The Spirit of Unrest
THE SPIRIT OF UNREST
In my day, we would say that Hearn went to New Orleans to find himself. As he explored the streets of the city, he also explored his psyche.
Hearn was a private man. He did not write about personal matters. Yet one only needs to read the beautiful things he wrote to see that in New Orleans his inner life was in harmony with his outer life more so than in any other time since his childhood. Hence his passionate effusions about New Orleans as the city of Eternal Summer. Did he haunt the streets of the Vieux Carré in a half-dream, seeing the city through the eyes of his inner self?
He was alone in New Orleans. With no real connection to any person or place. The perfect condition for introspection. For memories and dreams and fantasies.
New Orleans tantalized him with her subtropical beauty and languid charm. Like a lover in the presence of his beloved, all of his senses were alive.
Surrounded by beauty, he could only drink it in. This is the pleasure of the moment. But he knew he would eventually leave and he mourned the loss of beauty even while he was experiencing it. This is the melancholy pleasure of recollection. And this pleasure was increased by his twofold awareness of New Orleans in the present and New Orleans in retrospect.
He had barely arrived and he was already imagining the future when his wanderings would have taken him elsewhere and he would look back at this time with regret. Only then would he be able to call it home. Only when it was gone.