Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations Part 28

HOUSEHOLD MATTERS.

Come, companion, let us hurry That we may be early home, For my mother-in-law is cross, Only yestreen she accused me, Said that I had beat my husband; When, poor soul, I had not touched him.

Only bid him wash the dishes, And he would not wash the dishes; Threw then at his head the pitcher, Knocked a hole in head and pitcher; For the head I do not care much; But I care much for the pitcher, As I paid for it right dearly; Paid for it with one wild apple, Yes, and half a one besides.[46]

Objects of still higher admiration the Servians afford us in their _heroic_ poems. Indeed, what epic popular poetry is, how it is produced and propagated, what powers of invention it naturally exhibits,--powers which no art can command,--we may learn from this mult.i.tude of simple legends and complicated fables. The Servians stand in this respect quite isolated; there is no modern nation, that can be compared to them in epic productiveness; and a new light seems to be thrown over the grand compositions of the ancients. Thus, without presumption, we may p.r.o.nounce the publication of these poems one of the most remarkable literary events of modern times.

The general character of the Servian tales is the _objective_ and the _plastic_. The poet, in most cases, is in a remarkable degree _above_ his subject. He paints his pictures not in glowing colours, but in distinct, prominent features; no explanation is necessary to interpret what the reader thinks he sees with his own eyes. If we compare the Servian epics with those, which other Slavic nations formerly possessed, we find them greatly superior. In the Russian _Igor_, the whole narrative is exceedingly indistinct; you may read the whole of it five times, without being able clearly to follow out the composition. Not a single character stands out in relief. The mode of representation has more of the lyric than of the epic. The ancient Bohemian poems have more distinctness and freshness. No obscurity disturbs us. But the pa.s.sions of the poet break forth so often, as to give the whole narration something of the subjective character; while the Servian, even when representing his countrymen in combat with their mortal enemies and oppressors, displays about the same partiality for the former, as Homer for his Greeks.

The introductions, not only to the tales themselves, but even to new situations, are frequently allegorical. A distinct image is placed before the eyes at once. A tale, describing a famous sanguinary deed of revenge, commences thus:

What's that cry of anguish from Banyani?[47]

Is 't the Vila? is 't the hateful serpent?

Were 't the Vila, she were on the summit; Were 't the serpent, it were 'neath the mountain; Not the Vila is it, nor a serpent;

Shrieked in anguish thus Perovitch Balritch In the hands of Osman, son of Tchorov. [45]

Ravens are the messengers of unhappy news. The battle of Mishar begins with the following verses:

Flying came a pair of coal-black ravens Far away from the broad field of Mishar, Far from Shabatz, from the high white fortress; b.l.o.o.d.y were their beaks unto the eyelids, b.l.o.o.d.y were their talons to the ankles; And they flew along the fertile Matshva, Waded quickly through the billowy Drina, Journey'd onward through the honoured Bosnia, Lighting down upon the hateful border, 'Midst within the accursed town of Vakup, On the dwelling of the captain Kulin; Lighting down and croaking as they lighted.

Three or four poems, of which courts.h.i.+ps or weddings are the subjects, begin with a description of the beauty of the girl. Especially rich and complete is the following:

Never since the world had its beginning, Never did a lovelier flow'ret blossom, Than the flow'ret in our own days blooming; Haikuna, the lovely maiden flower.

She was lovely, nothing e'er was lovelier!

She was tall and slender as the pine-tree; White her cheeks, but tinged with rosy blushes, As if morning's beam had shone upon them, Till that beam had reached its high meridian.

And her eyes, they were two precious jewels,

And her eyebrows, leeches from the ocean, And her eyelids they were wings of swallows; And her flaxen braids were silken ta.s.sels; And her sweet mouth was a sugar casket, And her teeth were pearls arrayed in order; White her bosom, like two snowy dovelets, And her voice was like the dovelet's cooing; And her smiles were like the glowing suns.h.i.+ne; And her fame, the story of her beauty, Spread through Bosnia and through Herz'govina.

