| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: have lived in that room so long, sat in that window, dreamed on
that couch, reflected herself in that mirror, breathed that
air, without somehow detaching invisible fibres of her being,
delicate films of herself, that must gradually, she being gone,
draw together into a separate individuality an image not quite
bodiless, that replaces her in her absence, as the holy
Theocrite was replaced by the angel. If there are ghosts of the
dead, why not ghosts of the living also?" This lover's fancy so
pleased him that he brought to bear upon it the whole force of
his imagination, and it grew stronger day by day. To him,
thenceforth, the house was haunted, and all its floating traces
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: -- Of course those big paper butterflies (o-cho and me-cho) which figure
at weddings must not be thought of as having any ghostly signification. As
emblems they only express the joy of living union, and the hope that the
newly married couple may pass through life together as a pair of
butterflies flit lightly through some pleasant garden,-- now hovering
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
Kwaidan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Iliad by Homer: heaven had brought him.
Then Ajax struck Caletor son of Clytius in the chest with a spear
as he was bringing fire towards the ship. He fell heavily to the
ground and the torch dropped from his hand. When Hector saw his
cousin fallen in front of the ship he shouted to the Trojans and
Lycians saying, "Trojans, Lycians, and Dardanians good in close
fight, bate not a jot, but rescue the son of Clytius lest the
Achaeans strip him of his armour now that he has fallen."
He then aimed a spear at Ajax, and missed him, but he hit
Lycophron a follower of Ajax, who came from Cythera, but was
living with Ajax inasmuch as he had killed a man among the
The Iliad |
