Chita: A Memory of Last Island

by Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn was an English writer who was born in Greece, lived in Ireland, and then moved to the United States. He later moved to Japan, which had a great influence on his writing. Hearn is best known for his stories about Japan, especially his ghost stories and legends. Chita a Memory of Last Island was written while Hearn was living in New Orleans. Chita was a young white girl adopted by Spanish parents. The novella was based on the hurricane of 1856. The barrier island of L'Ile Dernicre was totally destroyed and swept into the sea. The story tells of good people living on the edge of an abyss and the brutality of nature. After Hurricane Katrina destroyed portions of New Orleans this story by Hearn has even more significance.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Classics, Read For School

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1886

About the author

Greek-born American writer Lafcadio Hearn spent 15 years in Japan; people note his collections of stories and essays, including Kokoro (1896), under pen name Koizumi Yakumo.

Rosa Cassimati (Ρόζα Αντωνίου Κασιμάτη in Greek), a Greek woman, bore Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (Πατρίκιος Λευκάδιος Χερν in Greek or 小泉八雲 in Japanese), a son, to Charles Hearn, an army doctor from Ireland. After making remarkable works in America as a journalist, he went to Japan in 1890 as a journey report writer of a magazine. He arrived in Yokohama, but because of a dissatisfaction with the contract, he quickly quit the job. He afterward moved to Matsué as an English teacher of Shimané prefectural middle school. In Matsué, he got acquainted with Nishida Sentarô, a colleague teacher and his lifelong friend, and married Koizumi Setsu, a daughter of a samurai.
In 1891, he moved to Kumamoto and taught at the fifth high school for three years. Kanô Jigorô, the president of the school of that time, spread judo to the world.

Hearn worked as a journalist in Kôbé and afterward in 1896 got Japanese citizenship and a new name, Koizumi Yakumo. He took this name from "Kojiki," a Japanese ancient myth, which roughly translates as "the place where the clouds are born". On that year, he moved to Tôkyô and began to teach at the Imperial University of Tôkyô. He got respect of students, many of whom made a remarkable literary career. In addition, he wrote much reports of Japan and published in America. So many people read his works as an introduction of Japan. He quit the Imperial University in 1903 and began to teach at Waseda University on the year next. Nevertheless, after only a half year, he died of angina pectoris.

Reviews

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Without the benefit of modern technology or meteorology, Hearn accurately portrays a hurricane of 1856, an event he didn't experience, as he didn't move to this area until over 21 years later. He was obviously intimate with the workings of nature, and the descriptions of the hurricane and its immediate aftermath are enthralling.

Hearn was born in Greece and, as I learned from the preface and introduction (both excellent!), lived on a Greek island before being forced by his Irish father to move after Hearn's father had his marriage to Hearn's Greek mother annulled. (Hearn left Ireland to live in the U.S. as soon as he was of age.) His love for the sea and the life around and within it, in all its beauty and terror, shines through here.

Hearn takes a legend that grew out of the destruction of Last Island, a barrier island (and resort for the wealthy) not far from New Orleans, and uses it to display the beauty and power of nature, the resilience and way of life of the area's inhabitants (Europeans, Asians, Africans and Americans), and the rising of life from death. The depiction of the latter theme I found as engrossing as the surging Gulf before it splits Last Island in two.

[Steve]

On 10 August 1856, a major hurricane destroyed Last Island, Isle Dernière, a Louisiana barrier island on the Gulf of Mexico, killing many. So severe was the storm that the island was inundated and carved into five smaller islands, the remnants now collectively known as Isle Dernières. Mr. Hearn’s short tale is remarkable both for its vivid prose and for its depiction of the cultures that swirled together at that time and place – he records the Spanish, French and Creole voices meticulously, for example. I guess destructive storms really existed before CNN and The Weather Channel came about. I’m glad The Fates brought me to this memorable book.

[Praj · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chita is a wonderful modest depiction of the copious faces of nature. Hearn who served as an editorial writer, at 'Times Democrat' (1875-1887) in New Orleans, pens a thoughtful mystic about humane simplicity against the eminent spectacle of innate catastrophe close to home.