We should never end, if we continued thus to extract all the beautiful and striking pa.s.sages from the Servian popular lyrics; although their chief merit by no means consists in beautiful pa.s.sages, but, in most cases, in the composition of the whole, and in the distinct, graphic, and plastic mode of representation. In respect to their style, we add only a single remark. Slavic popular poetry in general has none of the vulgarisms, which, in many cases, deface the popular ballads of the Teutonic nations. Yet _dignity_ of style cannot be expected in any popular production. Those whose feelings, from want of acquaintance with the poetry of nature, are apt to be hurt by certain undignified expressions interspersed unconsciously sometimes in the most beautiful descriptions, will not escape unpleasant impressions in reading the Servian songs. The pictures are always fresh, tangible, and striking; but, although not seldom the effects of the sublime, and of the deepest tragic pathos, are obtained by a perfect simplicity, nothing could be more foreign to them than the dignified stateliness and scrupulous refinement of the French stage.

The number and variety of the Servian heroic poems is immense. The oldest legendary cycle is formed by their great Tzar Dushan Nemanyitch and his heroes; by the pious prince Lazar, their last independent chief, who was executed by the Turks after having been made prisoner in battle; and by the death of his faithful knights on the field of Kossovo. The two battles fought here, in 1389 and 1447, put an end to the existence of the Servian empire. In immediate connection with these epic songs are those of which Marko Kralyewitch, i.e. Marko the king's son, the Servian Hercules, is the hero; at least thirty or forty in number. The pictures, which these ballads exhibit, are extremely wild and bold; and are often drawn on a mythological ground.

Indeed both the epic and the lyric poetry of the Servians are interwoven with a traditional belief in certain fanciful creatures of Pagan superst.i.tion, which exercise a constant influence on human affairs. Witches (_Vjasht.i.tzi_), veiled women who go from house to house, carrying with them destruction; the plague, personified as an old horrible looking female; and also the saints, and among them the _thunderer_ Elias and the _fiery_ Mary who sends lightning; these all appear occasionally. But the princ.i.p.al figure is the Vila, a mountain fairy, having nearly the same character as the northern elementary spirits; though the malicious qualities predominate, and her intermeddling is in most cases fatal.

There are various features which serve to allay the extreme wildness and rudeness of the oldest Servian poems. As one of the princ.i.p.al of these we consider the solemn inst.i.tution of a contract of brotherhood or fraternal friends.h.i.+p, which the Servians seem to have inherited from the Scythians.[49] Two men or two women promise each other before the altar, and under solemn ceremonies, in the name of G.o.d and St.

John, eternal friends.h.i.+p. They bind themselves by this act to all the mutual duties of brothers and sisters. Similar relations exist also between the two s.e.xes, when a maid solemnly calls an old man her "father in G.o.d," or a young one her "brother in G.o.d;" or when a man calls a woman his "mother or sister in G.o.d." This is mostly done in cases of distress. When a person, thus appealed to, accepts the appellation, they are in duty bound to protect and to take care of the unfortunate, who thus give themselves into their hands; according to the prevailing notion, a breach of this contract is severely punished by Heaven. Marko Kralyevitch was united in such an alliance with the Vila; in modern times we find it sometimes between Turks and Servians in the midst of their most bitter feuds.

The traditional ballads of the Servians, referring to the heroes of their golden time, are undoubtedly in their groundwork of great antiquity; but as until recently they have been preserved only by tradition, it cannot be supposed, that they have come down in their present form from the original time of their composition; which was perhaps nearly cotemporary to the events they celebrate. In most of them frequent Turcisms show, that the singer is familiar with the conquerors and their language. According to Vuk, very few are in their present form older than the fifteenth century.

