SCOTUS VIATOR Racial Problems in Hungary

THE Slovaks of Hungary, generously endowed with the gift of imagination, have created a rich popular literature of their own; and the words of Goethe which we have just quoted are amply justified in their case. To take but a single instance, the original forms of speech are so well preserved in the Slovak language, that every Slav philologist is obliged to learn it thoroughly. In form, grammar and syntax it is almost as original and important as the old ecclesiastical language of the Slavs.

ence upon the literature of our race, takes three main forms — the lyric song, the epic poem and the epic story, saga or fairy tale. In many of the people's habits, customs and games are to be found the first elements of drama, and often enough there occur obvious survivals from pagan times, as, for instance, the old lines about the drowning of Morena (or Death), a winter goddess —

The supply of proverbs and phrases is well-nigh inexhaustible ; the collection of Mr. Zaturecky fills a folio volume of 600 pages. Nor has Slovak literature allowed these treasures to lie fallow ; even in the sixteenth century there appeared collections of popular songs. But it was not till the nineteenth century that a true appreciation was attempted. The pioneer in this direction was Paul Joseph Šafárik, the brilliant historiographer of the Slavs, a Slovak by birth, who in collaboration with John Blahoslav published a classic collection of Slovak songs. His example was followed by another Slovak, John Kollár, the famous author of "The Daughter of Slava." The poet's two-volume edition of "National Songs of the Slovaks in Hungary" was printed in Buda in 1834, and affords a proof of the versatility, the richness of expression and the depth of feeling of the Slovak people. In recent years such collections have multiplied, until they form quite a library of Slovak songs and melodies. In many of them the melodies play an all-important part; for often a little verse which when read is insignificant and pointless, is thrown into relief and acquires lyrical value through its melody, for the text was composed singing, and can only be understood when sung. The Slovak song breathes out the fresh air, the scents of the woods and meadows and mountains, for these were its cradle and its source.[2]

The Slovaks possess an ancient Gentry class, which has, it is true, allowed itself in recent times to be Magyarized, but which is none the less Slovak in nature, and living as it does in the midst of the people, speaks and sings Slovak, when wine or song have rubbed off the false veneer of Magyar customs. There is even a small Slovak middle class, consisting of tradesmen, merchants and small manufacturers. But the vast majority of the race is made up of peasants tilling the soil, fishers and craftsmen, pedlars and men engaged upon home industries — in other words, classes who are in direct and permanent contact with the surrounding nature. The scenery in which they live is, in its northern district, of Alpine grandeur, and farther south of soft idyllic beauty, with rich meadows and wooded hills, sinking gradually into the great Hungarian plain. Only two Slovak rivers — the Poprád and the Dunajec — flow into the Vistula and the Baltic Sea; with these exceptions the country faces southwards, and connects with the geographical system of the Danube and the Black Sea. There are, however, numerous Slovak colonies in the southern plains, in the Banat and even as far as Syrmia[3]; so that the Slovaks cannot be regarded as a race of mountaineers pure and simple.

This variety of climate and scenery — the wild torrents and beetling crags of the Tátra, the soft outlines of the fertile lowland valleys — has wakened an echo in the soul of the people, and is reflected in the varied forms and notes of their popular poetry. We find in it a discord which is strengthened by the sad fate of the race, but also a harmony which reveals an eternal aspiration towards the beautiful. Our people's temperament is so rich, its joy of living so intense, that long centuries of repression in every department of life have not availed to rob their poetry of its joyous character. No doubt its underlying tone is one of melancholy, but never has it yielded to despair. At the close of the saddest song, there is a flash of hope and confidence, as though it were impossible that God should desert a people which believes in Him. Such a song is the following —

Slovak popular poetry contains obscure but highly interesting reminiscences of prehistoric and mediaeval times — of the brief and distant days when the Slovak nation was powerful and famous. In many a song there occur the names of heathen deities and references to old primaeval customs. Thus we find Svantovit the Slav Jupiter, Perun the god of thunder, the nymph-like Vily, Zmok the'treasure-god, Lel the god of love, Lojda and Živa, the Venus and Ceres of the Slavs. In an old game of question and answer played by the Slovak girls (no one of the other sex is allowed to take part), we find the name of the goddess Djundja (Ďunďa), whose attributes can no longer be traced. The girls form two choirs of equal number, and as they sing, dance to a slow and solemn measure.

