your ken.” In 2019, I don’t think this is a plausible direction. If you learn the language, if you come to know the culture and history, if you live among them, you may understand quite well. On the other hand, I don’t believe anyone can totally understand any large country, nor even small societies. It’s a question of your personality and your personal history as to how you perceive what surrounds you. So, the intoning and constant comparisons with Greece, the defense of Japan as a “great civilization worthy of respect and study” are very much out of date. You may grow tired quickly of such stuff. However, the man himself deserves to be remembered as one who did not look down on the Japanese, who did not want to convert them to Christianity, and tried to explain their ways to the West.… (mais)

Esta original obra se caracteriza, entre otras cosas, por contar con un precioso lomo entelado y unas magníficas ilustraciones en color. Esta edición reúne once inquietantes historias, pobladas de fantasmas, espíritus y otros seres sobrenaturales, ilustradas por la magnífica mano de Benjamin Lacombe.
El autor de los cuentos, Lafcadio Hearn, nació en la isla griega de Léucade en 1850 y falleció en Tokio en 1904, fue el primer gran japonólogo de la literatura occidental y destacó por sus relatos de fantasmas y sus libros de divulgación.
Gracias a su mujer nipona conoció los cuentos tradicionales sobre espectros y apariciones, que se encargó de convertir en nuevos relatos tras someterlos a un cuidado proceso de reescritura y reelaboración… (mais)