The more modern heroic ballads--for the productiveness of this remarkable people is still alive--are essentially of the same character. They may be divided into two parts. One division, probably composed during the last two centuries and down even to the present time, is devoted to a variety of subjects, public and private. Duels, love stories, satisfaction of blood-revenge, domestic quarrels and reconciliation, are alternately related. The variety of invention in these tales is astonis.h.i.+ng; the skill of the combinations and the final development surpa.s.ses all that hitherto has been known of popular poetry. One of the most remarkable of them is a narrative of 1227 lines; which relates to the marriage of a young man, Maxim Tzernovitch, son of Ivan Tzernovitch, a wealthy and powerful Servian. The father goes to Venice to ask in marriage for his son the daughter of the Doge. He describes him as the handsomest of young men; but, when he comes home, he finds him metamorphosed by the smallpox into the ugliest. By the advice of his wife, he subst.i.tutes another handsome young man to fetch home the bride with the procession of bridal guests; promising him the princ.i.p.al share in the bridal gifts; for he commits the fraud less from covetous views than from pride, being afraid of being put to shame as unable to keep his word before the haughty Venetians. They succeed in bringing away the bride; but the cheat is discovered on the road; a contest arises, and the whole affair ends in a horrible slaughter.

Vuk Stephanovitch has heard this tale repeatedly, and with several variations; but the princ.i.p.al features, for instance a rich and elaborate description of the bridal gifts, were always recited exactly in the same words. It was chanted in the most perfect manner by an old singer, named Milya, whom prince Milosh often had to sing it before him; and from whose lips Vuk at last took it down.

Another section of more modern ballads narrates events from the latest war between the Servians and Turks, between 1801 and 1815. Who of our readers has not heard of Kara George? His companions, Yanko Kat.i.tch, Stoyan Tchupitch, Milosh of Potzerye, are in Servia as well known and admired as Kara George himself. They and their comrades are the heroes of these ballads. The gallant Tchupitch rewarded the blind poet Philip, who chanted to him a long and beautiful poem of his own composition, with a white horse. The subject of his narrative was the battle of Salash; where Tchupitch himself had been the Servian commander.[59]

The same ballad singer Philip is the author of most of the modern heroic poems. Of others the authors are not known. Little stress is laid on the art of poetry; exercised with such extraordinary power.

These productions of our day are by no means inferior to the ancient.

There is indeed no essential difference, either in their diction or in their conception; and it is easy to be perceived, that old and young have been nursed from their infancy on tales of "the days of yore."

Some pa.s.sages of Philip's ballads are really Homeric.[51] Fortunately, the period is past when our admiration for hyperborean poetry needed to be justified by its similarity with the cla.s.sics. We have learned that real poetry is not spell-bound to names, nor to any nation or age; and the _beautiful_ has obtained in our time an independent existence, no longer subject to certain forms and conditions, but resting on itself and its divine gifts.

The difficulties Vuk Stephanovitch met with in collecting these wonderful ballads, were not small. He was often hardly able to prevail on the young men and girls to recite, still less to sing them before him; partly from a natural shyness to exhibit themselves before a stranger; partly because his search after effusions which had so little value in their eyes, and his attempt to fix them by writing, seemed to them an idle and useless occupation. The only reason which they could conceive for it was, that the learned idler meant to ridicule them; and his request was frequently answered by the words: "We are no blind men to sing or recite songs to you."

Of the heroic poems, he tells us, that they are not only chanted, but often recited, as _we_ are accustomed to _read_; and that in this latter way, old people teach them by preference to the children. His own father, grandfather, and uncle, were wont to recite and to sing them; and the two latter even composed not a few. Among those from whose lips he took down the present collection, were lads, peasants, merchants, as also hayduks, i.e. highwaymen, in Servia a mode of life less disreputable than with us, and somewhat approaching to heroism.

Further, at least seven or eight were blind men; all of them professional bards, and almost the only persons willing to satisfy him. The _shenske pjesme_, or female poems, he had to catch by chance; and short as they are, it was easy to keep them in memory after having heard them once or twice.

While these latter poems are mostly sung without any instrumental accompaniment in the spinning-rooms, in the pastures, or at the village dances; on the other hand the tavern, the public squares, the festive halls of the chiefs, are the places where the Gusle is heard which accompanies the heroic ballads. The bard chants two lines; then he pauses and gives a few plaintive strokes on his primitive instrument; then he chants again, and so on. He needs these short pauses for recollection, as well as for invention. Although these ballads are chiefly sung by blind men, yet no hero thinks it beneath him to chant them to the Gusle. Pirch, a Prussian officer, who travelled in Servia some twenty years ago, tells us, that the Knjas, his host, took the instrument from the hands of the lad, for whom he had sent to sing before his guest, because he did not satisfy him, and played and chanted himself with a superior skill. Clergymen themselves are not ashamed to do it. Nay, even Muhammedan-Bosnians, more Turks than Servians, have preserved this partiality for their national heroics. The great among them would not, indeed, themselves sing them; but they cause them to be chanted before them; and it happened, that a Christian prisoner in s.e.m.e.ndria obtained his liberty by their intercession with the Kadi, which he owed merely to their fondness for his ballads. A considerable number of fine songs are marked in Vuk's collection as having been first heard from Muhammedan singers.

