Talvj

“ In laying before our readers a sketch of Slavic popular poetry, we must renounce at once any attempt at chronological order. Slavic popular poetry has yet no history. Not that a considerable portion of it is not very ancient. Many mysterious sounds, even from the gray ages of paganism, reach us, like the chimes of distant bells, unconnected and half lost in the air; while, of many other songs and legends, the colouring reminds us strongly of their Asiatic home. ”

“ The allusions to the misfortunes of married life alone, gather sometimes in heavy clouds on this beautiful sky. The fear of being chained to an old man, or of a grim mother-in-law, or the quarrelling of the sisters-in-law, or the increasing cares of the household,—for, in the true patriarchal style, married sons remain in the house of the parents, and all make together only one family,—all these circumstances disturb sometimes the inexhaustible serenity of the Servian women, and call forth gentle lamentations, or perhaps still oftener horrible imprecations, from their humble breasts. ”

“ Even the love-songs, although "of the highest beauty," he thought could only he enjoyed en masse. 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. ”

“ If there is something revolting to a liberal mind, in the despotic haste with which he deprived a great nation at once of a part of their nationality, through his arbitrary decision in all that he deemed best for them; still it serves greatly to allay this feeling, to observe that the resistance which he experienced did not proceed from the people, but almost exclusively from the obstinate pride of a spoiled nobility, and the narrow-minded policy of an ignorant and jealous priesthood. The Russian nation itself is indeed, more than any other people, susceptible of deep impressions. ”

“ Slavic, Polish, and heathenish, were to them synonymous words. Thus, while the light of Christianity everywhere carried the first dawn of life into the night of Slavic antiquity, the early history of Poland affords more than any other part of the Christian world a melancholy proof, how the passions and blindness of men operated to counterbalance that holy influence. But although so unfavourably disposed towards the language, it cannot be said that the influence of the foreign clergy was in other respects injurious to the literary cultivation of the country. ”

“ German artists and mechanics and even agriculturists settled in Bohemia. The influence of German customs and habits showed itself more and more, and the nobility began to use in preference the German language. In the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, this influence increased considerably, and exhibited itself most favourably in the lyric poetry of the time, an echo of the German Minnesingers; many of the poets belonging like them to the highest nobility. Of all the Slavic nations, the Bohemian is the only one in which the flower of chivalry has ever unfolded itself ”

“ The general prevalence of a musical ear and taste among all Slavic nations is indeed striking. "Where a Slavic woman is," says Schaffarik, "there is also song. House and yard, mountain and valley, meadow and forest, garden and vineyard, she fills them all with the sounds of her voice. Often, after a wearisome day spent in heat and sweat, hunger and thirst, she animates, on her way home, the silence of the [pg.319] evening twilight with her melodious songs. ”

“ It would be difficult to decide what portion of the still existing Slavic tongue has kept itself the purest; the Old Slavic has its Græcisms, the Servian its Turcisms, the Polish and Bohemian their Germanisms, the Russian its Tartarisms, Germanisms, and Gallicisms. No language in the world will ever resist the influence of the languages of its neighbours; and even the lofty Chinese wall cannot protect the inhabitants of that vast empire from corruptions in their language. ”

“ Weak vestiges of this kind of exaltation, with a few exceptions, are to be found among those Slavic nations only, who, by frequent intercourse with other races, adopted in part their feelings. The gigantic heroism of the Slavic Woiwodes and Boyars is not the bravery of honour; it is the valour of manly strength, the valour of the heroes of Homer. The Servian hero, Marko Kralyewitch, was regarded by Goethe as the personification of absolute heroism; but even Marko does not think it beneath him to flee, when he meets one stronger than himself. ”

“ Although the language possesses all the elements of completeness, and notwithstanding the not inconsiderable mass of talent which has developed itself in the course of time, the Russian literature has perhaps not yet produced a single work of great and decided original value. The best works which they have, are imitations; and he is the most distinguished writer whose discernment leads him to choose the best model. ”

“ History is the great school, in which nations appear as the pupils, experience as the teacher; and the fate of mankind depends on a wise application of the great moral lessons which they daily receive. Most of the Polish historians of this ago preferred however the Latin language; but their productions are too intimately connected with Poland to be separated from its literature, and may, therefore, be named here. ”

“ The Danes have a beautiful ballad, in which the ghost of a mother is roused by the wailings and sufferings of her deserted offspring, to break with supernatural power the gravestone, and to re-enter, in the stillness of the night, the neglected nursery, in order to cheer, to nurse, to comb and wash the dear seven little ones, whom God once intrusted to her care. It is one of the most affecting pieces of popular poetry we ever have met with. ”

“ These are the dictates of nature, which only an artificial point of honour can overcome.
But, for the full enjoyment of Slavic popular poetry, we must exact still more from the reader. He must not only divest himself of his habitual ideas and views, but he must adopt foreign views and prejudices, in order to understand motives and actions; for the Oriental races are far from being more in a state of pure nature than ourselves. He will have to transport himself into a foreign clime, where the East and the West, the North and the South, blend in wonderful amalgamation. ”

“ But the produce of the literary cultivation of the Slovaks during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is at most but small: for the times appear to have been too heavy, and men's minds too much oppressed, for a free development of their powers. The civil wars, the devastations of the Turks, the religious controversies, and after the battle at the White Mountain, religious oppression and persecution, chased the peaceful muses from Pannonia, and put the genius of the people in chains. ”

