Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations Part 23

in a dress, in which they could be relished by readers of nations foreign to their genius. Even the love-songs, although "of the highest beauty," he thought could only he enjoyed _en ma.s.se_. But this last remark applies in a certain measure to all popular poetry; for these little songs are like the warblings of the wood-birds; and a single voice would do little justice to the whole. The monotonous chirping of one little feathered singer is tedious or burdensome; while we enjoy their full concert as the sweetest music of nature. One swallow does not make a summer. But the whole blissful sense of nature waking from her wintry sleep comes over you, when you hear the full, mixed chorus of the little songsters of the grove; and the monotonous cry of the cuckoo seems to belong just as much to the completeness of the concert, as the enchanting solo of the nightingale.

If we attempt to characterize Slavic popular poetry as a whole, we have chiefly to consider those shorter songs, which are common to all Slavic tribes, and which alone can be compared to the ballads of other nations. For, among the Slavi, only the Servians, including the Dalmatians, Montenegrins, and Croats, who speak the same language,--and indeed among all other modern nations they alone,--possess long popular epics, of a heroic character. What of this species of poetry still survives among the other Slavic nations, or indeed in any other country of Europe, is only the echo of former times. The endlessly protracted "Storie" of the Italians are, indeed, often longer than the Servian heroic tales; but in no other respect do they afford a point of comparison with them.

The Slavic popular songs have nothing, or very little, of the bold dramatic character which animates the Scotch, German, and Scandinavian ballads. Even dialogues occur seldom, except in some narrative form; as for instance:

To her brother thus the lady answered;

or,

And the bonny maiden asked her mother.

A division into epic and lyric ballads would also be difficult. A considerable portion, especially of the Russian and Servian songs, begin with a few narrative verses; although the chief part of the song is purely lyric. These introductory verses are frequently allegorical; and if we do not always find a connection between them and the tale or song which follows, it is because one singer borrows these introductions from another, and adds an extemporaneous effusion of his own. These little allegories, however, frequently give a complete picture of the subject. They are, also, not always confined to the introduction, but spun out through the whole poem. The following Russian elegy on the death of a murdered youth, may ill.u.s.trate our remarks. We translate as literally as possible. The Russian original, like the translation, has no rhymes,[5]

ELEGY.

O thou field! thou clean and level field!

O thou plain, so far and wide around!

Level field, dressed up with every thing, Every thing; with sky-blue flowerets small, Fresh green gra.s.s, and bushes thick with leaves; But defaced by one thing, but by one!

For in thy very middle stands a broom, On the broom a young gray eagle sits, And he butchers wild a raven black, Sucks the raven's heart-blood glowing hot, Drenches with it, too, the moistened earth.

Ah, black raven, youth so good and brave!

Thy destroyer is the eagle gray.

Not a swallow 't is, that hovering clings, Hovering clings to her warm little nest; To the murdered son the mother clings.

And her tears fall like the rus.h.i.+ng stream, And his sister's like the flowing rill; Like the dew the tears fall of his love: When the sun s.h.i.+nes, it dries up the dew.

P.

Servian songs begin also frequently with a series of questions, the answers to which form mostly a very happy introduction to the tale.

For instance:

What's so white upon yon verdant forest?

Is it snow, or is it swans a.s.sembled?

Were it snow, it surely had been melted; Were it swans, long since they had departed.

Lo! it is not swans, it is not snow, there, 'T is the tents of Aga, Ha.s.san Aga, etc.[6]

In Russian songs, on the other hand, a form of expression frequently occurs, which we venture to call a negative ant.i.thesis. It is less clear than the Servian, but just as peculiar. A preceding question seems to be frequently supposed; as we have also seen in the piece adduced above, "It is not a swallow," the poet says, "that clings to her nest; it is a mother who clings to her son." In other songs we hear;

Not a _falcon_ floateth through the air, Strays a _youth_ along the river's brim, etc.

or,

Not a cuckoo in the forest cool doth sing, Not in the gardens sings a nightingale; In the prison dark a brave youth sighs, He sighs and pours out many parting tears.

The frequency of standing epithets, characteristic more or less of all popular poetry, is particularly observable among the Slavic nations.

The translator will be troubled to find corresponding terms; but whatever he may select, it is essential always to employ the same; for instance, he must not translate the far-extended idea of _bjeloi_, white, alternately by _white, bright, snowy, fair_. In Slavic, not only things really white are called so, but every thing _laudable_ and _beautiful_ is called white; as, the _white_ G.o.d, i.e. the _good_ G.o.d; the _white_ Tzar, i.e., the monarch of _white_, or great and powerful, Russia. In most cases the poet himself no longer thinks of the signification and original meaning of the word. Yards, walls, bodies, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, hands, etc. are invariably _white_; even the breast and the hand of the tawny Moor. The sea is seldom mentioned without the epithet _blue_; Russian heroes have _black_ hair, but the head of the Servian hero is called _Rusja glava_, fair-haired, with a reddish shade. Russian youths, together with their steeds, are invariably _dobroe_, that is, good or brave; the heart is in the poetry of the same nation _retivoe_, cheerful, rash, light. The sun is in Servian _yarko_, bright; in Russian _krasnoi_, which signifies fair and red.

