Do outro lado do globo, no início do séc. XX sobre o Japão escreve
o grego
Patrick LefKadio Hearn (Lafcádio Hearn),
fazendo o Ocidente conhecer um pouco mais sobre as belezas do Oriente.
Este texto foi enviado por Yiannis, que reside na Grécia,
e que nos apresenta um pouco da história de um conterrâneo:
aproveite a leitura!
Flávia
THE INCREDIBLE ADVENTUROUS LIFE OF LEFKADIOS HEARN
He was born in Lefkas (for this reason the name Lefkadios),
an island in west Greece, which
was included in the island complex of Eptanisa in 1850. He
was the second son of the Irish
military doctor Charles Hearn, and Roza Kasimati, a Greek
beautiful woman, with aristocratic
origin. In 1952, the Hearn family moved to Dublin, because
of the father’s work, without the
first son who had died. Two years later, little Lefkadios at
the sensitive age of 4, stayed alone
with his aunt. His mother was forced to come back to Greece,
because of the despotic
character of her husband, and the closed society of Dublin,
in which, she wasn’t acceptable.
Charles Hearn divorced her with a legal trick, and went to
West Indias (Caribbean Adilles),
with his new wife. Lefkadios never met again his mother, who
after her returning to Greece,
was closed in a madhouse and died in 1882.
The fearful psyche of
Lefkadios found refuge in the ancient Greek culture, as a student,
but his suffering had not finished. During sports
competition, he lost his left eye, and this was
the second big trauma after his abandonment by his parents.
He turned into himself and his
books. He stopped college at the age of 16, and three years
later, he decided to emigrate to
America. The view of his face, with one destroyed white eye,
and the second one very red (
due to the effort to read), was a very difficult situation
in the tough Irish society of the 19th
century.
He settled at
Cinccinati of Ohaio state and lived very poor in those early years. The English
publisher and writer Henry Watkin persuaded him to become a
journalist, and Lefkadios
worked for many newspapers of the city. In 1875 his marriage
with the mulata Alethea Foley,
was a scandal for the racist society, and also an illegal
marriage. He lost his job and moved to
New Orleans. He travelled to west French Indias (French
carribean Adilles), and lived there
for two years, writing travelling experiences and literature.
In 1889, he travelled
to Japan as a journalist of the ‘’ Harper’s magazine’’. He wanted to
present to the Americans the real country, not like a
tourist, but with a look from inside. He
was very enthusiastic with the contact with a very different
culture as the Japanese, broke his contract with the magazine, and settled in
Yokohama, Cumamoto and finally at Combe. He
taught English and studied the Japanese civilization and
culture. He married Coizumi Setsu
daughter of a samurai and had 4 children with her. He took
the Japanese nationality and
changed his name to Koizumi Yacumo. He became a sindoist,
and a Budist. His opinion was
that the eastern religions were religions of action and not
theological dogmas. He wrote
literature in the Japanese language, and many articles in
American magazines and newspapers
about the country and the people. He became the most
important exporter of the culture and
the way of life, of his new country to America.
He wrote more than 20
books and some of them have been taught in the japanese schools.
4 of them became films for the cinema, and his life became a
T.V movie in Greece. The country
of japan honored him like a national writer, and his statue
is in the central park of Tokyo. He
died at the age of 54, having lived in Japan for only 14
years.