“ Schlözer, the great historian and linguist, justly observes: "Among all modern languages the Slavonic (Old Slavic) is one of those which are most fully developed. With its richness and other perfections I have here no concern. How it became so, the history of its cultivation sufficiently explains. Its model was the Greek language, in those days the most cultivated in the world; although Cedrenus no longer wrote like Xenophon. No idiom was more capable than the Slavonic of adopting the beauties of the Greek. ”

“ Love is ingenious in inventing new diminutives for the beloved object.
This exquisite tenderness in the Russian love-songs is united with a deep, pensive feeling, which indeed pervades the whole Russian popular poetry. Were we to describe the character of this in one expression, we should call it melancholy-musical. Even the more frivolous and equivocal songs have a tincture of this pensiveness. While the Servian songs of this description are the ebullitions of merry and petulant youth, the Russian are frequently not without a spice of sentimentality. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The high spirit of the Polish nation, and that glowing patriotism for which they are so distinguished, has induced them during the period of their unnatural partition and amalgamation [pg.263] with foreign nations, to devote more zeal than ever to the sole national tie which still binds together the subjects of so many different powers—their language. There have been numerous learned societies founded; among them, above all, the society of the friends of science at Warsaw, to which the most eminent men of the nation belong, must be distinguished. ”

“ The most favourable influence on its formation, however, was effected towards the close of the fifteenth century, by the custom which began to prevail of studying the classics, and of translating them with all the fidelity of which the idiom was capable. Thus fostered by judicious application and patriotic feeling, the Bohemian language approached, with rapid steps, the period of its golden age,—a time, indeed, in a political respect, of oppression, war, and devastation; but affording a gratifying proof, how powerfully moral means may counteract physical causes. ”

“ Yet not seldom a spark of real poetry shines through that melodious tissue of unmeaning words. What is most remarkable in these songs, which have now been more than a century the exclusive property of the common people, is the utter absence of coarseness and vulgarity, even in the wedding songs.
The Russian songs, like the Russian language, have a peculiar tenderness, and are full of caressing epithets. These are even frequently applied to inanimate objects. ”

“ Italy, the cradle of fine arts, and then the seat of general cultivation, was never visited more frequently by the Bohemian nobility, than when three-fourths of the nation adhered to the Protestant Church. At the very time, too, when the Bohemian Protestants had to watch most closely their religious liberties, and to defend them against the encroachments of a treacherous court, they did not deem it a desertion of the cause of religion to unite with the same Romanists, whose theological doctrines they contested, in their labours in the fields of philology, astronomy, and natural philosophy. ”

“ We cannot approach the region of their mysterious existence without an awful shuddering; while the few fairies, which Slavic poetry and superstition 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. ”

“ The very limited productiveness of the Russian poets is however a very striking and discouraging feature. While in the animated forest of German poetry, even during the most trying struggles of the times, a full chorus of songs and ballads resounds from every branch, we hear from Russian groves only solitary voices, and these voices seem to be exhausted almost as soon as they are heard. A volume of twenty sheets is in general considered in Russia as quite a respectable collection. Pushkin is almost the only one of their poets, whose very thoughts were verses. ”

“ And this is the point, in which the history of the Bohemian Reformation materially differs from that of some other countries. Luther's elevated mind did not indeed give room to narrow prejudices against those flowers of life, with which a kind Creator has adorned this earth. But almost all the other Reformers were led, either by a one-sided zeal or by circumstances, to show themselves decidedly opposed to the cultivation of elegant literature and the fine arts ”

“ And in many cases, we hold, that it is not the worst part of us; for we are far from belonging to the class of advocates of mere nature. The reader, for instance, must not expect to find in all the immense treasure of Slavic love-songs, adapted to a variety of situations, a single trace of romance, that beautiful blossom of Christianity among the Teutonic races. The love expressed in the Slavic songs is the natural, heartfelt, overpowering sensation of the human breast, in all its different shades of tender affection and glowing sensuality ”

“ Tradition, that wonderful offspring of reality and imagination, affords no safer basis to the history of poetry, than to the history of nations themselves. To dig out of dust and rubbish a few fragments of manuscripts, which enable us to cast one glance into the night of the past, has been reserved only for recent times. Future years will furnish richer materials; and to the inquirer, who shall resume this subject fifty years after us, it may be permitted to reduce them to historical order ”

“ We are ready to acknowledge that the Slavic alphabet, as arranged by Vuk, is better adapted to express the sounds of the Slavic languages, than the Latin; it is at once simpler and richer. But we nevertheless cannot help regretting, that he did not yield to the various reasons, which on the other side spoke in favour of the Latin alphabet. It was already used by some millions for the same language, and had been so for centuries. It would have given a history to the young Servian Literature built on the solid foundation of that of Ragusa. ”

“ GLAGOLITIC LITERATURE.
It is not without some hesitation that we approach a region, into which we cannot penetrate without stepping through a border of perfect darkness. We allude to the introduction of the Glagolitic alphabet; the great antiquity of which, supported by numerous traditions and legends, as well as by its venerable and almost hieroglyphic look, Kopitar's recent investigations and discoveries have again made probable; without, however, throwing any more light upon its origin. ”