Chapter 6
"The gypsy artists in Hungary play by inspiration, with inimitable _verve_ and spirit, without even knowing their notes, and nothing whatever of the rhymes and rules of the masters. Liszt, who has closely studied them, says, The art of music being for them a sublime language, a song, mystic in itself, though dear to the initiated, they use it according to the wants of the moment which they wish to express. They have invented their music for their own use, to sing about themselves to themselves, to express themselves in the most heartfelt and touching monologues.
"Their music is as free as their lives; no intermediate modulation, no chords, no transition, it goes from one key to another. From ethereal heights they precipitate you into the howling depths of hell; from the plaint, barely heard, they pass brusquely to the warrior's song, which bursts loudly forth, passionate and tender, at once burning and calm. Their melodies plunge you into a melancholy reverie, or carry you away into a stormy whirlwind; they are a faithful expression of the Hungarian character, sometimes quick, brilliant, and lively, sometimes sad and apathetic.
"The gypsies, when they arrived in Hungary, had no music of their own; they appropriated the Magyar music, and made from it an original art which now belongs to them."
I here break in upon Messieurs Tissot and Liszt to remark that, while it is very probable that the Roms reformed Hungarian music, it is rather boldly assumed that they had no music of their own. It was, among other callings, as dancers and musicians that they left India and entered Europe, and among them were doubtless many descendants of the ten thousand Indo-Persian Luris or Nuris. But to resume quotation:--
"They made from it an art full of life, passion, laughter, and tears. The instrument which the gypsies prefer is the violin, which they call _bas' alja_, 'the king of instruments.' They also play the viola, the cymbal, and the clarionet.
"There was a pause. The gypsies, who had perceived at a table a comfortable-looking man, evidently wealthy, and on a pleasure excursion in the town, came down from their platform, and ranged themselves round him to give him a serenade all to himself, as is their custom. They call this 'playing into the ear.'
"They first asked the gentleman his favorite air, and then played it with such spirit and enthusiasm and overflowing richness of variation and ornament, and with so much emotion, that it drew forth the applause of the whole company. After this they executed a czardas, one of the wildest, most feverish, harshest, and, one may say, tormenting, as if to pour intoxication into the soul of their listener. They watched his countenance to note the impression produced by the passionate rhythm of their instruments; then, breaking off suddenly, they played a hushed, soft, caressing measure; and again, almost breaking the trembling cords of their bows, they produced such an intensity of effect that the listener was almost beside himself with delight and astonishment. He sat as if bewitched; he shut his eyes, hung his head in melancholy, or raised it with a start, as the music varied; then jumped up and struck the back of his head with his hands. He positively laughed and cried at once; then, drawing a roll of bank-notes from his pocket-book, he threw it to the gypsies, and fell back in his chair, as if exhausted with so much enjoyment. And in _this_ lies the triumph of the gypsy music; it is like that of Orpheus, which moved the rocks and trees. The soul of the Hungarian plunges, with a refinement of sensation that we can understand, but cannot follow, into this music, which, like the unrestrained indulgence of the imagination in fantasy and caprice, gives to the initiated all the intoxicating sensations experienced by opium smokers."
The Austrian gypsies have many songs which perfectly reflect their character. Most of them are only single verses of a few lines, such as are sung everywhere in Spain; others, which are longer, seem to have grown from the connection of these verses. The following translation from the Roumanian Romany (Vassile Alexandri) gives an idea of their style and spirit:--
GYPSY SONG.
The wind whistles over the heath, The moonlight flits over the flood; And the gypsy lights up his fire, In the darkness of the wood. Hurrah! In the darkness of the wood.
Free is the bird in the air, And the fish where the river flows; Free is the deer in the forest, And the gypsy wherever he goes. Hurrah! And the gypsy wherever he goes.
A GORGIO GENTLEMAN SPEAKS.
Girl, wilt thou live in my home? I will give thee a sable gown, And golden coins for a necklace, If thou wilt be my own.