The Last Island was a holiday resort between the south shores of New Orleans and Louisiana. The island was destroyed by a Category 4 hurricane that washed the lasting remains of the scenic land gaining the name -Isle Dernière. Hearn sets the fictional story of Conchita (Chita) against the backdrop of a factual event creating eloquence to the narrative.

The typhoon of August 10th 1856 destroyed the island and its vacationing population; sweeping away the cattle, pianos, children’s toys, homes and dead bodies. The aftermath washes ashore of Viosca (island near Louisiana), an infant- a blonde, blue-eyed girl who is adopted by a Spanish fisherman Feliu and his wife Carmen. Carmen a religious woman perceives the baby to be a gift from God and names her Chita after her deceased baby. Chita finds a loving home with her foster parents unaware of her living biological father Dr.Julien. Cry providence, Julien turns up at the island to treat a patient; on seeing Chita realizes how much she resembles his dead wife Adele. However, before his skepticisms are confirmed he succumbs to yellow fever.

Designating it a "philosophical romance", Hearn divulges the perfidious and magnanimous facets of the environment. Writing about the nature majestically, he choreographs minimalism with utmost shrewdness blending a perfect melody of a spectatorial compassion.

"All, all is blue in the calm, save the low land under your feet, which you almost forget, since it seems only as a tiny green flake afloat in the liquid eternity of day. Then slowly, caressingly, irresistibly, the witchery of the Infinite grows upon you: out of Time and Space you begin to dream with open eyes, to drift into delicious oblivion of facts, to forget the past, the present, the substantial, to comprehend nothing but the existence of that infinite Blue Ghost as something into which you would wish to melt utterly away forever. . . ."

Hearn’s brilliancy in inserting life in objects creates a dreamy rhapsody banishing the catalogue narration seen in other written novellas. The irony of adversity and bliss juxtaposed in the lives of Chita and the island makes this one of Hearn’s finest.

[Hendrik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eindrucksvolle Landschaftsbilder aus dem Mississippi-Delta. Die Handlung ist lediglich Beiwerk, angesichts der großartigen Naturbeschreibungen.

[Greg Kerestan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lafcadio Hearn is a fantastic folklorist and writer of the supernatural and the uncanny. Writing a piece of slice of life with elements of travel literature and prose poetry, he seems a bit out of his element, and you can see elements of his less realistic, more impressionistic, tendencies sneaking in through the cracks. The story itself is competent but no great shakes- you read this one for the scenery and for Hearn's famous tone, not for Chita herself.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Das Cover (aufgewühltes Meer) hat mich im Bücherschrank nach diesem Büchlein greifen lassen, verwundert las ich dann ein Blurp von Hugo von Hofmannsthal auf dem Umschlag. Wie ist das möglich? Das Buch ist tatsächlich schon vor fast 130 Jahren erschienen, die Handlung spielt nochmal ein halbes Jahrhundert früher. Die Geschichte selbst ist zeitlos (ein Findelkind wird von einem Paar aufgezogen, das hofft, dass es bei ihnen bleiben kann), darum geht es aber in dieser Erzählung aus meiner Sicht nur nebensächlich. Die wahren Protagonisten sind Wasser, Sturm und Land im südlichen Mississippi-Delta. Ihr Zusammenspiel beschreibt Hearn - sobald man sich an den altmodischen Schreibstil, bei dem vor jedem Substantiv ein Adjektiv steht, gewöhnt - lebendig und eindrücklich.

[deilann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this very dull, and had a hard time staying attentive, despite it having very good reviews and being very short. But a lot of the imagery is very good, and I didn't have to struggle to find the last page. If it had been longer, it probably would have ended up with one star.

[Kitty Tomlinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tells the story of a little girl who survived the hurricane of 1856 that killed her parents on Last Island off the coast of Louisiana near New Orleans.

