The Gypsies Part 4

"And what do you talk?" I inquired of the first violin.

"_Ich spreche nur Deutsch_!" he exclaimed, with a strong Vienna accent and a roar of laughter. "I only talk German."

This worthy man, I found, was as much delighted with my German as the leader with my gypsy; and in all my experience I never met two beings so charmed at being able to converse. That I should have met with them was of itself wonderful. Only there was this difference: that the Viennese burst into a laugh every time he spoke, while the gypsy grew more sternly solemn and awfully impressive. There are people to whom mere talking is a pleasure,--never mind the ideas,--and here I had struck two at once. I once knew a gentleman named Stewart. He was the mayor, first physician, and postmaster of St. Paul, Minnesota. While camping out, _en route_, and in a tent with him, it chanced that among the other gentlemen who had tented with us there were two terrible snorers. Now Mr. Stewart had heard that you may stop a man's snoring by whistling. And here was a wonderful opportunity. "So I waited," he said, "until one man was coming down with his snore, _diminuendo_, while the other was rising, _crescendo_, and at the exact point of intersection, _moderato_, I blew my car-whistle, and so got both birds at one shot. I stopped them both."

Even as Mayor Stewart had winged his two birds with one ball had I hit my two peregrines.

"We are now going to perform," said the gypsy captain. "Will you not take seats on the platform, and hear us play?"

I did not know it at the time, but I heard afterwards that this was a great compliment, and one rarely bestowed. The platform was small, and we were very near our new friends. Scarcely had the performance begun ere I perceived that, just as the gypsies in Russia had sung their best in my honor, these artists were exerting themselves to the utmost, and, all unheeding the audience, playing directly at me and into me. When any _tour_ was deftly made the dark master nodded to me with gleaming eyes, as if saying, "What do you think of _that_, now?" The Viennese laughed for joy every time his glance met mine, and as I looked at the various Lajoshes and Joshkas of the band, they blew, beat, or sc.r.a.ped with redoubled fury, or sank into thrilling tenderness. Hurrah! here was somebody to play to who knew gypsy and all the games thereof; for a very little, even a word, reveals a great deal, and I must be a virtuoso, at least by Romany, if not by art. It was with all the joy of success that the first piece ended amid thunders of applause.

"That was not the _racoczy_," I said. "Yet it sounded like it."

"No," said the captain. "But _now_ you shall hear the _racoczy_ and the _czardas_ as you never heard them before. For we can play that better than any orchestra in Vienna. Truly, you will never forget us after hearing it."

And then they played the _racoczy_, the national Hungarian favorite, of gypsy composition, with heart and soul. As these men played for me, inspired with their own music, feeling and enjoying it far more than the audience, and all because they had got a gypsy gentleman to play to, I appreciated what a _life_ that was to them, and what it should be; not cold-blooded skill, aiming only at excellence or preexcellence and at setting up the artist, but a fire and a joy, a self-forgetfulness which whirls the soul away as the soul of the Moenad went with the stream adown the mountains,--_Evoe Bacchus_! This feeling is deep in the heart of the Hungarian gypsy; he plays it, he feels it in every air, he knows the rush of the stream as it bounds onwards,--knows that it expresses his deepest desire; and so he has given it words in a song which, to him who has the key, is one of the most touching ever written:--

"Dyal o pani repedis.h.i.+s, M'ro pirano hegedis.h.i.+s;

"Dyal o pani tale vatra, M'ro pirano klanetaha.

"Dyal o pani pe kishai M'ro pirano tsino rai."

"The stream runs on with rus.h.i.+ng din As I hear my true love's violin;

"And the river rolls o'er rock and stone As he plays the flute so sweet alone.

"Runs o'er the sand as it began, Then my true love lives a gentleman."

Yes, music whirling the soul away as on a rus.h.i.+ng river, the violin notes falling like ripples, the flute tones all aflow among the rocks; and when it sweeps _adagio_ on the sandy bed, then the gypsy player is at heart equal to a lord, then he feels a gentleman. The only true republic is art. There all earthly distinctions pa.s.s away; there he is best who lives and feels best, and makes others feel, not that he is cleverer than they, but that he can awaken sympathy and joy.

