“To come near to the life of a people, to touch the ebb and flow of its human tides, we must consider the intangible utterances in which that people voiced its thoughts, its emotions, its aspirations.”

“Definitions of poetry have often suffered from being too narrow, from being based too much on the form and too little on the spirit. To attempt the impossible, we may define poetry as that species of emotional composition which finds expression in rhythmical form and in language warmed arid lighted by the imagination.”

“The study of Hawaiian poetry is surrounded with much difficulty, even when pursued by one who has an extensive knowledge of the Hawaiian language. Even under the lead of a competent guide, the task of digging out the meaning of an old Hawaiian mele is no light undertaking.”

“In the first place, to catch this literary guide, this kaka-olelo, and then to yoke him in to the required task, is an effort that requires all the wisdom and diplomacy at one’s command. Such people in these days are both scarce and unwilling.”

“The causes which make it difficult for us to understand the poetry of the Hawaiians are to be found both in the genius of the Polynesian language and in the stage of intellectual development at which the Polynesian had arrived.”

“The study of a language cannot be separated from the study of the mind and genius of the people for whom it is the organ of expression.”

“The phonic elements of the Hawaiian language are few in number and elementary in character; yet they show the marks of
great age, and the attenuation of long use. It is as if one should find the toys and playthings of children, with but slight modifications, doing duty in the hands of mature men as the instruments for accomplishing the serious tasks of life.”

“In the Hawaiian language every syllable ends in a vowel, and no two consonants are uttered without the interposition of a vowel sound. A slight calculation based on these data shows us that the Hawaiian speech does not contain more than seventy-six syllables.”

“To take another step, if we classify words, and more properly nouns, according to the three different stages of evolution through which they pass …”

“… first as the reflex expression of emotions, second as images, mental pictures, and third as the mere signs of ideas, we shall find that few nouns of the Hawaiian language have gone beyond the second stage, i. e., the word calls up a living picture in the mind.”

“The results that flowed from this condition were many and far-reaching, affecting not only the poetry, but the prose speech of daily life; so that it is often hard to draw the line and say where prose ends and poetry begins. From this, it follows, as might be expected, that Hawaiian poetry is highly figurative.”

“The very fact of its poverty in abstract terms compels a resort to the language of the senses, with the result that the stronger figures of speech, metaphor, hyperbole, and personification, are the ones most often used. It is not abstract beauty that is sung, but the thing beautiful.”

“We find a language full of pictures, a graphic speech, in which things visible and ponderable are brought directly before us for sight and touch. Does a lover wish to celebrate the charms of his mistress, he goes straight to nature and ascribes to the dear one of his heart all the perfections he finds in wildwood, lake and mountain …”

“… hers the blush of morning, the warmth of noonday, the perfume of sweet vine and flower, the gentle voice of the breeze; or rather the very things themselves are hyperbolized as the parts of her being.”

“Hawaiian poetry … is a dialect marked by laconic directness and wonderful power. In this old poetry we see the language in its naked strength”.

“The childlike character of the language has another influence on the poetry; it gives to its utterances a double meaning. This is a feature that causes no little embarrassment, by making it doubtful whether the primary and obvious meaning is the one intended, or some deeper hidden casket of thought is hinted at.”

“One strong and admirable feature of Hawaiian poetry is its direct attack. The poet wastes no time in beating about the bush, but strikes at once into the heart of his subject.”

“The mele, which is the generic designation of all varieties of Hawaiian poetry, was primarily lyric, intended for cantillation, often with instrumental accompaniment to punctuate the time.”

“This fact alone would make it probable that all Hawaiian poetry was constructed on rhythmical principles. It is not always easy to recognize the rhythm of Hawaiian poetry by the mere study of its written form.”

“When recited, that is, cantillated, the mele throbs with a tremulous rhythm of its own, but when reduced to writing, the same words unskilfully uttered seem to have lost the spirit of song, and to have staled like champagne poured over night.”

