Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, November, 1878

The reader who merely sees this song on a printed page in an imperfect prose translation can form little conception of the thrilling effect which it produces when sung by an excited woman to the fierce wild music of the Caucasian highlanders amid a group of Khamzat's fiery and sensitive countrymen. Their faces flush with strong emotion, their hands close with nervous grip upon the hilts of their long kinjals, and their bright eyes slowly fill with tears of mingled grief, rage and pity as the excited singer wails out the dying words of their lost leader.

The heroic poetry of the Caucasian mountaineers is largely taken up with recitals of their freebooting exploits and achievements in the valley of Georgia, usually in the form of songs or ballads, which all breathe the same fierce, proud, cruel spirit. In the diction there is very little art. Rhyme, although it is known to the mountaineers, is seldom used, and their poetry is, as a rule, nothing more than rhythmical or blank verse broken into irregular stanzas of from seven to eleven metrical feet. This kind of verse they improvise with great readiness and facility. It seems to be the form of expression which their stronger feelings naturally take. I have heard an Avarian mother chant amid her sobs an improvised but rhythmical lament over the body of her dead child. Rude as Caucasian poetry is, however, in construction, fierce and warlike as it generally is in spirit, one meets occasionally in Caucasian songs with the most delicate and graceful conceptions. Contrast, for example, "The Song of Khamzat" or "The Death-Song of the Chechense" with the following bit of Avarian poetry, which I have taken the liberty of calling:

GLAMOUR

Come out of doors, O mother! and see what a wonder is here:
Up through the snows of the mountain the flowers of spring appear.
Come out on the roof, O mother! and see how along the ravine
The glacier-ice is covered with the springtime's leafy green!
There are no flowers, my daughter: 'tis only because thou art young
That blossoms from under the mountain-snows appear to thee to have sprung.
There is no grass on the glacier: the blades do not even start;
But thou art in love, and the grass and flowers are springing in thy heart.

I have space for only one more specimen of Caucasian heroic literature, a brief oration of Kazi Mullah, the friend and teacher of Shamyl and the founder of Caucasian Muridism. An imperfect translation of this speech will be found in Latham's Races of the Russian Empire. Copies of it in Arabic were widely circulated throughout Daghestan immediately after its delivery, and it probably contributed more than any other single thing to bring on the general insurrection of the East Caucasian mountaineers in 1832. In the spring of that year the inhabitants of a small aoul or mountain-village in Central Daghestan—I think Khunzakh—were assembled one evening in the walled courtyard of one of its houses under the minaret of the village mosque for the purpose of social enjoyment. Tradition relates that they were celebrating a wedding. A fire had been built in the middle of the courtyard, and around it picturesquely-dressed men and women were singing and dancing to the accompaniment of fifes, kettledrums and tambourines. Suddenly there appeared in the circular gallery of the minaret which overlooked the courtyard the figure of a tall, gray-bearded stranger, a mullah, whose green turban marked his lineal descent from the family of the Prophet. He looked down for a moment with stern displeasure into the fire-lighted courtyard, and then putting his hands to his lips chanted the Mohammedan call to prayers. The music and merrymaking instantly ceased, and the sweet weird chant rang out far and wide through the still evening air over the silent village, dying away at last in a long musical cry of La illaha il Allah! ("There is no God but God"). Amid profound silence Kazi Mullah—for the gray-bearded stranger was that renowned priest—stretched out his hand over the crowded courtyard and with slow stern gravity said:

"Upon all your merrymakings and feasts, upon all your marriages and rejoicings, upon yourselves, your children and your households, upon everything that you do, have and are, rests the awful curse of God! Heaven has marked you with the black seal of eternal damnation because you still grovel in sin and refuse to obey the voice and teachings of our holy Prophet. Your duty is to spread with the sword the light of our holy faith throughout the world; but what have you done? what are you doing? Miserable cowards! without faith and without religion! you pursue eagerly the pleasures of this life, but you despise the law of God and of his holy Prophet. Vain are your selfish prayers—vain is your daily attendance at the mosque. Heaven rejects your heartless sacrifices. The presence of the Russian infidel blocks up the way to the throne of God! Repent, pray, and arm yourselves for the war of the Most High. The hour draws near when I shall call you forth and consecrate you for the holy sacrifice of battle."

