The Gypsies Part 5

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 pa.s.sing 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 f.a.n.n.y 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 h.e.l.l, 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 sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e!

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 das.h.i.+ng, Above the breeze fresh breezes blow; Through seas of light new light is flas.h.i.+ng, 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 l.u.s.tre, How have ye changed to guardian love!

Alas! where stars in myriads cl.u.s.ter, 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 s.h.i.+nes 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 s.h.i.+ne, 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 pa.s.sion 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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."