[Covingtoncat73 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful classic available for free in eFormat from Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org). It is a fictionalization of a real event in Louisiana history. There used to be more and larger barrier islands before erosion and some of these had summer resorts. In the days before modern weather technology, a hurricane wiped out such a resort. Hearn, using the wonderfully descriptive (not to say purple) prose, wrote this novella about a little girl who survives the hurricane but is separated from her family and taken in by an Isleno fisher-couple. It is a gorgeous little novella and only about 90 pages long.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone who claims that no one could foresee the dangers of a hurricane, and the risk to Louisiana coastal dwellers, should read this novel, based no doubt on his experience (or the experience of his sources) with tropical storms. Hearn not only describes the nonchalance of vacationers and dwellers on the barrier islands who are trapped and die, he also describes the coastal erosion - well over 100 years before Katrina, Rita and Gustav.

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Повесть об историческом урагане 1856 года, который смел и смыл чуть ли не все побережье Луизианы и сильно перекроил дельту Миссиссиппи. Такой Паустовский с интригой — лучше сочетания и пожелать нельзя. Первая часть — готовый сценарий фильма-катастрофы, да и дальше все достаточно кинематографично, странно, что до сих пор никто не снял.

[tination · Rating 3 out of 5]

An sich lässt sich aufgrund der Kürze des Buches kaum etwas sagen. Es passiert ja auch nicht so viel auf den Seiten. Wer aber gern Naturszenen und deren Gewalt erleben möchte, wird hier durchaus Freude finden. Es ist kein schlechtes Buch. Nur langweilig.

https://commigratio.com/2018/07/19/la...

[Leslie (updates on SG) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned about Hearn from his role in introducing Japanese ghost stories to English-speaking audiences. This novella is considered a classic of Louisiana literature, and fulfilled a category for Book Riot's Read Harder challenge (book about a natural disaster). The prose is a bit too much for my taste, but does capture nature well. In addition, the story is short.

[Luis]

beautiful

[Jordan]

I am actually reading this and other Hearn in the Library of America edition and loving it.

[Davyne Dial · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story telling.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sunset came, and with it the ponderous heat lifted,--a sudden breeze blew,--lightnings flickered in the darkening horizon,--wind and water began to strive together,--and soon all the low coast boomed. Then my companion began his story; perhaps the coming of the storm inspired him to speak! And as I listened to him, listening also to the clamoring of the coast, there flashed back to me recollection of a singular Breton fancy: that the Voice of the Sea is never one voice, but a tumult of many voices--voices of drowned men,--the muttering of multitudinous dead,--the moaning of innumerable ghosts, all rising, to rage against the living, at the great Witch call of storms...

I enjoyed Lafcadio Hearn's short novel about a child orphaned during the 1856 Category 4 hurricane which decimated the resort community on Last Island off the coast of Louisiana. During the opening third, Hearn recounts the destruction of the hurricane, an account peppered with facts and a healthy dose of romanticism. His description of belles waltzing while the dance hall flooded, according to Last Days of Last Island: The Hurricane of 1856, Louisiana's First Great Storm by Bill Dixon, captured the imagination of readers and, consequently, much of Hearn's fictional constructs regarding the storm became accepted truth. Dixon presents an entire chapter of his book on Lafcadio Hearn's novella.

Hearn has a very poetic writing style with an awful lot of dashes and ellipses. He shifts languages at times--English, French, Spanish, and Italian, depending on which character is talking. The characters in the novel are not as well-drawn as the setting and atmosphere. For example, when a group of men arrive after the hurricane looking for survivors or looters, they discover a young child rescued from the sea by peaceful sea-folks. Hearn describes the encounter as follows:

She shrank from Doctor Hecker, who addressed her in German, shook her head at Lawyer Solari, who tried to make her answer in Italian; and her look always went back plaintively to the dark, sinister face of Laroussel,--Laroussel who had calmly taken a human life, a wicked human life, only the evening before.

Wait--what? Why this description of Laroussel? Why load this exposition into this sentence, of Laroussel "calmly" taking a human life. Later, we learn the child's father, Dr. Julian, had had a dual with Laroussel, but even then, it doesn't matter. Laroussel continually makes spectral appearances--even from the grave--but just who he is or why he is present is never firmly established. I got the feeling Hearn viewed character motivations, background, and dialogue as necessary filler between sweeping descriptions of raging waters. Describing waves is his métier--and the ravages of Yellow Fever. When a character succumbs to the saffron scourge, the account is riveting.