Hoja, Ďunďa, hoja — What did the Queen send you for ? — Hoja, Ďunda, hoja.

And so they go on indefinitely. The girls' faces glow, their voices ring more passionately, their slow movements grow more lively and more rhythmical; involuntarily we are reminded of the mysterious practices of pagan times.

There is frequent mention of the god Vajan, always in connection with fire and fire-offerings. On the evening of June 23, great fires are lighted on many of the heights throughout Slovensko — Vajanske ohne, the flames of Vajan, as they are called — and a whole series of hymns are sung in his honour.

It is highly interesting that in these old fragments the names of the heathen mythology should have survived all the efforts of the Church to erase them from the people's memory. Even more remarkable is the fact that these names exactly coincide with those which we find in similar songs of the Russians, the Obotrites (a now vanished Slav tribe in Mecklenburg) and the Serbs.

Strange as it may seem, the Slovak people, while it has preserved the memory of pre-Christian times at least dimly and fragmentarily, has allowed more recent historic events to sink into oblivion. The barbarian invasions, the inroads of the Huns and the Magyars, have not left a trace behind, and only the great epoch of Saints Cyril and Methodius, of Rastislav and Svatopluk, has struck a plaintive echo in the soul of the Slovak people. The most exquisite fragment of any historic importance which has survived to the present day is the song which celebrates the departed glories of Nitra, the capital of the Moravian Empire. The melody is also very ancient —

This song is widely known and often sung ; it gives expression to the deep sadness and pathos of the Slovaks, whose eyes fill with tears as they sing its melancholy but exquisite air. For the fall of the Moravian Empire was a fatal blow, from which the race has never recovered.

Other historic songs are of far more recent date — for the most part from the rising of Francis Rákóczy, though a few go back as far as the Turkish occupation and even the reign of the great Matthias Corvinus. Some tell of the gallant defence of Brezno and other towns against the Turks, and of the captured Slovak maidens who remembered the land and speech of their fathers even in the Sultan's harem.

One figure stands out prominently in the popular songs of later times — Jánošík, the robber, the hero, the social liberator. Countless songs and epics recount his exploits and invest him with the renown of a benefactor and martyr of the people, their champion in the struggle against the intolerable yoke of feudal serfdom, an avenger of the bloody wrongs which they endured at the hands of the Gentry. Jánošík is a name which lives in the mouth of every Slovak ; wherever injustice is done, there his name is to be found, and there is hardly a river, a valley, a cave or a precipice in all Slovensko with which it is not connected. Jánošík with his twelve comrades fled into the primaeval forests of the Carpathians, in order to escape from the tyrants and to avenge the death of his father, who was beaten to death upon the flogging-bench (deres). His headquarters were in the mountains of Králova Holá (on the outskirts of the counties of Liptó, Zólyom and Gömör) ; but the traces of his brief career as outlaw are to be found everywhere from Pressburg as far as Kassa and Eperjes in the north-east; here a cave and there an oak, a lime-tree or a spring is associated with the name of Jánošík. Marvellous tales are told of his strength and desperate valour, his ubiquitous presence, his generous moods and deeds of genuine chivalry. The rich oppressors he robbed of gold and treasure, in order to divide them among the people ; to the needy travelling student he measured out the "anglia" or English cloth, by spreading it from tree to tree. Veritable epic poems are the songs which celebrate his deeds — how with twelve heroic comrades he fought against three counties, how he plundered and burned the castles of the nobles, how he defended the common people and summoned them to the fight; but a pathetic lyrical note is struck in the songs which recount his capture, his tortures and death upon the gallows at Liptó St. Miklós. They hanged him in heavy irons, and in this plight he lived three days and three nights, proud and obstinate, and sang from the gallows a song of the final deliverance of his people from the grim bondage of feudalism.