The intense reality of musical art as a comforter to these gypsies of Eastern Europe is wonderful. Among certain inedited songs of the Transylvanian gypsies, in the Kolosvarer dialect, I find the following:--

"Na janav ko dad m'ro as, Niko mallen mange as, Miro gule dai merdyas Pirani me pregelyas.

Uva tu o hegedive Tu sal mindik pash mange."

"I've known no father since my birth, I have no friend alive on earth; My mother's dead this many day, The girl I loved has gone her way; Thou violin with music free Alone art ever true to me."

It is very wonderful that the charm of the Russian gypsy girls' singing was destroyed by the atmosphere or applause of a Paris concert-room, while the Hungarian Romanys conquered it as it were by sheer force, and by conquering gave their music the charm of intensity. I do not deny that in this music, be it of voice or instruments, there is much which is perhaps imagined, which depends on a.s.sociation, which is plain to John but not to Jack; but you have only to advance or retreat a few steps to find the same in the highest art. This, at least, we know: that no performer at any concert in London can awake the feeling of intense enjoyment which these wild minstrels excite in themselves and in others by sympathy. Now it is a question in many forms as to whether art for enjoyment is to die, and art for the sake of art alone survive. Is joyous and healthy nature to vanish step by step from the heart of man, and morbid, egoistic pessimism to take its place? Are over-culture, excessive sentiment, constant self-criticism, and all the brood of nervous curses to monopolize and inspire art? A fine alliance this they are making, the ascetic monk and the atheistic pessimist, to kill Nature!

They will never effect it. It may die in many forms. It may lose its charm, as the singing of Sarsha and of Liubasha was lost among the rustling and noise of thousands of Parisian _badauds_ in the Orangerie.

But there will be stronger forms of art, which will make themselves heard, as the Hungarian Romanys heeded no din, and bore all away with their music.

"_Latcho divvus miri pralia_!--_miduvel atch pa tumende_!" (Good-day, my brothers. G.o.d rest on you) I said, and they rose and bowed, and I went forth into the Exhibition. It was a brave show, that of all the fine things from all parts of the world which man can make, but to me the most interesting of all were the men themselves. Will not the managers of the next world show give us a living ethnological department?

Of these Hungarian gypsies who played in Paris during the Exhibition much was said in the newspapers, and from the following, which appeared in an American journal, written by some one to me unknown, the reader may learn that there were many others to whom their music was deeply thrilling or wildly exciting:--

"The Hungarian Tziganes (Zigeuner) are the rage just now at Paris.

The story is that Liszt picked out the individuals composing the band one by one from among the gypsy performers in Hungary and Bohemia.

Half-civilized in appearance, dressed in an unbecoming half-military costume, they are nothing while playing Strauss' waltzes or their own; but when they play the Radetsky Defile, the Rac.o.ksky March, or their marvelous czardas, one sees and hears the battle, and it is easy to understand the influence of their music in fomenting Hungarian revolutions; why for so long it was made treasonable to play or listen to these czardas; and why, as they heard them, men rose to their feet, gathered together, and with tears rolling down their faces, and throats swelling with emotion, departed to do or die."

And when I remember that they played for me as they said they had played for no other man in Paris, "into the ear,"--and when I think of the gleam in their eyes, I verily believe they _told_ the truth,--I feel glad that I chanced that morning on those dark men and spoke to them in Romany.

Since the above was written I have met in an entertaining work called "Unknown Hungary," by Victor Tissot, with certain remarks on the Hungarian gypsy musicians which are so appropriate that I cite them in full:--

"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 h.e.l.l; from the plaint, barely heard, they pa.s.s brusquely to the warrior's song, which bursts loudly forth, pa.s.sionate 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 a.s.sumed 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, pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sionate 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 (Va.s.sile 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.