Hearn's style is certainly not currently in vogue. We don't write books like this anymore. Yet, I found this novel fascinating, offering a unique perspective on actual historical events while providing a glimpse of life in Louisiana in the late 1800s.

[Ad · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the fall of 1877, Lafcadio Hearn left his newspaper work in Cincinnati and moved to the exotic southern city of New Orleans. He would live for nearly a decade in New Orleans, writing for several newspapers, but also studying local customs and writing a cookbook about Creole cuisine. Hearn wrote editorials, and cultural reviews, for example about Zola; he also translated some French literature. In other articles he introduced Buddhism. The large number of his writings on New Orleans and its environs, also include the city's Creole population, impressionistic descriptions of places and characters, and Louisiana Voodoo. Hearn's writings for national publications, such as Harper's Weekly and Scribner's Magazine, helped create New Orleans' popular reputation as a place with a distinct culture more akin to that of Europe and the Caribbean than the rest of North America. During the time he lived there, Hearn was little known, and even now he is little known for his writing about New Orleans except by local cultural devotees.

Harper's sent Hearn to the West Indies as a correspondent in 1887. He spent two years in Martinique (before traveling on to Japan, his final and most important destination) and in Martinique he wrote and published the novella based on his stay in New Orleans: Chita, a Memory of Last Island. Last Island (Isle Dernière) was a barrier island and a pleasure resort popular with wealthy vacationers southwest of New Orleans on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. It was destroyed by the Last Island Hurricane of August 10, 1856. Over 200 people perished in the storm. Every structure on the island including the hotel, a large, two-story wooden structure of considerable strength, was destroyed. Today only small pieces of several smaller islands remain and the only population consists of seabirds.

Lafcadio Hearn used these basic historical facts to create Chita, a minor masterpiece that is by turns is mysterious and tragic. In the aftermath of the hurricane, a Spanish fisherman (Feliu) wades into the Gulf to pick through debris. Among the bodies, he finds one that is still alive, a young Creole girl. Her parents are presumed to have died in the storm.

Raised by the fisherman's family, Chita grows into a strong, independent young woman. Her story is counterpointed by that of her lost father, Julien, a doctor who thinks that his daughter is dead and, as a result, devotes himself to helping others in need. When he comes to Last Island to help stem a yellow fever epidemic, he encounters Chita...

Chita has been written in the lush, ornately aesthetic style of the 1890s. It blends fact with fiction in a haunting tale that is both impressionistic in its evocation of nature and realistic in its characterizations and depictions of life in the bayou of South Louisiana. There is a strong sense of place in this novella. Yet the extinction of the island also serves as a warning: without care, even the most serene beauty may be savored only for a short time.

It is a mystery why this beautiful novella by Hearn is today so utterly forgotten...

Also see my blog: https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/p/...

[Lukeboston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surely a gift for someone to have worked with so carefully and artfully to capture the terroir of where you're from.. :)

The nature writing is excellent and Lord this guy can romanticize. The narrative aspect was a bit lacking, or rather, there was a lull while the book awkwardly transitioned from a documentarian account to a character-driven story that only really righted itself just as it ended. I was surprised by that considering the book is so short, but the presentation of this book as a novel about a Creole girl and so on seems a little misconstrued--this part felt like an extended coda, pulling a fable from the prose poetry of the first section, shaking off the dense language and narrative remove that had worked then with some difficulty. I'm curious to compare this to some of Hearn's more representative works at some point, because this was probably an odd way in. It definitely reads as almost a spin-off, let-me-try-my-hand-writing-my-own coming from a folklorist and essayist.

Having also just visited home briefly, driving in and out of New Orleans, taking in the buildings and trees and things, there is something about latent being-in south Louisiana that I miss deeply when gone, that makes me irrationally proud, and that I just don't what what to do with when I simultaneously have no desire to stick around. Maybe it's that unfulfillability that's resonating, only amplified by the ancient transience this specific place is famous for. I'm sure much of this feeling is not unique to have about one's hometown, but this book helps materialize the Louisiana-specificity that is there.