This impassioned speech fell like a lighted torch into a perfect powder-magazine of religious enthusiasm. Copies of it in Arabic were borne from village to village by mounted Murids; other mullahs took up Kazi's cry of gazavat (war for the faith), using his speech as a text for their excited harangues; and in less than a month the whole district was in a blaze of insurrection. Kazi Mullah himself was the first victim of the fire of war which his eloquence had kindled. He was killed while fighting desperately at the storming of the aoul of Ghimry by a column of Russian infantry under Baron Rosen, on October 17, 1832.

I have endeavored to give in the preceding songs and in the speech of Kazi Mullah an idea of the nature and the spirit of Caucasian heroic literature. I will turn now in closing to the literature of sorrow and suffering, which is the black shadow cast by heroism across the threshold of domestic life. Heroic literature is the voice of Caucasian manhood: the literature of suffering is the cry of bereaved women.

The following lines are the lament of an Avarian girl whose lover has been killed while making a raid with a troop of Lesghian horsemen through the valley of Georgia:

My beloved went away into the valley of the Alazan, and as he left me he looked over his shoulder at every step.

My clear-eyed one rode down into the lowlands of Georgia, and his horse was fleet and fearless as a mountain-wolf.

But from the depths of the lowlands has come the bitter news that our mountain-hawks will never more return:

From the far-away valley of Georgia have come the scorching tidings that our lions lie dead in the pass with broken talons.

O merciful God! if I were only an eagle, that I might touch once more those cold dead hands!

O almighty One! if I were only a wild dove of the cliffs, that I might look once more into that pale dead face!

I envy thee, I envy thee, O jackal of Georgia! thou feedest upon the bodies of those who wore weapons of steel!

I envy thee, I envy thee, O raven of the river! thou drinkest the eyes of those who rode to battle on swift horses.

The jackal devours the bodies of the warriors who bore weapons of steel, and skulks away into the depths of the forest:

The raven drinks up the eyes of those who rode to battle on swift horses, and with hoarse croaks vanishes in the blue sky.

There is no attempt in this wild lament to soften or mitigate the horrors of a violent death by throwing around it a halo of heroism and glory. The woman cares not what prodigies of valor her lover performed, but she dwells with self-torturing vividness of imagination upon the helpless and abandoned body which she can never again see or touch, but which the ravens and jackals can tear and mutilate at will.

Compare with this the following lament of a Lesghian woman over the body of her dead husband:

I would stand on the shore of the green ocean if I only knew
That I should see the diamond which has fallen into its surges:
I would climb to the lonely summit of the highest mountain if I only knew
That I should find a spring flower blossoming in the blue ice.
If one look carefully one may see the diamond which has fallen into the ocean,
But never again shall I see the life which has gone:
If one search patiently one may find a spring flower rooted in the blue ice,
But never again shall I find the swift falcon which has flown away.
Henceforth I live upon an earth which is no longer a world,
And in a world which has no longer a heaven.

There is a certain rude art in the way in which the asserted possibility of two evident impossibilities is made to lead up to and heighten the utter hopelessness of the third. The diamond may be recovered from the depths of the ocean; the flower which has withered and died may spring again even from glacier-ice; but the soul once gone is gone for ever: the great disaster of death is irretrievable even in imagination. There is no hint or suggestion here of any possible resurrection of the body or of reunion beyond the grave: I cannot recall any Caucasian lament in which there is. But whether the omission is due to the breaking down of faith under the strain of grief, or whether it is conventionally improper in a lament to allude to anything which would lighten the sense of bereavement, I do not know.

