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AN ABANDONED CHILD
Born in 1850 from an affair between an Irish naval officer and a young Greek woman on the island of Lefkada, Lafcadio lived his first two years on his mother's (Rosa Kassimatis') knee, as she waited for Charles Bush Hearn to return from his duties at sea. Rosa and young Lafcadio were moved to Ireland to be cared for by Hearn's dowager aunt. But Rosa, increasingly lonely, homesick, and unstable, left her son in Ireland and returned to Greece. Lafcadio never saw her again. His father eventually abandoned him as well, and he grew into his teens shuttled between boarding schools, until his bankrupted aunt sent him to live with her maid in the slums of London. At 16, he suffered an eye injury which permanently disfigured him- which is why no portrait of him shows the left side of his face. This injury, on top of the insult of neglect and abandonment, left its mark on Hearn's psyche. |
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A PEDDLER OF THE GROTESQUE
Alienated from his peers by his dark Greek skin and his white eye, Hearn lost himself in literature- particularly the French Decadent writers. He felt kin to their sense of the tragic and grotesque. Hearn's final abandonment occurred when his aunt sent him to Cincinnati at the age of 19, with the promise that a distant relative there would take care of him. Upon arrival he was refused entry to their home, and became homeless. Hearn survived by doing odd jobs, sleeping in barns and haunting the public library until he happened upon a kind printer (Henry Watkin) who allowed him to sleep on a pile of paper shavings in his shop. Learning of Hearn's love of writing and literature, Watkin encouraged him to apply to write for the Cincinnati Enquirer. Within two years, Hearn was writing lurid stories about the underbelly of 1870's Cincinnati- the murders, slaughterhouses, ragpickers, opium dens, spiritualists, abortionists, graverobbers, 'stink factories', etc. etc. His stories were the rage. A serialized report about a gruesome murder at a tanyard was reprinted in newspapers across the country. Hearn began calling himself "The Dismal Man" , a sign that he relished the notoriety. |
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AN ETHICAL OUTLAW
An outcast at heart, Hearn felt most at home with those otherwise crushed under the wheels of industry, and those shunned from 'respectable' society. He chronicled the stories, struggles and songs of the poorest and most vulnerable in the city. He had arrived in Cincinnati shortly after the Civil War, and race relations were tense, to say the least. Undeterred by the taboo against inter-racial relations (he described himself as a "European mulatto"), Hearn fell in love with Alethea Foley, a mixed-race woman who was seen as 'black', and they married (illegally) in 1874. Hearn himself, being of Greek and Irish blood, was barely white himself, but the backlash to this relationship was infuriating. Though they separated after a few tempestuous months, Hearn was seen as breaking a vital law. He was fired from the Enquirer in 1875. This, in addition to the psychological toll of his sensational writings' ever-darker nature caused Hearn to look to more welcoming (and warmer) cultural climates. |
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1887 A CREOLIZED TOURIST
In 1877 Hearn boarded a train for New Orleans. As an editor at the Times-Democrat, he had unique access to New Orleans society, and became a frequent guest of literati and other intellectuals. And he continued to chronicle the lives of all classes, often living on a shoestring budget himself. His Creole Cookbook, a set of recipes gathered firsthand, is still celebrated today. He wrote at a ferocious pace, turning out literary criticism, poetry, and even a novel. Though he rose in the ranks of society, Hearn still regarded himself as an outsider on a deep level, and his fragile sense of security led him to abandon friends at the smallest perceived slight. He also saw New Orleans, like Cincinnati, as corrupted by industry, politics and modernization in general, on the decline: "a dead bride crowned with orange flowers". As Hearn began to long for new adventures, his writing began to appear in national journals; an 1887 assignment by Harper's to travel to the French West Indies was a welcome excuse to leave New Orleans in search of a more authentic life. |
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AN ITINERANT ETHNOGRAPHER
Hearn fell in love again; this time with the land and people of the West Indies. Always nostalgic for his idealized original home of Greece, Hearn saw these islands as closer to his spiritual home than he had ever been. Though his assignment lasted for only a few months, he lived in Martinique for two years, writing a second novel and expanding his serial travelogue into a highly detailed and lushly illustrated book-length chronicle. Hearn relished the tropical; his writing about culture included transcendent descriptions of the natural world: 
A NATURALIZED FAMILY MAN
Hearn would likely have stayed in Martinique, but financial pressures led him to accept another proposal by Harper's: to write a travelogue of Japan. Japan impressed Hearn deeply; its complex history, Buddhist and Shinto religions, the delicacy of manners, and most of all the mystery of its folklore provided an endless source for his writing. Once again, Hearn absorbed himself into the culture completely, becoming a citizen, marrying Setsuko Koizumi changing his name to Yakumo Koizumi, adopting her samurai family, teaching literature at schools and Universities to support them. Setsuko bore Hearn three children, bringing him great joy. Hearn had been abandoned by all who had cared for him in the past; he would right things by staying with his family. Japanese culture was mostly unknown to Western audiences; Hearn's vivid translations of folk stories, in particular the kwaidan (ghost stories), brought him great success outside of Japan. Though Hearn found happiness in this last part of his life (he died of a heart attack at home in 1904), his writing shows a deep inner searching that continued on; a wrestling with the violence in the world, the mysteries of love, and the heartbreak inherent in living. |