GYPSY GIRL.
No wild horse will leave the prairie For a harness with silver stars; Nor an eagle the crags of the mountain, For a cage with golden bars;
Nor the gypsy girl the forest, Or the meadow, though gray and cold, For garments made of sable, Or necklaces of gold.
THE GORGIO.
Girl, wilt thou live in my dwelling, For pearls and diamonds true? {82} I will give thee a bed of scarlet, And a royal palace, too.
GYPSY GIRL.
My white teeth are my pearlins, My diamonds my own black eyes; My bed is the soft green meadow, My palace the world as it lies.
Free is the bird in the air, And the fish where the river flows; Free is the deer in the forest, And the gypsy wherever he goes. Hurrah! And the gypsy wherever he goes.
There is a deep, strange element in the gypsy character, which finds no sympathy or knowledge in the German, and very little in other Europeans, but which is so much in accord with the Slavonian and Hungarian that he who truly feels it with love is often disposed to mingle them together. It is a dreamy mysticism; an indefinite semi-supernaturalism, often passing into gloom; a feeling as of Buddhism which has glided into Northern snows, and taken a new and darker life in winter-lands. It is strong in the Czech or Bohemian, whose nature is the worst understood in the civilized world. That he should hate the German with all his heart and soul is in the order of things. We talk about the mystical Germans, but German self-conscious mysticism is like a problem of Euclid beside the natural, unexpressed dreaminess of the Czech. The German mystic goes to work at once to expound his "system" in categories, dressing it up in a technology which in the end proves to be the only mystery in it. The Bohemian and gypsy, each in their degrees of culture, form no system and make no technology, but they feel all the more. Now the difference between true and imitative mysticism is that the former takes no form; it is even narrowed by religious creeds, and wing-clipt by pious "illumination." Nature, and nature alone, is its real life. It was from the Southern Slavonian lands that all real mysticism, and all that higher illumination which means freedom, came into Germany and Europe; and after all, Germany's first and best mystic, Jacob Bohme, was Bohemian by name, as he was by nature. When the world shall have discovered who the as yet unknown Slavonian German was who wrote all the best part of "Consuelo," and who helped himself in so doing from "Der letzte Taborit," by Herlossohn, we shall find one of the few men who understood the Bohemian.
Once in a while, as in Fanny Janauschek, the Czech bursts out into art, and achieves a great triumph. I have seen Rachel and Ristori many a time, but their best acting was shallow compared to Janauschek's, as I have seen it in by-gone years, when she played Iphigenia and Medea in German. No one save a Bohemian could ever so _intuit_ the gloomy profundity and unearthly fire of the Colchian sorceress. These are the things required to perfect every artist,--above all, the tragic artist,--that the tree of his or her genius shall not only soar to heaven among the angels, but also have roots in the depths of darkness and fire; and that he or she shall play not only to the audience, and in sympathy with them, but also unto one's self and down to one's deepest dreams.
No one will accuse me of wide discussion or padding who understands my drift in this chapter. I am speaking of the gypsy, and I cannot explain him more clearly than by showing his affinities with the Slavonian and Magyar, and how, through music and probably in many other ways, he has influenced them. As the Spaniard perfectly understands the objective vagabond side of the Gitano, so the Southeastern European understands the musical and wild-forest yearnings of the Tsigane. Both to gypsy and Slavonian there is that which makes them dream so that even debauchery has for them at times an unearthly inspiration; and as smoking was inexpressibly sacred to the red Indians of old, so that when the Guatemalan Christ harried hell, the demons offered him cigars; in like manner tipsiness is often to the gypsy and Servian, or Czech, or Croat, something so serious and impressive that it is a thing not to be lightly thought of, but to be undertaken with intense deliberation and under due appreciation of its benefits.
Many years ago, when I had begun to feel this strange element I gave it expression in a poem which I called "The Bohemian," as expressive of both gypsy and Slavonian nature:--
THE BOHEMIAN.