With these two characteristic illustrations of the form of expression which sorrow takes in Caucasian life, I must close my brief and imperfect sketch of Caucasian literature. I hope I have amply proved the assertions which I made in a previous paper with regard to the originality and innate intellectual capacity of the Caucasian highlanders; but whether I have or not, the reader must, I am sure, admit that the proverbs, songs and anecdotes above translated are at least indications of great latent capability, of unusual versatility of talent, and of a wide range of human feeling and sympathy. It is possible that I overestimate their value on account of my inability to separate the impressions made upon me by the people themselves from those made by their literature; but I am confident that the general outlines of the Caucasian character as I have tried here to sketch them are accurate, and that the reader would fully appreciate and admit the significance of the literature if he could make the personal acquaintance of the people.

In conclusion, I cannot better express my own opinion of the Caucasian mountaineers than by adopting the words of A. Viskovatof, one of the fairest and most discriminating of Russian travellers: "Nature has not properly brought out the moral and intellectual capacity of the Caucasian highlanders. Through the superficial crust of ignorance and wildness you may see in every mountaineer a frank and acute intellect, and, brigand though he may be, he still shows evidences of human feeling and of a soul. His brigandage, indeed, is only the external roughness which results naturally from his education, his circumstances and his mode of life. Beneath it there are intellect, feeling, manliness and strength of character. Under certain conditions of course these very traits go to make up the daring, skilful mountain-brigand whom we know; but separate him from his surroundings, educate him in the civilized world, and you have a capable, energetic, intellectual and feeling man. Love of honor and love of fame are, generally speaking, among the strongest actuating impulses of the mountaineer's character; and these were the very impulses which kept him always hostile to the Russians, which impelled him constantly to engage in partisan warfare, and which enabled him to resist so long and with such terrible strength all Russia's efforts to subdue him. Was it merely for plunder that parties of mountaineers used to assemble in front of our lines and throw themselves furiously upon our outposts? No: the leaders of those parties reminded them in forcible and eloquent speeches of the deeds of their heroic fathers and forefathers, of the glory to be won in battle with the giours, of the exploits of their brothers and countrymen who had left their bodies on Russian soil; and they fought for honor and fame. What made the Chechenses hold out so long and so desperately, suffering hunger and peril and hardship, dying, and sending their children to die, in battle? Was it a spirit of blind submission to Shamyl and their religious leaders, or an unreasoning hatred of infidels, or a thirst for plunder and rapine? Not at all. It was the love of independence—the natural devotion of brave men who were fighting for their country, their honor and their freedom."

    George Kennan.

THE GIFT

You brought me a flower of spring
When the winter airs were cold,
And the birds began to sing,
And the gloom turned swift to gold.

The world looked chilly and dark,
But you called a flash from the sky:
Your clear eyes kindled a spark
Of splendor that cannot die.

O Love with the heart of Truth!
What is it you lay at my feet?
The bloom of your glorious youth,
Its flower and radiance sweet?

I lift to my lips the flower,
For thanks seem worthless and weak,
And I bless the beautiful hour,
But I have no word to speak.

    Celia Thaxter.

THROUGH WINDING WAYS

CHAPTER XIII

I AM not enough of a hero even in my own story to dwell upon the events of the two following years. I graduated with honors, of which I was secretly and my mother and Mr. Floyd ostentatiously proud. Then my guardian and I set out upon our travels. Travel was something different in those times from what it is to-day, but Mr. Floyd had for years been familiar with the best of European life, and this gave me opportunities such as few men of my age possessed. We spent our second winter in the East: then returned to Florence, and were planning a few months more of adventure when we received the news of Mr. Raymond's death. Mr. Floyd had but one thought after this, which was that now at last his little girl was his own again.

He had had an accident in Damascus—a fall which in itself was not serious, causing mere contusion and sprains, but it had resulted in a severe illness by the time we reached Alexandria. Harry Dart had been with us in Egypt and Palestine, but was obliged to leave us, and for a month or more I had nursed my guardian assiduously, with a fear lest this was to be the end of a sacred and beloved existence. He too feared it, and between his intervals of pain would say, "I want to see my little girl once more: I must see your mother. Oh, why do we separate ourselves from those we love?" But he rallied, and finally regained his ordinary health, and before May we were again in Florence in our old rooms and talking of joining Harry Dart at Venice, when Helen's letter came.