Slavic people

“ The history of the language is our object, not the history of the people; we therefore give of statistic and political notices only so much, as seems to be requisite for the illustration of our subject.
The earliest data for the history of the civilization of the Slavic race, we find in their mythology; and here their oriental [pg.5] origin again appears. The antithesis of a good and evil principle is met with among most of their tribes ”

“ As for the purity and universality with which popular poetry is preserved among the Slavic nations, we strongly fear, that the chief cause of these advantages lies in the barrenness of their literature, and in the utter ignorance among the common people even of its elements. ”

“ In general, they appear as a peaceful, industrious, hospitable people, obedient to their chiefs, and religious in their habits. Wherever they established themselves, they began to cultivate the earth, and to trade in the productions of the country. There are also early traces of their fondness for music and poetry; and some circumstances, of which we shall speak in the sequel, seem to justify the supposition of a very early cultivation of the language.
All the knowledge we have respecting the ancient history of the Slavic race, as we have seen, is gathered from foreign authors ”

“ This is a scarcely desirable state of affairs in view of the fact that the Slavs as a whole are lower and more primitive in character and condition than the Germans. The cultivated portion of Slavic populations forms a very small proportion in number of the whole, and stands far in advance of the abundant multitude of peasants and artisans, a vast body of people who are ruled chiefly by fear ”

“ It is high time to take up once more the main thread of our argument—how far did the Slavic invasion, which so profoundly influenced the agrarian institutions, affect the physical type of the people of Germany? We may subdivide the Slavic-speaking nations of eastern Europe into two groups, which, however, differ from one another and from the pure Alpine race only in degree. ”

“ Besides their common racial bond, each group is related by language, economic environment,{218} determined by climatic and political conditions, and above all, by religion, which is a stronger bond than even ties of racial kinship.
The entire Slavic world is living under the dominion of religion more or less clearly interpreted and understood. This manifests itself in conversation with the people. “God help you on your way!” “Go with God.” “Praised be the Lord Jesus Christ!” are common greetings as one journeys along Slavic highways and byways. ”

“ These poor and scanty accounts of the mythology of the ancient Slavs are supplemented by old traditions which still live among the people, these legends being very rich and containing ample survivals of the past, since even after their conversion to Christianity the common folk clung to their pagan beliefs. Thus ancient national tales, preserved to this very day, contain distinct traces of the early faith, and these traditions, verified by old evidence, are of such prime importance that they will form the basis of our description of Slavic mythology. ”

“ We have had little occasion hitherto, in dealing with the history of western Europe, to speak of the Slavic peoples, to whom the Russians, Poles, Bohemians, and many other nations of eastern Europe belong. Together they form the most numerous race in Europe, but, as has been well said, "they occupy a greater place on the map than in history." ”

“ That this Slavic branch, a mountain people, had its treasures of popular poetry, has always been supposed; and many single pieces, not without beauty, have been communicated to the public in German translations. A collection of these flowers, which fade rapidly away in this German neighbourhood, was ten years ago made by Achazel and Korytko. [150]
The literature of a people, among whom every individual of any education may call another highly cultivated language in the fullest sense his own,—as is the case with the Bohemians and Slovenzi in respect to the German,—cannot be very extensive. ”

“ In the latter half of the eleventh century the Slavic nations were already in possession of the whole extent of territory which they still occupy, from the Arctic Ocean on the north to the Black and Adriatic seas on the south, and from Kamtschatka and the Russian islands of the Pacific to the Baltic, and along the banks of the rivers Elbe, Muhr, and Ruab, again to the Adriatic. They are represented by early historians as having been a peaceful, industrious, hospitable people, obedient to their chiefs, and religious in their habits. ”

“ Both nations are branches of the great Slavic race, their languages are nearly related and the consciousness of blood relationship is very strong. The Russian people, being by far the most numerous of the Slav nations, is looked upon as the big brother of the Slav family, the champion of the oppressed Slavs of Turkey and Austria-Hungary. ”

“ As traders, as the business elements in the cities, however, they are found even up in Varna and Bourgas in Bulgaria.
In the interior there can be no doubt that the Slavs are in the vast majority over all the other peoples. The names of the smallest villages, as indicated on Austrian maps, the most trustworthy that have been made, are obviously Slavic. Down through Thrace, almost to Constantinople, over to a few miles outside Saloniki, sweeping over almost into the mountains of Albania, up to Montenegro, the people are Slavic. ”

“ THE Bohemians have been the torchbearers in the Slavic revival which has awakened the dormant national consciousness of the minor Slavic peoples, and which had indirectly brought Russian literature to its fullest fruition. ”

“ In the course of this dispossession the most westerly Slavic group, the Polabic, between the Elbe and the Oder, were merged in the German, and, barring the remnant of Wends in Lusatia (the Sorabi or Northern Serbs) , have disappeared entirely from ethnic geography. The great Slavic nation of the present day is Russia, but the great number of Slavic peoples who are not Russian and the considerable Russian population which is not Slavic renders impossible the study of this race on strictly national lines. ”