Chces li tajnou vec aneb pravdu vyzvedeti Blazen, dite opily clovek o tom umeji povodeti.
Wouldst thou know a truth or mystery, A drunkard, fool, or child may tell it thee
BOHEMIAN PROVERB.
And now I'll wrap my blanket o'er me, And on the tavern floor I'll lie, A double spirit-flask before me, And watch my pipe clouds, melting, die.
They melt and die, but ever darken As night comes on and hides the day, Till all is black; then, brothers, hearken, And if ye can write down my lay.
In yon long loaf my knife is gleaming, Like one black sail above the boat; As once at Pesth I saw it beaming, Half through a dark Croatian throat.
Now faster, faster, whirls the ceiling, And wilder, wilder, turns my brain; And still I'll drink, till, past all feeling, My soul leaps forth to light again.
Whence come these white girls wreathing round me? Barushka!--long I thought thee dead; Katchenka!--when these arms last bound thee Thou laid'st by Rajrad, cold as lead.
And faster, faster, whirls the ceiling, And wilder, wilder, turns my brain; And from afar a star comes stealing Straight at me o'er the death-black plain.
Alas! I sink. My spirits miss me. I swim, I shoot from shore to shore! Klara! thou golden sister--kiss me! I rise--I'm safe--I'm strong once more.
And faster, faster, whirls the ceiling, And wilder, wilder, whirls my brain; The star!--it strikes my soul, revealing All life and light to me again.
* * * * *
Against the waves fresh waves are dashing, Above the breeze fresh breezes blow; Through seas of light new light is flashing, And with them all I float and flow.
Yet round me rings of fire are gleaning,-- Pale rings of fire, wild eyes of death! Why haunt me thus, awake or dreaming? Methought I left ye with my breath!
Ay, glare and stare, with life increasing, And leech-like eyebrows, arching in; Be, if ye must, my fate unceasing, But never hope a fear to win.
He who knows all may haunt the haunter, He who fears naught hath conquered fate; Who bears in silence quells the daunter, And makes his spoiler desolate.
O wondrous eyes, of star-like lustre, How have ye changed to guardian love! Alas! where stars in myriads cluster, Ye vanish in the heaven above.
* * * * *
I hear two bells so softly ringing; How sweet their silver voices roll! The one on distant hills is ringing, The other peals within my soul.
I hear two maidens gently talking, Bohemian maids, and fair to see: The one on distant hills is walking, The other maiden,--where is she?
Where is she? When the moonlight glistens O'er silent lake or murmuring stream, I hear her call my soul, which listens, "Oh, wake no more! Come, love, and dream!"
She came to earth, earth's loveliest creature; She died, and then was born once more; Changed was her race, and changed each feature, But yet I loved her as before.
We live, but still, when night has bound me In golden dreams too sweet to last, A wondrous light-blue world around me, She comes,--the loved one of the past.
I know not which I love the dearest, For both the loves are still the same: The living to my life is nearest, The dead one feeds the living flame.
And when the sun, its rose-wine quaffing, Which flows across the Eastern deep, Awakes us, Klara chides me, laughing, And says we love too well in sleep.
And though no more a Voivode's daughter, As when she lived on earth before, The love is still the same which sought her, And I am true, and ask no more.
* * * * *
Bright moonbeams on the sea are playing, And starlight shines upon the hill, And I should wake, but still delaying In our old life I linger still.
For as the wind clouds flit above me, And as the stars above them shine, My higher life's in those who love me, And higher still, our life's divine.
And thus I raise my soul by drinking, As on the tavern floor I lie; It heeds not whence begins our thinking If to the end its flight is high.
E'en outcasts may have heart and feeling, The blackest wild Tsigan be true, And love, like light in dungeons stealing, Though bars be there, will still burst through.