Although the same ballads are not heard every where, yet the poetical feeling and productiveness seem to be pretty equally distributed over all the region inhabited by the Servian race. The heroic ballads originate mostly in the southern mountains of Servia, in Bosnia, Montenegro, and its Dalmatian neighbourhood. Towards the North-East the productiveness diminishes; the songs are still _known_ in the Austrian provinces, but the recitation of them, and the Gusle itself, are left to blind men and beggars. Pirch heard, nevertheless, the ballads of Marko Kralyevitch in the vicinity of Neusatz, in Hungary.

On the other hand, the amatory Servian ballads, and all those comprised under the name of female songs,--although by no means exclusively sung by women,--originate chiefly in those regions, where perhaps a glimpse of occidental civilization has somewhat refined the general feeling. The _villages_ of Syrmia, the Banat, and the Batchva, are the home of most of them; in the Bosnian towns also they are heard; while in the _cities_ of the Austrian provinces they have been superseded by modern airs of less value, perhaps, and certainly of less nationality.

It remains to remark, that while in all the other Slavic popular poetry, the _musical_ element is prominent, it is in the Servian completely crowded into the background. Even the little lyric pieces, or female ballads, are not only in a high degree monotonous, but even without the peculiar sweetness of most popular airs. They also are chanted rather than sung.

The Bulgarian language is said to be particularly rich in popular ballads; and it would hardly be credible, that the numerous nations with which they mixed for centuries, should not have influenced their poetry as well as their language. Nevertheless, those ballads we have met with are not distinguished in any way from the Servian; especially from those Servian ones sung in the provinces where intercourse with a Turkish population is more frequent. One specimen will be sufficient.

THE SLAVE GANGS.[52]

O thou hill, thou high green hill!

Why, green hill, art thou so withered?

Why so withered and so wilted?

Did the winter's frost so wilt thee?

Did the summer's heat so parch thee?

Not the winter's frost did wilt me, Nor the summer's heat did parch me, But my glowing heart is smothered.

Yesterday three slave gangs crossed me; Grecian maids were in the first row, Weeping, crying bitterly: "O our wealth! art lost for ever!"

Black-eyed maidens from Walachia Weeping, crying in the second: "O ye ducats of Walachia!"

Bulgar women in the third row, Weeping, crying, "O sweet home!

O sweet home! beloved children!

Fare ye well, farewell for ever!"

The SLOVENZI or VINDES, that is, the Slavic inhabitants of Camiola and Carinthia, have of course their own ballads, which have been recently collected. That the influence of the German population, with whom they live intermingled, has been very great, even in these songs, cannot be matter of surprise. It is, however, chiefly discernible in the melodies they sing; which are said to be the same familiar to the German mountaineers of Styria and Tyrol. Several narrative ballads of some length are still extant among them, similar to the Servian, but rhymed. These have been communicated to the German public in a translation by their poet Anastasius Grun. They are all too long to be given here as specimens; we therefore confine ourselves to the following pretty little song:

THE DOVELET.[53]

"Where were you, and where have you stray'd In the night?

Your shoes are all with dew o'erlaid; In the night, in the night."

I strayed there in the cool green grove, In the night.

There flutters many a turtle dove, In the night, in the night.

They have such little red cheeks, they all, In the night; And bills so sweet, and bills so small, In the night, in the night.

There I stood, lurking on the watch, In the night; Till one little dovelet I did catch, In the night, in the night.

It had of all the sweetest bill, In the night; Red rose, its cheeks were redder still, In the night, in the night.

That dovelet now caresses me In the night; And kissing each other we'll ever be, In the night, in the night.