Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Shadowings

Lafcadio Hearn - Shadowings (1900)

Open Library direct link 
Open Library main page

Not a discovery, not an oddity, but appropriate for Halloween (more or less).  It's something of a grab bag with the first section comprised of translated ghost and supernatural stories, including "The Reconciliation" that was filmed as Kwaidan.  There's a brief middle with essays on cicadas, Japanese women's names and old songs before closing with a section of "Fantasies" that seem to be basically prose poems of Hearn's own composition.