“On hearing the kumu-hula, the hula-master, cantillate a mele, it becomes evident that by an indefinable tone or accent, by a manipulation of his voice, he constantly introduces unwritten elements, garlands the verbal framework of the composition with certain slurring tones, grace-notes, which serve to complete the rhythm.”

“It is as when the mason fills in with rubble and small stones the spaces that remain when the large blocks have been placed in position, or as when the decorator twines about the rough frame the wreaths and wildwood filagree that serve to complete the design and make the structure an artistic appeal to the emotions.”

“The genius of the Polynesian language, and especially its Hawaiian branch, is highly favorable to this end within its own range, for it has a most delicate feeling for accent and for sound values, especially for vowel-values.”

“Terminal rhyme was not a device employed in Hawaiian poetry, and for good reason. In a language like the Hawaiian, with its ever recurring syllable endings in a, e, i, o and u …”

“… it would have been a carrying of coals to Newcastle to have set forth such commonplace wares. But there were other tone-color devices of which they availed themselves.”

“A common device was to repeat a word or part of a word that had occurred in a previous verse – a carrying over, as it were, of the poetical leaven from one verse to another. The object seems to have been to produce a pleasant surprise by reintroducing a word with a change of meaning. The repeated word is sometimes doubled in form, thus enhancing the effect.”

“In some of the meles there is a marked tendency to break up the composition into short parts, distichs, triplets, quatrains, and the like, each part at times forming a whole by itself. The result is a disjointing of the meaning, a loosening of the logical relation of one part with another.”

“No doubt the manner of their composition, and the fact that the authorship of many of the poems was shared by several bards working in conjunction, had its influence in preventing unity of conception and breaking the flow of thought, thus giving to the composition rather the character of a mosaic or string of beads than of a form cast in one mould or forged at one heat.”

“There were many varieties of mele. … The pule, prayer, took generally the poetical form. The prayers of the primitive ones are to be understood only by viewing things from their standpoint.”

“Being altogether a religious people, and not yet having risen above the conception that the universe is ruled by many deities, it followed that religion was compartmented …”

“… so that it can almost be said there was a department for war, for the piping times of peace, for pestilence, for the health of the king, for drought, for the change from one season to another, for birth, for death, for land, for sea, for wind and storm, for earthquakes …”

“… for the canoe-maker, for the bird-catcher and for the hula. This last was a happy cult, in which there were no groaning victims, no human sacrifices, in which fear and the sense of impending doom gave way to joy and light-heartedness; yet shackled with the bonds of tabu, hedged in with the conventional constraints of tradition.

“It had in it the genuine spirit of worship and supplication; it was illumined with the flame of sacrifice and propitiation ; it kept alive the sense of dependence on a higher power. However little it may interest us in and of itself, it cannot fail to command the respect of every earnest and tolerant mind.”

“But of most of the songs it may be said that love, now decorous, now wanton, sometimes outspoken, often concealed from the object of affection, or hidden in a tangle of metaphor; jealousy and intrigue; idyllic peace and content; domestic felicity, or heart-ache …”

“… the mere joy of existence ; delight in the fresh beauty of the physical world – these form the main recurring themes of which the bards of Hawaii ever delighted to treat.”

“There is, of course, a sprinkling of that class of poets and poetasters who delight in ribald jests and buffoonery; but this class forms only a small, though by no means unimportant, part of the whole, and serves the useful function of reminding us that human nature rejoices in the same vagaries of fancy in all ages, and that ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.’”

“The hula meant very much to the Hawaiian. It included in itself so large a part of what was to him the best of life’s dole; it was such a unique and significant attempt on his part to realize his dreams and aspirations …”

“… that one cannot wonder that it came to include in itself much of the best and choicest thought and uttered emotion of the Hawaiian people. It stood to them in place of lecture hall, theatre, opera, library.” (All here is from Nathaniel Bright Emerson.)

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