Doves are in both languages _gray_. How much the poets are accustomed to these epithets, and how heedlessly they use them, appears from a Servian tale, called "Haykuna's Wedding," a charming poem, and even much more elaborated than is common, where the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a beautiful girl are compared to two gray doves. To remind our readers of the father of popular poetry, Homer, and of the like use by him of stereotype epithets, is unnecessary.

The Slavic popular ballads, like the Spanish, very seldom lay any claim to completeness. They do not pretend to give you a whole story, but only a _scene_. They are, for the most part, little pictures of isolated situations, from which it is left to the imagination of the hearers to infer the whole. The narrative part is almost always descriptive, and, as such, eminently _plastic_. If the picture represented has not the dramatic vivacity of the ballads of the Teutonic nations, it has the distinctness, the prominent forms, and often the perfection of the best executed bas-reliefs of the ancients.

Like these, the Slavic poems seldom represent wild pa.s.sions or complicated actions; but, by preference, scenes of rest, and mostly scenes of domestic grief or joy. When we look at the celebrated Greek bas-relief, which represents an affianced maiden the evening before her wedding, weeping, or bashfully hiding her fair face, while a servant girl washes her feet,[7] we cannot help being impressed with just the same feelings, which seize us when we hear or read one of the numerous Slavic songs devoted to similar scenes. To ill.u.s.trate our remarks, and to make our readers understand exactly what we call the _plastic_ character of Slavic popular songs, we insert here the following Servian love-scene. We add, that it was one of Goethe's favourites, worthy, in his opinion, to be compared with the Canticles.[8] There is a melody in the language of this song, not to be imitated in any translation. We confess that Frederic Schlegel's definition of architecture, "frozen music," occurs to us when we read it in the original.

JOVO AND MARIA.

'Cross the field a breeze it bore the roses, Bore them far into the tent of Jovo; In the tent were Jovo and Maria, Jovo writing and Maria broidering.

Used has Jovo all his ink and paper, Used Maria all her burnished gold-thread.

Thus accosted Jovo then Maria; "O sweet love, my dearest soul, Maria, Tell me, is my soul then dear unto thee?

Or my hand find'st thou it hard to rest on?"

Then with gentle voice replied Maria; "O, in faith, my heart and soul, my Jovo, Dearer is to me thy soul, O dearest, Than my brothers, all the four together.

Softer is thy hand to me to rest on, Than four cus.h.i.+ons, softest of the soft ones."[9]

The high antiquity of Slavic popular poetry is manifest among other things, in the frequent mythological features which occur. In the ballads of the Teutonic nations, we recollect very few instances of talking animals. As to those which talk in nursery tales, we are always sure to discover in them enchanted princes or princesses. In one Scotch ballad, "The Gray Goshawk," a horse speaks; and, in a few other instances, falcons and nightingales. In Spanish popular poetry we do not meet with a single similar example. In the songs of all the Slavic nations, conversing, thinking, sympathizing animals are very common. No one wonders at it. The giant Tugarin Dragonson's steed warns him of every danger. The great hero Marko's horse even weeps, when he feels that the death of his master approaches. Nay, life is breathed even into inanimate objects by the imagination of Slavic girls and youths. A Servian youth contracts a regular league of friends.h.i.+p and brotherhood with a bramble-bush, in order to induce it to catch his coy love's clothes, when she flees before his kisses.

Even the stars and planets sympathize with human beings, and live in constant intercourse with them and their affairs. Stars become messengers; a proud maiden boasts to be more beautiful than the sun; the sun takes it ill, and is advised to burn her coal-black in revenge. The moon hides herself in the clouds when the great Tzar dies. One of the most interesting Servian tale, called "The Heritage,"

is the fruit of the moon and the morning star's gossiping with each other. It begins thus:

To the morning star the moon spake chiding; "Morning star, say where hast thou been wandering?

Where hast thou been wandering and where lingering, Where hast thou three full white days been lingering?"

To the moon the morning star has answered; "I've been wandering, I've three days been lingering, O'er the white walls of the fortress Belgrade, Gazing there on strange events and wonders."

The events which the star had witnessed, it now proceeds to relate to the moon; and these make the subject of this beautiful tale.

After having touched upon these general features, did our limits permit, we should speak more at large of those mythological beings of a more distinct character, which belong to the individual Slavic races; for example, the Vila of the Servians, the Russalki of the Malo-Russians, and the like; at least so far as this belief is interwoven in their poetry, the only respect in which it concerns us here. But we must confine ourselves to a few brief remarks.

