Madame Butterfly E-Book

John Luther Long

• Herausgeber: John Luther Long
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

"Madame Butterfly" is a short story by American lawyer and writer John Luther Long. It is based on the recollections of Long's sister, Jennie Correll, who had been to Japan with her husband—a Methodist missionary. It was published in Century Magazine in 1898, together with some of Long's other short fiction.An American naval officer, Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, arrives in Japan to take up his duties on a ship docked in Nagasaki. On the suggestion of his friend Sayre, he takes a Japanese wife and house for the duration of his stay there. His young bride, Cho-Cho-San, is a geisha whose family were strongly in favor of the marriage until Pinkerton forbade them from visiting.John Luther Long (1861–1927) was an American lawyer and writer best known for his short story "Madame Butterfly", which was based on the recollections of his sister, Jennie Correll, who had been to Japan with her husband—a Methodist missionary.

Leseprobe

Madame Butterfly

byJohn Luther Long 

MADAME BUTTERFLY

Boston and New York: Grosset and Dunlap.

New York

1903.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I. SAYRE'S PRESCRIPTION

II. MR. B.F. PIKKERTON -- AND HIS WAY

III. A MOON-GODDESS TRULY

IV. TROUBLE -- MEANING JOY

V. A SONG OF SORROW -- AND DEATH -- AND HEAVEN

VI. DIVINE FOOLERY

VII. HOW HE DIDN'T UNDERSTAND HER WHICHEVER

VIII. THE BRIGHT RED SPOT IN CHO'S CHEEKS

IX. "'BOUT BIRDS"

X. GENTLE LYING

XI. "THE MOS' BES' NIZE MAN"

XII. LIKE A PICTURE OF BUNCHOSAI

XIII. THE GOOD CONSUL'S COMPASSIONATE LYING

XIV. THE BLONDE WOMAN

XV. WHEN THE ROBINS NEST AGAIN

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

MADAME BUTTERFLY

INTRODUCTION

AMACHIDOSAMA

SINCE Cho-Cho-San is to have a reincarnation on the way to the literary Nirvana, my publishers, who, in this rebirth, represent the Great First Cause, beg me for a "prelude." I had hoped to have the happiness of never writing a preface (for which the "prelude" is the publisher's cunning disguise), but one disobeys one's publishers at a certain distinct peril.

Therefore, observe!

Being thus constrained, I had sent them a prelude, indeed. It was, and still is, a poem of the most obscure and exalted nature, concealed in prose dithyrambics. But they have detected and scorned it, and it is now returned with the reproach that eight pages are thus left by my default to be filled or something will happen to the book and to the public—and to me.

"Now be sensible," they say, or words to that flattering effect, "and tell the plain people plainly how the story was born; how it went out into world and touched the great universal heart, as ready to be touched as some rare instrument and as difficult; how it became a play—grand opera (the very first American story any European composer has set to music, according to those who are wise in such matters—though I don't believe it); what the people have said about it,—et cetera."

Well, here it is! Since they will not have the insidious poem, they shall tell it themselves—and have both the blame and the praise. They printed it. The people read it, and said and wrote things about it—some good, some bad. But, happily, they who liked Cho-Cho-San were more than they who did not; and so she laughed and wept her way into some pretty hard hearts, and lived—not entirely in vain.

And then she went upon the stage and made Miss Bates and herself so famous that we had to write a bigger play for them. And they beckoned for her across the sea, where, in London, Signore Puccini saw her, and when she comes back she will be a song! Sad, sad indeed, but yet a song!

What the people have said to me about her has been almost entirely by way of question. And the most frequent of these has been whether I, too, was n't sorry for Cho. To this I answer, with confusion, Yes. When she wept I wanted to—if I did n't; and when she smiled I think I did; but when she lauged I know I did.

For you will remember that at first she laughed oftener than she wept, and at last she wept oftener than she laughed—so one could n't help it.

And where has she gone? I do not know. I lost sight of her, as you did, that dark night she fled with Trouble and Suzuki from the little, empty, happy house on Higashi Hill, where she was to have had a honeymoon of nine hundred and ninety-nine years!

And is she a fancy, or does she live? Both.

And where is Pinkerton? At least not in the United States navy—if the savage letters I receive from his fellows are true.

Concerning the genesis of the story I know nothing. I think no one ever does. What process of the mind produces such things? What tumult of the emotions sets them going? I do not know. Perhaps it is the sum of one's fancies of life—not altogether sad, not altogether gay, a thing to be borne, often for others whom its leaving would mar. Perhaps the sleepless gods who keep the doors of life did not close them quite upon some other incarnation? For gods who never sleep may sometimes nod.

Finally, what matter? Here in this book is Cho-Cho-San, born again with all her little sins anew upon her head. And some of these the scribbler who here writes knows as well as they who, long since void of sentiment, sit in their chairs where words are made, and con them, and set them forth, forgetting that there may be something better had for good will and good searching. But there are sins one loves. So I love those of Cho. And I would have this Cho-Cho-San no more perfect than the world has cared to have her.

And this is she. Here is no "revised" edition. It has all the human, all the literary faults it had at first—and, may I hope, still its little charm?

So, Messueurs, Mesdames, I beg here, in your presence, that all the Gods of Luck will smile on this reincarnation!

Gomen nasai. Oitoma itashimasho.

J. L. L.

Schlafewohlplatz

August 27,1903.

I. SAYRE'S PRESCRIPTION

SAYRE had counseled him on the voyage out (for he had repined ceaselessly at what he called their banishment to the Asiatic station) to wait till they arrived. He had never regarded service in Japanese waters as banishment, he said, and he had been out twice before.

Pinkerton had just come from the Mediterranean.

"For lack of other amusement," continued Sayre, with a laugh, "you might get yourself married and -- "

Pinkerton arrested him with a savage snort.

"You are usually merely frivolous, Sayre; but to-day you are silly."

Without manifest offense, Sayre went on:

"When I was out here in 1890 -- "

"The story of the Pink Geisha?"

"Well -- yes," admitted Sayre, patiently.

"Excuse me, then, till you are through."  He turned to go below.

"Heard it, have you?"

"A thousand times -- from you and others."

Sayre laughed good-naturedly at the gallant exaggeration, and passed Pinkerton his cigarette-case.

"Ah -- ever heard who the man was?"

"No."  He lighted his cigarette.  "That has been your own little mystery -- apparently."

"Apparently?"

"Yes; we all knew it was yourself."

"It wasn't," said Sayre, steadily.  "It was my brother."   He looked away.

"Oh!"

"He's dead."

"Beg pardon.  You never told us that."

"He went back; couldn't find her."

"And you advise me also to become a subject for remorse?  That's good of you."

"It is not quite the same thing.  There is no danger of you losing your head for -- " he glanced uncertainly at Pinkerton, then ended lamely -- "any one.  The danger would probably be entirely with -- the other person."

"Thanks," laughed Pinkerton; "that's more comforting."

"And yet," mused Sayre, "you are hard to comfort -- humanly speaking."

Pinkerton smiled at this naive but quite exact characterization of himself.

"You are," continued Sayre, hesitating for the right word -- "impervious."

"Exactly," laughed Pinkerton.  "I don't see much danger to myself in your prescription.  You have put it in rather an attractive light.  The idea cannot be entirely disreputable if your brother Jack used it.  We lower-class fellows used to call him Agamemnon, you remember."

"It is not my prescription," said Sayre, briefly, leaving the deck.