Also tickled that Lafcadio Hearn's entire deal is proof that orientalism includes Louisiana eheheh. Reading this I was reminded of being in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and how I was reminded in both of these places of New Orleans. Surely a lot of this is affinity bias, but the estuarine relationship with the sea that Hearn waxes on about here was one of the big throughlines with Hiroshima, in particular. Again, just leaves me curious about Hearn's Japan-writing and how he applies his gaze between these places.

[Kentertainer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hearn's prose is purple in the extreme. There is often page upon page of nothing but descriptions of landscapes and weather. There were a few points where it felt like he was flexing his style a little too much, I found it mostly thrilling. I suspect that many Louisiana natives would appreciate it as much as I did. Through such rich literary painting--as well as the story involving confrontation with the erasing power of a hurricane--Chita imbued me with the childlike sense of feeling haunted again by my homeland's beauty, as well as its lack of deference bordering on outright hostility.

That feeling of hauntedness is not only an effect of the story and the imagery; it is also an effect of the historical setting. That word "Creole" that we Louisianans use to make an abstracted unity out of our heritage--it gets separated out into its constituent parts and embodied in the characters of this novella. They come from different backgrounds, and many of them are barely able to communicate with each other. Hearn writes some of the dialogue in the languages the characters are purported to speak. He often has the narrator translate to English, but sometimes he doesn't. It makes the setting feel simultaneously familiar and ghostly and unsettlingly severed from the present.

[Cillian Flood · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hearn is confident in his prose, of that I can't deny. And they're not terrible, in fact it's quite refreshing to read an author that put prose so front and center, but this book is meant to be an actual story and not just a fancy description. And in that regard the first third of the book utterly failed to get me invested. He had some saving grace when the actual characters involved in the narrative appeared and established the central issue, but then he lost me again by not developing anything in a particularly interesting way. A nice story for visiting a time and place not commonly explored, but from what little I've read thus far, his actual first hand accounts seem to achieve that better than his fictional work.

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars for now. the interesting parts were mostly in the first half (reading about the storm itself and the way of life at the time), but im really glad i read this right now, after how much my home and surrounding areas have suffered this year because of hurricane ida. also it made me very sad to see louisiana described so beautiful because, while there are still beautiful parts of the state, so much of it has been desecrated by both humans and nature. worth the read if you have any interest in louisiana culture/history.

[Erset · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es una novela de ficción basada en una historia real de una isla que la llamaban Última isla, se ubicaba enfrente del litoral de la Louisiana en Estados Unidos, un huracán prácticamente desapareció la isla en el siglo XIX y dado que era turística murieron varias personas, el autor crea una obra de ficción basada en las historias que le contaban sobre los sucesos acontecidos durante el huracán.

Primera obra de ficción de un autor que sigo desde hace varios años, esta es mi obra favorita de él. Me gusta cómo crea una atmósfera tan vívida y a la vez tan oscura, emplea algunos elementos sobrenaturales muy bien integrados, que me recuerdan a sus relatos de terror japoneses.

[sarah panic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely beautiful prose. I even read a full chapter out loud just to hear how the words would flow out loud.

[Minaida · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like one big beautiful poem, longing for the storming sea.

[user061219 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Criminally overshadowed by his work on Japan, Chita is Hearn’s only novel which marries his exquisite ability to evoke the wonder and beauty of his surroundings (in this case the swampland south of New Orleans amidst the Gulf of Mexico) and the tender story of a young girl who has washed ashore in the aftermath of a hurricane. This truly is a masterclass in the practice of evocative poetic prose and the philosophical nature of the brutality and futility of life and death. I really do hope that more fans of Hearn’s work find this novel. I was only made aware of its existence when leisurely scanning the shelves of a New Orleans book store.

[Matt Vigneau · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story is subtle. The prose of Lafcadio is underappreciated and a pleasure to discover.