The strong and deeply-rooted superst.i.tions of the Slavic nations are partly manifest in their songs and tales; these are full of foreboding dreams, and good or bad omens; witchcraft of various kinds is practised; and a certain oriental fatalism seems to direct will and destiny. The connection with the other world appears nevertheless much looser, than is the case with the Teutonic nations. There is no trace of spirits in Russian ballads; although spectres appear occasionally in Russian nursery tales. In Servian, Bohemian, and Slovakian songs, it occurs frequently, that the voices of the dead sound from their graves; and thus a kind of soothing intercourse is kept up between the living and the departed. The superst.i.tion of a certain species of blood-sucking spectres, known to the novel reading world under the name of _vampyres_, a superst.i.tion retained chiefly in Dalmatia, belongs also here. In modern Greek, such a spectre is called _Brukolacas_ in Servian _Wukodlak_. We do not however recollect the appearance of a vampyre, in any genuine production of modern Greek or Servian poetry. It seems as if the sound sense of the common people had taught them, that this superst.i.tion is too shocking, too disgusting, to be admitted into poetry; while the oversated palates of the fas.h.i.+onable reading world crave the strongest and most stimulating food, and can only be satisfied by the most powerful excitement.

In the whole series of Slavic ballads and songs, which lie before our eyes, we meet with only one instance of the return of a deceased person to this world, in the like gloomy and mysterious way, in which the Christian nations of the North and West are wont to represent such an event. This is in the beautiful Servian tale, "Jelitza[10] and her Brothers." As it is too long to be inserted here entire, we must be satisfied with a sketch of it. Jelitza, the beloved sister of nine brothers, is married to a Ban on the other side of the sea. She departs reluctantly, and is consoled only by the promise of her brothers to visit her frequently. But "the plague of the Lord"

destroys them all; and Jelitza, unvisited and apparently neglected by her brothers, pines away and sighs so bitterly from morning to evening, that the Lord in heaven takes pity on her. He summons two of his angels before him;

"Hasten down to earth, ye my two angels, To the white grave where Jovan lies buried, The lad Jovan, Jelitza's youngest brother; Into him, my angels, breathe your spirit,

"Make for him a horse of his white grave-stone, Knead a loaf from the black mould beneath him, And the presents cut out from his grave-shroud; Thus equip him for his promised visit."

The angels do as they are bidden. Jelitza receives her brother with delight, and asks of him a thousand questions, to which he gives evasive answers. After three days are past, he must away; but she insists on accompanying him home. Nothing can deter her. When they come to the church-yard, the lad Jovan's home, he leaves her under a pretext and goes back into his grave. She waits long, and at last follows him. When she sees the nine fresh graves, a painful presentiment seizes her. She hurries to the house of her mother. When she knocks at the door, the aged mother, half distracted, thinks it is "the plague of the Lord," which, after having carried off her nine sons, comes for her. The mother and daughter die in each other's arms.[11]

This simple and affecting tale affords, then, the only instance, in Slavic popular poetry, of a regular apparition; but even here that apparition has, as our readers have seen, a character very different from that of a Scotch or German ghost. The same ballad exists also in modern Greek; although in a shape perhaps not equal in power and beauty to the Servian.[12]

But the very circ.u.mstance that its subject is so isolated among the Slavic nations, who are so ready to seize other poetical ideas and to mould them in various ways, leads us to believe, that the Servian poet must have heard somehow or other the Greek ballad, or a similar one; and that the subject of the Servian ballad, although this is familiar to all cla.s.ses, was originally a stranger in Servia. Nowhere indeed, in the whole range of Slavic popular poetry, do we meet with that mysterious gloom, with those enigmatical contradictions, which are peculiar to the world of spirits of the Teutonic North; and which we think find their best explanation in the ant.i.thesis between the principles of Christianity, and the ruins of paganism on which it was built.

It is true, that, wherever Christianity has been carried, similar contradictions must necessarily have taken place: but the mind of the Slavic nations, so far as it is manifest in their poetry, seems never to have been perplexed by these contradictions. History shows, that the Slavic nations, with the exception of those tribes who were excited to headstrong opposition by the cruelty and imprudence of their German converters, received Christianity with childlike submission; in most cases princ.i.p.ally because their superiors adopted it.[13] Vladimir the Great, to whom the Gospel and the Koran were offered at the same time, was long undecided which to choose; and was at last induced to embrace the former, because "his Russians could not live without the pleasure of drinking."[14] The wooden idols, it is true, were solemnly destroyed; but numerous fragments of their altars were suffered to remain undisturbed at the foot of the cross; and the pa.s.sion-flower grew up in the midst of the wild broom, the branches of which, tied together, the Tshuvash considers, even at the present day, as his tutelary spirit or Erich[15]. No struggle seems ever to have taken place, to reconcile these contradictory elements; while the more philosophical spirit of the Teutonic nations, and their genius for meditation and reflection, could not be so easily satisfied. The character of the Teutonic world of spirits is the reflex of this struggle. The foggy veil which covers their forms, the mysterious riddles in which their existence is wrapped, the anxious pensiveness which forms a part of their character, all are the results of these fruitless and mostly unconscious endeavours to amalgamate opposing elements. We cannot approach the region of their mysterious existence without an awful shuddering; while the few fairies, which Slavic poetry and superst.i.tion present us, strike us by the distinctness and freshness of their forms, and give us the unmingled impression either of the ludicrous or of the wild and fantastic.

