The Latest I Read for You

• Have you prepared your child to face adversity?!
What would you do if death cruelly snatched away a member of the family?? Or if a financial calamity struck? Have the children the right to know of the matter?!

• Would it interest you, Madam, to hear a glimpse of contemporary Japanese poetry?? Here, then, is what I have read for you!!

It is another evening among your evenings; a breath blows in from the sea, wiping away the sweat that has streamed down your brow and easing the day's weariness; you recline on a soft seat, the sun's heat having gone out in the deep, and you take up a book between your hands!..

And I fear the rustling of the pages may add to the strain of your nerves, in this heat that electrifies the air; so I hasten to you, carrying in my hands an impossible summary of the latest the magazines have set before us.

You know, Madam, that the chief concern of this age is fixed upon upbringing; never in any period of time has the human race awakened to the importance of rearing these little livers of ours that crawl upon the earth as it has in this age; and so your eyes can hardly fall upon a magazine or a book without your sensing this care in shaping the writing to suit the educational approach — including the magazines and the recent books built upon psychological studies at once deep and exact.

In Parents magazine I came upon a subject fit to be a letter to every mother — indeed, to everyone concerned with upbringing — and the letter's title is: Have you prepared your child to face adversity?

You may ask: what has he to do with the world of grown-ups? Naturally my love and tenderness will not allow me to burden him with care while he is small!..

But the writer says: the building of your child's personality depends upon your tact in handling these matters and analyzing them in the light of understanding and love.

And the writer insists on dotting the i's, and so begins her letter to you with a fact. She says she recently met a friend who had lost her mother, and when she asked her about the reaction of her daughter Salwa, eight years old, she answered: I was afraid of breaking Salwa's little heart, so I told her nothing; instead I sent her to the mountain until the condolence ceremonies were over.

And when the writer asked how she had explained the grandmother's absence, she said: I let her believe she had gone away on a journey that would take years!

This is one of dozens of mothers who have gone to the farthest lengths to keep a daughter from life's misery, without noticing the abnormal situation created by her own will. And then, how is she to explain to this child why the grandmother's letters are delayed, and why no special card arrives for the beloved little one?

With time, the child begins to gather up fragments of the distorted truth, and she must in the end arrive at the painful reality of the situation; she will be shocked, no doubt; and she will have lost the understanding of death in the natural way — that it is an integral part of life — and been deprived, besides, of a satisfaction that would have given her the right to share in the tragedy!..

It is among the hardest of things to accept the death of someone dear to us, however far we have advanced in emotional maturity and philosophizing. Nor should our little ones learn that death is something terrifying and cold; rather, it is natural, the inevitable end of all mankind. And of course Salwa will not thank her parents for camouflaging the truth; she may rather bear a grudge for this isolation that snatched her away from the heart of the family.

How we face difficulties is, in the writer's view, more important than the event itself; and she offers as an example the parents' attitude toward a feeble-minded child: do they not count him a catastrophe that breaks the back? Whereas they would feel no shame over him if his weakness were in his heart, for instance?.. And then, in what wretchedness do they place the boy's brothers and sisters?

A financial catastrophe is no less important than death; the child must understand it, so that he may feel the privilege of it, and sacrifice even his toys to help his family.

Samir's mother brought her son to the psychiatrist and complained to him of terrifying dreams that woke the boy to walk about in the middle of the night; she could not account for it, for he was among the best pupils in his class, a shining star among his companions, and the champion of sports among his fellows. But the doctor understood that the parents lived in perpetual discord... The mother protested: the matter was far removed from Samir's feelings, for they kept from him every doubt and suspicion of the badness of their relations — all this to preserve his happiness. But she did not convince the doctor; instead he asked the parents to lay the situation plainly before their son. And so the mother told him the story, beginning with the day she first met his father; and the father came and seconded her words. And do you know what the result was?.. The terrifying dreams melted away and Samir's soul was set at rest; and if pain showed on the features of his face in his waking hours, it had left him in his sleep.

A glance at our age makes it imperative that we be frank with our children, for they contemplate life on the screen, or hear its whisper from behind the radio!. And the writer persuades you once again to describe to your son the world as it really is — that it is not the home, where the parents' wing shelters him. It is a world of hardships and difficulties which he must face with resolve, and struggle against as best he can, guided to it by his parents' directing finger and its inspiring strength.

And by way of the Atlantic magazine I carry you, Madam, to the Far East, to introduce you to Japanese literature, which has drawn attention of late — and Japanese poetry is my particular subject.

The writer says: if Tokyo is the capital of the Japanese islands, then Magome is the pilgrimage-place of the innovating writers and poets; delegations of students and professors visit it to draw inspiration for the tablet, and to sip from the wellspring of the new art, for it is the birthplace of Tōson Shimazaki, standard-bearer of the modern literary renaissance in Japan.

Tōson began his poetry with love verse, for he loved woman and sang his poems to her; and his literary powers developed, until behold, he was a storyteller alongside the poet; and behold him wrestling with the narrowness of Japanese society, and beginning to fight the narrow family traditions that bind the hands, grip the souls, and halt the flight of the spirit.

Nor is he the only poet in the field of struggle: Arishima is one of the poets who tasted double bitterness — and who feels the suffocation of society more keenly than a suffering poet?..

Japanese literature is rich in Eastern imagination; it lets the soul go free upon its natural bent and carries it through sense and existence! The Japanese poet records this feeling in terse touches, and the unit of his poem may be the shortest known among all literatures. It is enough for me to quote two poems in proof of it:

Ask the winds and the clouds
which of you will go first —
your leaves are about to fall!

And here is another poem, in which the social pulse catches your eye:
Oh, the thrill of refreshment
the day a man becomes emperor
on a far-off island
with no subjects to trouble him.

And the reader must summon all his senses and all his powers of imagination, to fill the empty space between the words.

Nor shall I forget to mention Kawabata, the poet who sang to woman, and to her alone devoted his poems; he forgets the universe, and the problems of life, when he speaks of her; and he set apart for the wretched among women, those who cling to the tail of life's procession, a generous share of his poems — all of it in a splendid artistic manner.

It is worth mentioning that poetry in Japan is a practical means of educating the people; it is recited on public occasions, and special schools exist to teach poetry and no other branch of learning. It has succeeded in influencing education, and social guidance in general, for a group has arisen among the poets representing the philosophy of realism, and it has compelled society to look at those individuals whom the generations have bundled away, cheated of the right to their very being.

I did not mean to carry you so far away, Madam; but I return now, to find you still reclining on the balcony, contemplating the sea, or the mystery of evening over the hills, thinking out the solution of your children's problem — or composing a poem of Lebanon!