THE DEEP ONES: "The Dream of Akinosuke" by Lacfadio Hearn

"The Dream of Akinosuke" by Lacfadio Hearn

Discussion begins August 3, 2022.



First published the March 1904 issue of Atlantic Monthly.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?93343

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things
Insect Literature
The Selected Writings of Lafcadio Hearn

ONLINE VERSIONS

https://gutenberg.org/files/1210/1210-h/1210-h.htm#chap14

ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-po2jim_4g

MISCELLANY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafcadio_Hearn
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/16/why-lafcadio-hearns-ghost-stories-...
http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/lovecraft/essa...
https://tinyurl.com/4ncp6r6s

Those ants evidently live very fast, for all that to take place during a few minutes' nap.

I rather enjoyed the tale, but I dunno if I have much more to say about it.

This brought to mind Chuang Tzu (who dreamed that he was a butterfly, and on waking reportedly did not know if he was a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or if he was a butterfly dreaming that he was a man). And I noted that the time difference between the ant's realm here and the "real" world; and faerie in Western Europe and the real world are complete opposites.

What really struck me was the callous treatment of the ants after Akinosuké awakens. I didn't expect them ti be treated as "just ants" after what had just transpired.

>3 housefulofpaper: Had the same thought on Zhuangzi (and the Puhoy episode of AdventureTime).
Based on the few stories of his I’ve read featuring ghosts and demons I was sure when his wedding was announced, the bride was going to turn into some kind of a malevolent fiend.
The off beat ending left me with the same sense of poignancy that impressed me when I read up on the sad and outlandish events of Hearn’s life before he finally found the home he was looking for in Japan. It make me wonder if some expatriates are quite the reverse, finally coming home at the end.

I dunno if Zhuangzhi is an apt comparison - what seems to be going on is more like astral projection, with his soul/mind flying away and having adventures while his body sleeps

>5 papijoe: I too expected something awful to happen after the marriage as occurs in Hearn's "The Woman of the Snows".

It's also an odd story because, in my dabblings into Japanese culture and literature, their animist beliefs seem to rarely include insects.

>7 RandyStafford: I couldn’t think of much in terms of insect references in Japanese culture except for Grave of the Fireflies. But the topic intrigued me, so I googled “ insect netsuke” and went down a rabbit hole of Shinto ceremonies for the kami of silkworm larvae, studies on how Japanese people’s brains process insect sounds as signal (voices) rather than noise as Westerners would, and similar topics.
Overall the hysterical fear of insects that seems to predominate in the West appears to be largely absent in Japan.

This talk of insects in literature has reminded me that I have not yet read Insect Literature, the collection of Hearn's essays, stories and lectures about insects in his work.