It is the reecho of more than one song of those strange lands, of more than one voice, and of many a melody; and those who have heard them, though not more distinctly than Francois Villon when he spoke of flinging the question back by silent lake and streamlet lone, will understand me, and say it is true to nature.
In a late work on Magyarland, by a lady Fellow of the Carpathian Society, I find more on Hungarian gypsy music, which is so well written that I quote fully from it, being of the opinion that one ought, when setting forth any subject, to give quite as good an opportunity to others who are in our business as to ourselves. And truly this lady has felt the charm of the Tsigan music and describes it so well that one wishes she were a Romany in language and by adoption, like unto a dozen dames and damsels whom I know.
"The Magyars have a perfect passion for this gypsy music, and there is nothing that appeals so powerfully to their emotions, whether of joy or sorrow. These singular musicians are, as a rule, well taught, and can play almost any music, greatly preferring, however, their own compositions. Their music, consequently, is highly characteristic. It is the language of their lives and strange surroundings, a wild, weird banshee music: now all joy and sparkle, like sunshine on the plains; now sullen, sad, and pathetic by turns, like the wail of a crushed and oppressed people,--an echo, it is said, of the minstrelsy of the _hegedosok_ or Hungarian bards, but sounding to our ears like the more distant echo of that exceeding bitter cry, uttered long centuries ago by their forefathers under Egyptian bondage, and borne over the time-waves of thousands of years, breaking forth in their music of to-day."
Here I interrupt the lady--with all due courtesy--to remark that I cannot agree with her, nor with her probable authority, Walter Simson, in believing that the gypsies are the descendants of the mixed races who followed Moses out of Egypt. The Rom in Egypt is a Hindoo stranger now, as he ever was. But that the echo of centuries of outlawry and wretchedness and wildness rises and falls, like the ineffable discord in a wind-harp, in Romany airs is true enough, whatever its origin may have been. But I beg pardon, madam,--I interrupted you.
"The soul-stirring, madly exciting, and martial strains of the Racoczys--one of the Revolutionary airs--has just died upon the ear. A brief interval of rest has passed. Now listen with bated breath to that recitative in the minor key,--that passionate wail, that touching story, the gypsies' own music, which rises and falls on the air. Knives and forks are set down, hands and arms hang listless, all the seeming necessities of the moment being either suspended or forgotten,--merged in the memories which those vibrations, so akin to human language, reawaken in each heart. Eyes involuntarily fill with tears, as those pathetic strains echo back and make present some sorrow of long ago, or rouse from slumber that of recent time. . . .
"And now, the recitative being ended, and the last chord struck, the melody begins, of which the former was the prelude. Watch the movements of the supple figure of the first violin, standing in the centre of the other musicians, who accompany him softly. How every nerve is _en rapport_ with his instrument, and how his very soul is speaking through it! See how gently he draws the bow across the trembling strings, and how lovingly he lays his cheek upon it, as if listening to some responsive echo of his heart's inmost feeling, for it is his mystic language! How the instrument lives and answers to his every touch, sending forth in turn utterances tender, sad, wild, and joyous! The audience once more hold their breath to catch the dying tones, as the melody, so rich, so beautiful, so full of pathos, is drawing to a close. The tension is absolutely painful as the gypsy dwells on the last lingering note, and it is a relief when, with a loud and general burst of sound, every performer starts into life and motion. _Then_ what crude and wild dissonances are made to resolve themselves into delicious harmony! What rapturous and fervid phrases, and what energy and impetuosity, are there in every motion of the gypsies' figures, as their dark eyes glisten and emit flashes in unison with the tones!"
The writer is gifted in giving words to gypsy music. One cannot say, as the inexhaustible Cad writes of Niagara ten times on a page in the Visitors' Book, that it is indescribable. I think that if language means anything this music has been very well described by the writers whom I have cited. When I am told that the gypsies' impetuous and passionate natures make them enter into musical action with heart and soul, I feel not only the strains played long ago, but also hear therein the horns of Elfland blowing,--which he who has not heard, of summer days, in the drone of the bee, by reedy rustling stream, will never know on earth in any wise. But once heard it comes ever, as I, though in the city, heard it last night in the winter wind, with Romany words mingled in wild refrain:--
"_Kamava tute_, _miri chelladi_!"
