Kusamakura

the firmament that has its East and West and has to walk on the rope of interests, true love is one’s enemy and visible wealth dirt. A name made and honour won may be likened unto honey which wise bees leave behind by forgoing their sting, after making it appear that they were manufacturing and sweetening it. The so-called pleasures all come from love for things and contain in them all kinds of pain. However, the world happens to have its poet and artist, who feed on the essence of this world of relativity, and knows the absolute principle of purity. They dine on heaven’s haze and quench their thirst with dew. They talk of purple and discuss crimson, and no regret detains them when death comes for them. Their pleasures are not to become attached to things, but to become themselves part of things. When they have become things themselves, they find no room for their ego though they may explore the remotest confines of the earth. They rise above worldly dirt and drink full of the boundless air of purity. These things are said not merely to scare those saturated with the odor of the lucre of the city, and alone to pose loftily, but to convey the gospel contained in them and to invite their brother beings to share in its blessings. To tell the truth, art and poetry are principles all men are born with. Most people, who, having counted their summers, are now living their grey winter, will be able to reawaken their past with its joys of seeing light shining in them. He who is unable to recall such a memory is one who has lived a life not worth living.

I do not say that the poet’s joys consist in giving oneself exclusively over to one thing, or surrendering ourselves solely to another. He may, at one time enter and become a solitary flower, or turn into a butterfly at another. Or like Wordsworth become a field of daffodils, with his heart thrown into confusion by the wind. Sometimes again he becomes lost in a scene and is unable clearly to tell what is it that has captured his heart. Some people may call this being possessed by nature. Others may describe it as the heart listening to a music of an unstringed harp. Still others may see in it a lingering in boundless regions or wandering in a limitless expanse, being unable to know or to understand. Say what they like, they are perfectly free to do so. I was precisely in this state of mind as I sat resting half of my weight on my bent elbow that rested on my desk, with my head perfectly vacant otherwise.

It was unmistakably clear that I was thinking nothing, looking at nothing. I could not be said to have become or turned into anything, as there was nothing of striking colours moving within my world of consciousness. Nevertheless I was in motion. I might not be moving in the world; but I was anyhow in motion. Not moved by a flower, not moved by birds, not moved against humanity, still moving as in a spell.

If I must explain this state of being somehow less oracularly, I should say that my soul was moving with the Spring. I should say that an etherial essence, obtained by compounding all the colours, forces, substances and sounds of Spring into an esoteric electuary, then by melting it in dews gathered in the land of immortals, and by finally evaporating it in the sunshine of fairyland, found its way into my pores before I became aware, and put me into my present state. Ordinarily an absorption is accompanied by a stimulus, which will make the process pleasant. In my case, how I came to it was quite hazy no stimulation accompanying it. Because of this absence of stimulation, there was something indescribably profound in my joy, which was quite different from those that are transparent and noisy, and occasion superficial excitement. Mine might be likened unto a great expanse of ocean, moving from its unseen fathomless depth from continent to continent, except that there was not quite as much active vitality. But I was the more fortunate because of this deficiency, as the manifestation of great vitality must needs anticipate its exhaustion some day. There is no such worry in the normality of things. My mind was presently in a state more airy than normal and I was not only free from all anxiety that strong activity might wear out, but I was above the common level of indifferent normality. By airiness I mean simply elusiveness, and do not imply any idea of over-weakness. Poets speak of melting airiness or downy lightness, and the phrase exactly fits the condition I am describing.

I wondered next, how it would work to make a picture of my fancy. I doubted not for a moment that it would not make an ordinary picture. An everyday painting is a mere reproduction, on a piece of silk or canvas of what one sees around, as it is, or else after filtering it through an aesthetic eye. A picture has done its part, when a flower looks the flower it is, the water as it reflects in the eye, and human characters animate as in life. If one is to rise above this common level, one must let live on the canvas one’s theme, with touches that utter sentiments exactly as one feels about it. Since the artists of this order aim at working the special impressions they have received into the phenomena they have caught, they may not be said to have produced a picture, unless their brush speaks, at its every sweep, of those impressions. Their work must bear out their claim that their manner of perceiving this way and feeling that way has in no way been influenced by or borrowed from old traditions or those going before them, but that nevertheless theirs is