The figure of Jánošík has found its way into modern Slovak literature, and the poet John Botto has written a fine epic poem, "The Death of Jánošík," which may fairly be classified as popular poetry, so widely is it known and sung. It begins thus —

Naturally the lyrical element is by far the strongest in Slovak popular poetry. In it are reflected the griefs and wants of everyday life, the close affinity with nature, the eternal conflict of the elemental powers of good and evil. As in the folksongs of all races, the infinite themes of love play the chief part; the longings of the absent lover, the joys of married life, the beloved's death or faithlessness, the intrigues of relations — all recur in endless variations, and yet are seldom flat or monotonous. The Slovak folk-song collections, though they contain close upon 100,000 such songs, are still far from complete ; indeed, the fount is inexhaustible, and is ever brimming over with new songs, so that there can never be any question of completion.

Needless to say, these songs are not all pearls. Many of them are made up of mere jests and doggerel rhymes or plays upon words and sounds ; yet even in the coarser songs we find a certain delicacy of expression — never mere vulgarity for its own sake, as in the street songs of a great city, and this is noticeable even in songs whose double entendre is of doubtful taste.

Most Slovak songs have a tinge of melancholy ; for the life which they portray is earnest and sad even when it is most exuberant.

This feeble rendering can give no real idea of the tenderness and sweet melancholy of the original, still less of the harmonious effect produced by text and melody together. Indeed, the melody often breathes inspiration into mediocre words, and supplies and explains what the words have left unsaid. There are many Slovak songs with absolutely trivial or worthless words, which none the less produce upon a stranger unacquainted with the language an effect of tragedy and vigour ; their true magic lies in the melody. For the Slovak peasantry have thrown their whole heart into these melodies, which help them to endure their gloomy fate, and brighten the gray monotony of everyday life.

In the case of a people whose connexion with nature has been so intimate, it was only to be expected that natural phenomena would figure largely in their poetry. The sun and moon, and even the distant sea, so far beyond the peasant's ken ; the mighty crags of the Tátra range, the strength and swiftness of its rivers, the mystic beauty of its primaeval forests, the lush meadows and the fruitful fields, the wind which sweeps across the stubble — these all form the themes of the Slovak song. Great stress is laid upon Nature's softer and more kindly traits; the song of the nightingale is not of this earth, but has been stolen from the angels, the dew upon the grass is the tears of the gentle meadow-maidens. But the darker powers of nature also play their part; eerie superstition and the uneasy dejection inspired by the unknown or the mysterious are strangely blended with a touching submission to the dispensations of Providence. The black starless night is the evil stepmother who offers a stone to the child that cries for bread, and lays vinegar before it in the place of water; fierce winter, with its drifting snow, is the cruel feudal lord who battens upon the blood of his serfs. The grim Werewolf (Vlkolak) and other spirits of evil surround the children of the lonely peasant with unknown dangers.

The Slovak folk songruns through the whole gamut of human passions. The joys and sorrows of the human heart, love and hate, embarrassment and triumph, hope and dejection, devotion and defiance, flattery and mockery are reflected in its mirror ; bloodthirstiness and godless despair alone are missing.

Humour and satire also play their part, but always tinged with a quaint bonhomie, an easy-going temper and a deep fund of human nature. Slovak humour is as a rule more farcical than sarcastic; its roguery has very little sting. Thus the Slovak maiden sings as she goes —

These crude jokes, banal as they may be, are expressed in terse pregnant phrases of which only a rich and well-developed language is capable.