It remains to speak of the moral character of Slavic popular poetry.

If, in respect to its decency, we may judge from the printed collections, we must be struck with the purity of manners among the Slavic nations, and the unpollutedness of their imagination. Hacquet, speaking of the Slovenzi or Vindes, the Slavic inhabitants of Carniola, states, that the songs with which they accompany their dances are often indecent[16]. But there is little dependence to be placed on judgments of this description. Sometimes expressions and ideas are rashly called indecent, which only differ from the conventional forms of decency without really violating its laws.

Hacquet moreover only half understood those songs of the Slovenzi. We will at least not condemn them without having seen them. Among the Russian songs, there are some of a certain wanton and equivocal character, displaying with perfect _navete_ a scarcely half-veiled sensuality. The boldness, with which these songs are sung in chorus by young peasant women, has often excited the astonishment of foreigners.

The number of ballads of this description, however, so far as we are informed, is not considerable; and the character of Russian love-ballads in general is pure and chaste. As for the Servians, they have in fact a great mult.i.tude of songs of a very marked levity and frivolity; and Goethe, when these first appeared in the German version of Gerhardt, could not help finding it remarkable, that two nations, one half-barbarous, the other the most practised of all, (_die durchgeubteste_, meaning the French,) should meet together on the step of frivolous lyric poetry[17]. But these Servian songs are pure in comparison with many Grub-Street ballads and German _Zotenlieder_. The spirit of roguery and joviality, which prevails in them all, proves that they are more the overflowings of wild and unrestrained youth, than the fruits of dissoluteness of manners. They are often coa.r.s.e, but never vulgar; they are indelicate, but they are not impudent. At any rate, we never meet in them that confounding of virtuous and vicious feelings, which has so often struck us painfully even in the best Scotch and German ballads. We refer the reader here to our previous remarks on the measure of right and wrong, to be applied in our judgment of nations foreign to us in habits and pursuits. The heroes of the Servian epics are always represented as virtuous, often to harshness. Marko Kralyewitch is always ready to punish young women for any trespa.s.s against female modesty, by severing their heads from their shoulders; and even to his own bride, when he thinks her too obliging towards himself, he applies the most ignominious names, and threatens her with the sword.

Love and heroism, the princ.i.p.al subjects of all poetry, are also the most popular among the Slavi. But one of the peculiarities of their poetry is, that these two subjects are kept apart more than among other nations. While in the exploits of the Spanish heroes, which the popular Romances celebrate, love is so interwoven with heroism, and heroism with love, that we are not able to separate this two-fold exaltation of a generous mind, love is almost excluded from the heroic poems of the Slavi; or, at least, admitted only about in the same degree as in the epics of the ancients. It is seldom, if ever, the motive of the hero's actions. We need then add nothing more, to describe the character of Slavic heroism. It is never animated by romantic _love_; although sometimes, in the more modern epics of the Servians, by romantic _honour_. In one of the modern Servian tales, perhaps about a century old, which describes a duel between a Dalmatian Servian and a Turk, a scene of the most perfect chivalry occurs. The young Dalmatian captain, Vuk Jerinitch, having just reached manhood, inquires of the older captains, which of the Turks had most injured their country during the last invasion, while he was a child. The old captains name to him Zukan, the Turkish standard bearer. Vuk consequently challenges him, proposing at the same time, in true Oriental character, that, himself having a beautiful sister and the Turk a wife of equal beauty, both shall belong to the victor.

Zukan of course accepts the challenge. Their meeting is in the best chivalric style; they demand of each other no pledge or oath of faith, but meet in Vuk's tent with perfect confidence; they embrace and kiss each other, and make friendly inquiries after each other's health. The first hour of their meeting flies away in conviviality, and in admiration of the ladies. At last the desire to gain the Christian girl induces the Turk to interrupt their drinking. But, before they begin the fight, "they kiss each other on the cheeks, and forgive each other mutually their blood and death." This scene indeed has a decidedly Oriental costume; but the feelings, from which it results, are produced by as much of romantic exaltation as any Spanish romance could exhibit.