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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: upward, now downward, but never widely separating.
II
A small selection of hokku (1) on butterflies will help to illustrate
Japanese interest in the aesthetic side of the subject. Some are pictures
only,-- tiny color-sketches made with seventeen syllables; some are nothing
more than pretty fancies, or graceful suggestions;-- but the reader will
find variety. Probably he will not care much for the verses in themselves.
The taste for Japanese poetry of the epigrammatic sort is a taste that must
be slowly acquired; and it is only by degrees, after patient study, that
the possibilities of such composition can be fairly estimated. Hasty
criticism has declared that to put forward any serious claim on behalf of
Kwaidan |