The influence of the folksong upon Slovak poets made itself felt from the very beginning of the modern literary revival; such writers as Janko Král, Ján Botto, Samo Chalúpka — the latter the author of more than one powerful ballad — drew their inspiration entirely from popular sources.[5] But the higher poetry also sips at the clear fount of popular song, and thus enriches the literary language with many a telling phrase or idiom. In this way the poet Hviezdoslav[6] has interwoven his

epic poems, "The Woodman's Wife" and "Gabriel Vlkolin-ský" with exquisite songs, which rapidly won the popular ear and are sung by hundreds who have no idea of their modern origin. Their deeper insight into life does the poet all honour ; but their highest merit lies in their kinship with the earliest products of the genius of the race.

The Slovak people, despite all external influences and the ravages wrought by so-called "education" in an alien tongue, has lost but little of its originality. Factories, railways, emigration, Magyar schools, have not availed to rob the Slovaks of their nationality and of their beautiful and sonorous language ; and to-day, amid many signs of impending change, new waters still well forth from the perennial source of their popular song and melody.

[1] [Svetozár Húrban was born on January 16, 1847, at Hluboká (county of Nyitra), where his father, Joseph Miloslav Húrban, the wellknown Slovak leader in 1848, was Lutheran pastor. He was educated in Germany, and from 1874 to 1878 practised as a young advocate in Szakolcza and Liptó St. Miklós. He served in the Bosnian campaign of occupation in 1878. After his return, lie became editor of the Národnie Noviny in Turócz St. Márton — for many years the only Slovak political paper. He has more than once been imprisoned for political offences, having been sentenced to one year for an article protesting against the insults offered to his father's grave (see p. 306), and six months for the part which he took in welcoming his brother editor, Ambro Pietor, on the latter's return from prison (see p. 328). In any country save Hungary Mr. Húrban would be in high honour as a poet and critic ; but his gallant resistance to Magyarization has earned him continual persecution. It is one of the tragedies of the Slovak race that a man of so essentially poetic a temperament as Svetozár Húrban should have been driven into the arena of politics. His Russophil sympathies, resting as they do upon a literary basis, have caused friction between him and ehe younger generation of Slovak leaders, who look not to St. Petersburg but to Prague and Vienna. But he will always be revered as the man who kept the tiny flame of Slovak nationalism burning in the dark days when it was nearest to extinction.

His chief works are (a) Poetical: Tatry a more (Tatra and Sea), a collection of poems ; Zpod jarma (From under the Yoke) ; Besedy a dumy (Causeries and Dreamings) : (b) Novels : Suchá ratolest (The Rotten Branch), by which is meant the Slovak nobles who have deserted their nationality ; Kotlin : (c) Stories and Sketches : Lalia (The Lily) ; Svietace piene (Flying Shadows) ; Husla (The Violin) ; Two Sisters; The Young Minister. German translations have appeared of "Der Kandidat," "Der Nachtwächter," "Das Weib des Holzhauers," "Der schwarze Idealist," "Das Heimatslied." May English translations soon follow I — R.W.S.W.]

[2] A fairly exhaustive bibliography of Slovak songs is to be found in the work of Dr. V. Zibrt, published in 1895.

[3] For instance, the town of Békéscsaba, with 35,000 inhabitants.

[4] Vistula.

[5] Mr. Húrban has made effective use of Slovak folksongs in more than one of his own novels. "Kotlin" contains a charming description of how the heroine Lejla, when asked to play a nocturne of Schubert, plays instead a simple Slovak air.

[6] Paul Orszagh-IIviezdoslav, who is Svctozar Hurban's only peer among living Slovak writers, was born on February 2, 1849, at Alsó Kubin (county of Árva). At one time he practised as an advocate, but now lives in retirement in his native town, and devotes himself to literature. His best works are "Hájnikova Žena" (The Woodman's Wife): "Ezo Vlkolinsky" (Village Annals) : Hagar: Elegies and Psalms. He has translated Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream into Slovak.