II. AUSTRIAN GYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA.
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon, and I was walking down Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, when I met with three very dark men.
Dark men are not rarities in my native city. There is, for instance, Eugene, who has the invaluable faculty of being able to turn his hand to an infinite helpfulness in the small arts. These men were darker than Eugene, but they differed from him in this, that while he is a man of color, they were not. For in America the man of Aryan blood, however dark he may be, is always "off" color, while the lightest-hued quadroon is always on it. Which is not the only paradox connected with the descendants of Africans of which I have heard.
I saw at a glance that these dark men were much nearer to the old Aryan stock than are even my purely white readers. For they were more recently from India, and they could speak a language abounding in Hindi, in pure old Sanskrit, and in Persian. Yet they would make no display of it; on the contrary, I knew that they would be very likely at first to deny all knowledge thereof, as well as their race and blood. For they were gypsies; it was very apparent in their eyes, which had the Gitano gleam as one seldom sees it in England. I confess that I experienced a thrill as I exchanged glances with them. It was a long time since I had seen a Romany, and, as usual, I knew that I was going to astonish them. They were singularly attired, having very good clothes of a quite theatrical foreign fashion, bearing silver buttons as large as and of the shape of hen's eggs. Their hair hung in black ringlets down their shoulders, and I saw that they had come from the Austrian Slavonian land.
I addressed the eldest in Italian. He answered fluently and politely. I changed to Ilirski or Illyrian and to Serb, of which I have a few phrases in stock. They spoke all these languages fluently, for one was a born Illyrian and one a Serb. They also spoke Nemetz, or German; in fact, everything except English.
"Have you got through all your languages?" I at last inquired.
"Tutte, signore,--all of them."
"Isn't there _one_ left behind, which you have forgotten? Think a minute."
"No, signore. None."
"What, not _one_! You know so many that perhaps a language more or less makes no difference to you."
"By the Lord, signore, you have seen every egg in the basket."
I looked him fixedly in the eyes, and said, in a low tone,--
"_Ne rakesa tu Romanes miro prala_?"
There was a startled glance from one to the other, and a silence. I had asked him if he could not talk Romany. And I added,--
"_Won't_ you talk a word with a gypsy brother?"
_That_ moved them. They all shook my hands with great feeling, expressing intense joy and amazement at meeting with one who knew them.
"_Mishto hom me dikava tute_." (I am glad to see you.) So they told me how they were getting on, and where they were camped, and how they sold horses, and so on, and we might have got on much farther had it not been for a very annoying interruption. As I was talking to the gypsies, a great number of men, attracted by the sound of a foreign language, stopped, and fairly pushed themselves up to us, endeavoring to make it all out. When there were at least fifty, they crowded in between me and the foreigners, so that I could hardly talk to them. The crowd did not consist of ordinary people, or snobs. They were well dressed,--young clerks, at least,--who would have fiercely resented being told that they were impertinent.
"Eye-talians, ain't they?" inquired one man, who was evidently zealous in pursuit of knowledge.
"Why don't you tell us what they are sayin'?"
"What kind of fellers air they, any way?"
I was desirous of going with the Hungarian Roms. But to walk along Chestnut Street with an augmenting procession of fifty curious Sunday promenaders was not on my card. In fact, I had some difficulty in tearing myself from the inquisitive, questioning, well-dressed people. The gypsies bore the pressure with the serene equanimity of cosmopolite superiority, smiling at provincial rawness. Even so in China and Africa the traveler is mobbed by the many, who, there as here, think that "I want to know" is full excuse for all intrusiveness. _Q'est tout comme chez nous_. I confess that I was vexed, and, considering that it was in my native city, mortified.