among the many writers who have made of this singular race their special study, none, to my thinking, has succeeded in understanding them so perfectly as liszt. other authors have analyzed and described the gypsies with scientific accuracy, but their opinions are mostly tinged by prejudice or enthusiasm; for while grellman approaches the subject with evident repugnance, like a naturalist dissecting some nauseous reptile in the interest of science, borrow, on the contrary, idealizes his figures almost beyond recognition. perhaps it needed a hungarian to do justice to this subject, for the hungarian is the only man who, to some extent, is united by sympathetic bonds to the tzigane; he alone has succeeded in identifying himself with the gypsy mind, and comprehending all the strange contradictions of this living paradox.
i cannot, therefore, do better than quote (in somewhat free translation) some passages from liszt’s valuable work on gypsy music, which, far more vividly than any words of mine, will serve to sketch the portrait of the hungarian tzigane.
“there started up one day betwixt the european nations an unknown tribe, a strange people of whom none was able to say who they were nor whence they had come. they spread themselves over our continent, manifesting, however, neither desire of conquest nor ambition to acquire the right of a fixed domicile; not attempting to lay claim to so much as an inch of land, but not suffering themselves to be deprived of a single hour of their time: not caring to command, they neither chose to obey. they had nothing to give of their own, and were content to owe nothing to others. they never spoke of their native land, and gave no clew as to from which asiatic or african plains they had wandered, nor what troubles or persecutions had necessitated their expatriation. strangers alike to memory as to hope, they kept aloof from the benefits of colonization; and too proud of their melancholy race to suffer admixture with other nations, they lived on, satisfied with the rejection of every foreign element. deriving{237} no advantage from the christian civilization around them, they regarded with equal repugnance every other form of religion.
“this singular race, so strange as to resemble no other—possessing neither country, history, religion, nor any sort of codex—seems only to continue to exist because it does not choose to cease to be, and only cares to exist such as it has always been.
gypsy type.
“instruction, authority, persuasion, and persecution have alike been powerless to reform, modify, or exterminate the gypsies. broken up into wandering tribes and hordes, roving hither and thither as chance or fancy directs, without means of communication, and mostly ignoring one another’s existence, they nevertheless betray their common relationship by unmistakable signs—the self-same type of feature, the same language, the identical habits and customs.
“with a senseless or sublime contempt for whatever binds or hampers, the tziganes ask nothing from the earth but life, and preserve their individuality from constant intercourse with nature, as well as by absolute indifference to all those not belonging to their race, with whom they commune only as far as requisite for obtaining the common necessities of life.
{238}
“like the jews they have natural taste and ability for fraud; but, unlike them, it is without systematic hatred or malice. hatred and revenge are with them only personal and accidental feelings, never premeditated ones. harmless when their immediate wants are satisfied, they are incapable of preconceived intention of injuring, only wishing to preserve a freedom akin to that of the wild horse of the plains, and not comprehending how any one can prefer a roof, be it ever so fine, to the shelter of the forest canopy.
“authority, rules, laws, principles, duties, and obligations are alike incomprehensible ideas to this singular race—partly from indolence of spirit, partly from indifference to the evils engendered by their irregular mode of life.
“such only as it is, the tzigane loves his life, and would exchange it for no other. he loves his life when slumbering in a copse of young birch-trees: he fancies himself surrounded by a group of slender maidens, their long floating hair bestrewed with shining sapphire stones, their graceful figures swayed by the breeze into voluptuous and coquettish gestures, as though each were trembling and thrilling under the kiss of an invisible lover. the tzigane loves his life when for hours together his eyes idly follow the geometrical figures described in the sky overhead by the strategical evolutions of a flight of rooks; when he gauges his cunning against that of the wary bustard, or overcomes the silvery trout in a trial of lightning-like agility. he loves his life when, shaking the wild crab-apple-tree, he causes a hail-storm of ruddy fruit to come pouring down upon him; when he picks the unripe berries from off a thorny branch, leaving the sandy earth flecked with drops of gory red, like a deserted battle-field; when bending over a murmuring woodland spring, whose grateful coolness refreshes his parched throat as its gurgling music delights his ear; when he hears the woodpecker tapping a hollow stem, or can distinguish the faint sound of a distant mill-wheel. he loves his life when, gazing on the gray-green waters of some lonely mountain lake, its surface spellbound in the dawning presentiment of approaching frost, he lets his vagrant fancy float hither and thither unchecked; when reclining high up on the branch of some lofty forest-tree, hammock-like he is rocked to and fro, while each leaf around him seems quivering with ecstasy at the song of the nightingale. he loves his life when, out of the myriads of ever-twinkling stars in the illimitable space overhead, he chooses out one to be his own particular sweetheart;{239} when he falls in love, to-day with a gorgeous lilac-bush of overwhelming perfume, to-morrow with a slender hawthorn or graceful eglantine, to be as quickly forgotten at sight of a brilliant peacock-feather, with which, as with a victorious war-trophy, he adorns his cap; when he sits by the smouldering camp-fire under ancient oaks or massive beeches; when, lying awake at night, he hears the call of the stag and the lowing of the respondent doe; when he has no other society but the forest animals, with whom he forms friendships and enmities—caressing or tormenting them, depriving them of liberty or setting them free, revelling in the treasures of nature like a wanton child despoiling his parent’s riches, but well knowing their wealth to be inexhaustible.
