Lafcadio Hearn

Appreciations of Poetry (Classic Reprint) Lafcadio Hearn

Publisher Marketing: Excerpt from Appreciations of Poetry This volume contains a second selection from the lectures which Lafcadio Hearn delivered at the University of Tokyo between 1896 and 1902. An account of these lectures and of the remarkable student notes in which they were preserved, is given in the Introduction to the first selection, "Interpretations of Literature," 1915. The reader of the present volume should be reminded at least that Lafcadio Hearn lectured without notes, but very slowly, choosing simple words and constructions, in order to make the foreign language as easy as possible to his Japanese students; and some of his students managed to take down many of his lectures word for word. From their notes the present volume, like the "Interpretations of Literature," is selected. The fact that the lectures come to us indirectly, in places perhaps inaccurately, without Hearn's revision and therefore without the exquisite surface of his style, may give us at first a sense of loss; but second thoughts suggest rather our good fortune in having the lectures as they are. The best of Hearn's style, the man himself, is perhaps more clearly revealed here than in any of his finished work. His letters indicate that had he come back to lecture in the United States, as in 1902 he thought of doing, he would have used the substance of some of these classroom talks; and he apparently thought of writing them out and publishing them. He had made no beginning on them, however, when he died. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Contributor Bio:  Hearn, Lafcadio Born in Greece to an Irish soldier and a Greek mother, Lafcadio Hearn emigrated to the United States at the age of nineteen. While working as a newspaperman in Cincinnati, Ohio, Hearn married a black woman, which was then illegal, and fled to New Orleans to escape prosecution. Once there, he began to work for the New Orleans Item. During his time in New Orleans, Hearn published several books while continuing his work as a journalist.