“ The northern Slavs include the Russians, Poles, Slovaks, Czechs, and Wends; the southern is composed of the Serbs, Croatians, Slovenes, and Albanians. Both of these are broad-headed, the southern group being rather taller and considerably darker than the one which surrounds Germany. All the modern Slavic peoples of northern Europe approximate to the Alpine type; from which it follows that intermixture of them with the Teutons ought normally to produce shorter stature, darker hair and eyes, and, most persistently of all, an increased breadth of head. ”

“ As the result of these differences of advance in population, the Slavic peoples have been raised from the lowest to the highest weight in numbers; the Germanic have dropped just enough in the scale to take second place; while the Latinized folk of Southwestern Europe, or Latins as we call them, have fallen far from the share they had in the peopling of the continent 100 years ago. Of each 1,000 Europeans in 1801 the Slavs numbered 268, the Latins 355, the Germanics 375. In 1850 the count was 310 for the Slav, 321 for the Latin, 369 for the Germanic. ”

“ Yet the subject in itself is not without a high interest and importance; relating, as it does, to the languages and literature of a population amounting to nearly or quite seventy millions, or more than three times as great as that of the United States. These topics embrace, of course, the history of mental cultivation among the Slavic nations from its earliest dawn; their intellectual development; the progress of man among them as a thinking, sentient, social being, acting and acted upon in his various relations to other minds. ”

“ Much less of barbarism and wild revenge meets us in their modern productions, namely, the epic poems relating to the war of deliverance in the beginning of the present century; although their oppressors had given them ample cause for a merciless retaliation. In the shorter and more lyric songs, of which a rich treasure is the property of most Slavic nations, and in which their common descent is most strikingly manifested, there prevails a still purer morality, and the most tender feelings of the human breast are displayed. ”

“ After having ceased for centuries to be a language of common life, the Old Slavic has of course lost that kind of pliancy and facility, which only a living language, employed to express all the daily wants of men, can possibly acquire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The suppleness of Asia and the energy of Europe, the passive fatalism of the Turk and the active religion of the Christian, the revengeful spirit of the oppressed, and the child-like resignation of him who cheerfully submits,—all these seeming contradictions find an expressive organ in Slavic popular poetry. Even in respect to his moral feelings, the reader will frequently have to adopt a different standard of right and wrong. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It must further be borne in mind that the extant data treat of the period immediately preceding the introduction of Christianity, when the Slavic nations, inhabiting a wide-spread region and already possessed of some degree of civilization, had made considerable progress from their primeval culture. Hence no inferences may be drawn from the mythology of one Slavic nation as to the religion of the Slavs as a whole. ”

“ 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 near relationship of the Slavic nations among each other, is exhibited in no feature more strikingly than in their national popular poetry, especially in the little lyric songs, the immediate effusion of their feelings, wishes, and cares; whilst epic poetry, which draws her materials from the external world, must hence, in every nation, be in some measure modified by their different fortunes and situations. ”

“ No other Slavic nationality is more self-conscious and patriotic, not to say chauvinistic, in its national feeling, and at the same time none begins to be so permeated with general European culture and so advanced economically. ”

“ Strabo, Pomponius Mela, Pliny, Tacitus, and several other classical and a few oriental writers, allude to the Slavic nations occasionally. But the first distinct intelligence we have of them, is not older than the middle of the sixth century. ”

“ Of all the surviving Slavic tribes, we have seen that the nationality of the VENDES of Lusatia is most endangered. If formerly, as a race, they suffered from persecution and oppression, they have now for several centuries shared all the advantages of an enlightened education and wise institutions with their German countrymen ”

“ East of the Scandinavian peninsula and of the German-speaking population of central Europe, spread out like a great fan, are a variety of peoples who possess many common characteristics, including a group of closely related languages, which are called Slavic. These Slavs in the year 1500 included (1) the Russians, (2) the Poles and Lithuanians, (3) the Czechs, or natives of Bohemia, within the confines of the Holy Roman Empire, and (4) various nations in southeastern Europe, such as the Serbs and Bulgars. ”

“ The specific names, however, Antes and Slavi, which Adelung applies to the great divisions, and which were first used by Jornandes, are arbitrary, and less distinct than those adopted by Dobrovsky, Kopitar, and Schaffarik; who divide all Slavic nations, according to certain philological affinities and differences, into the North-Western and South-Eastern Stems. ”

“ Strabo describes some of the idols of the Rugians, in which we meet again the whole significant symbolization of the East. The custom prevalent among many Slavic nations, of females burning themselves with the corpses of their husbands, seems also to have been brought from India to Europe. ”

“ As a matter of fact his work clearly shows the imprint of Slavic genius and receives its richness from qualities which have always appeared in Slavic literature,—sincerity and accuracy of observation, a passionate love for all manifestations of modern life, lyrical fullness, and power of suggestion. ”

“ Russia is much more largely Asiatic in spirit than it is European. The typical Slav of today is, temperamentally, though not in a precise sense racially, a mixture of Tartar fierceness, old Slavonic stolidity, and Hindu Nirvana, which, being translated into Russian, is essentially Nihilism. Yet, today as for many centuries, the Slavic race is as truly homogeneous as any can be. ”

“ In the natural course of development, the Slavic type is destined to separate from the Teutono-Romance or European type, and it will elaborate in a comprehensive synthesis the cultural elements that have undergone partial development at the hands of the other types. ”