“what he calls life is to inhale the breath of nature with every pore of his body; to surfeit his eye with all her forms and colors; with his ear greedily to absorb all her chords and harmonics. life for him is to multiply the possession of all these things by the kaleidoscopic and phantasmagorial effects of alcohol, then to sing and play, shout, laugh, and dance, till utter exhaustion.
“having neither bible nor gospels to go by, the tziganes do not see the necessity of fatiguing their brain by the contemplation of abstract ideas; and obeying their instincts only, their intelligence naturally grows rusty. conscious of their harmlessness they bask in the rays of the sun, content in the satisfaction of a few primitive and elementary passions—the sans-gêne of their soul fettered by no conventional virtues.
“what strength of indolence! what utter want of all social instinct must these people possess in order to live as they have done for centuries, like that strange plant, native of the sandy desert, so aptly termed the wind’s bride, which, by nature devoid of root, and blown from side to side by every breeze, yet bears flower and fruit wherever it goes, continuing to put out shoots under the most unlikely conditions!
“and whenever the tziganes have endeavored to bring themselves to a settled mode of life and to adopt domestic habits, have they not invariably sooner or later returned to their hard couch on the cold ground, to their miserable rags, to their rough comrades, and the brown beauty of their women?—to the sombre shades of the virgin forests, to the murmur of unknown fountains, to their glowing camp-fires and their improvised concerts under a starlit sky?—to their intoxicating{240} dances in the lighting of a forest glade, to the merry knavery of their thievish pranks—in a word, to the hundred excitements they cannot do without?
“nature, when once indulged in to the extent of becoming a necessity, becomes tyrannical like any other passion; and the charms of such an existence can neither be explained nor coldly analyzed—only he who has tasted of them can value their power aright. he must needs have slumbered often beneath the canopy of the starry heavens; have been oft awakened by the darts of the rising sun shooting like fiery arrows between his eyelids; have felt, without horror, the glossy serpent coil itself caressingly round a naked limb; must have spent full many a long summer day reclining immovable on the sward, overlapped by billowy waves of flowery grasses which have never felt the mower’s scythe; he must often have listened to the rich orchestral effects and tempestuous melodies which the hurricane loves to draw from vibrating pine-stems, or slender quaking reeds; he must be able to recognize each tree by its perfume, be initiated into all the varied languages of the feathered tribes, of merry finches, and of chattering grasshoppers; full often must he have ridden at close of day over the barren wold, when the rays of the setting sun cast a golden glamour over the atmosphere, and all around is plunged in a bath of living fire; he must have watched the red-hot moon rise out of the sable night over lonely plains whence all life seems to have fled away; he must, in short, have lived like the tzigane in order to comprehend that it is impossible to exist without the balmy perfumes exhaled by the forests; that one cannot find rest within stone-built prisons; that a breast accustomed to draw full draughts of the purest ozone feels weighed down and crushed beneath a sheltering roof; that the eye which has daily looked on the rising sun breaking out through pearly clouds must weep, forsooth, when met on all sides by dull, opaque walls; that the ear hungers when deprived of the loud modulations, of the exquisite harmonies, of which the mountain breeze alone has the secret.
“what have our cities to offer to senses surfeited with such ever-varied effects and emotions? what in such eyes can ever equal the bloody drama of a dying sun? what can rival in voluptuous sweetness the rosy halo of early dawn? what other voice can equal in majesty the thunder-roll of a midsummer storm, to which the woodland echoes respond as the voice of a mighty chorus? what elegy so{241} exquisite as the autumn wind stripping the foliage from the blighted forest? what power can equal the frigid majesty of the cruel frost, like an implacable tyrant bidding the sap of trees to stand still, and rendering silent the voices of singing birds and babbling streams? to those accustomed to quaff of this bottomless tankard, must not all other pleasures by comparison appear empty and meaningless?
“indifferent to the minute and complicated passions by which educated mankind is swayed, callous to the panting, gasping effects of such microscopic and supercultured vices as vanity, ambition, intrigue, and avarice, the tzigane only comprehends the simplest requirements of a primitive nature. music, dancing, drinking, and love, diversified by a childish and humorous delight in petty thieving and cheating, constitute his whole répertoire of passions, beyond whose limited horizon he does not care to look.”
having begun this chapter with the words of liszt, let me finish it with those of the german poet lenau, who, in his short poem, “die drei zigeuner” (“the three gypsies”), traces a perfect picture of the indolent enjoyment of the gypsy’s existence:
“one day, in the shade of a willow-tree laid,
i came upon gypsies three,
as through the sand of wild moorland
my cart toiled wearily.
“giving to naught but himself a thought,
his fiddle the first did hold,
while ’mid the blaze of the evening rays
a fiery lay he trolled.
“his pipe with the lip the second did grip,
a-watching the smoke that curled,
as void of care as nothing there were
could better him in the world.
“the third in sleep lay slumbering deep,
on a branch swung his guitar;
through its strings did stray the winds at play,
his soul was ’mid dreams afar.
“with a patch or two of rainbow hue,
tattered their garb and torn;
but little recked they what the world might say,
repaying its scorn with scorn.
“and they taught to me, these gypsies three,
when life is saddened and cold,
how to dream or play or puff it away,
despising it threefold!
“and oft on my track i would fain cast back
a glance behind me there—
a glance at that crew of tawny hue,
with their swarthy shocks of hair.”
