THE SERVIAN EPIC
Poetry as the inspiration of the Balkan war was the theme of a recent talk given by Madame Slavko Grouitch before the Friday Club in Chicago, and elsewhere, during her brief sojourn in her native country. Madame Grouitch was a student at the American School of Archaeology in Athens when she married the young Servian diplomat who now represents his nation in London.
According to the speaker, the Servian national songs have kept alive the heroic spirit of the people during more than four centuries of Turkish oppression. Through them each generation of the illiterate peasantry has fought once more the ancient wars, and followed once more the ancient leaders even to the final tragedy of the battle of Kossovo, where in 1377 they made their last brave stand against the Mohammedan invader. Whenever a few people assemble for a festival, some local bard, perhaps an old shepherd or soldier, a blind beggar or reformed brigand, will chant the old songs to the monotonous music of the gusle, while the people dance the Kolo.
"There are thousands of songs in the Servian epic," says Mme. Grouitch, "and each has many variants according to whether it is sung in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Dalmatia, Servia, Bulgaria or Macedonia; for all these political divisions are peopled by the Servian race descended from the heroes whose deeds are the theme of such unwearied narration. The bard is called the Guslar from his one-stringed instrument, whose melancholy cadence—a sighing-forth of sound—affects the emotions and increases the pathos of the words. For the story is usually sad, even when it proclaims the triumph of great deeds."
These songs invariably begin:
Once it was so; now it is told.
And they as invariably end:
From me the song; from God health to you.
A number of poems were read from Mme. Mijatovich's rather uninspired translation of the Kossovo series, published in London in 1881. Extreme simplicity and vividness characterize the old epic, which follows the hopeless struggle of the noble Czar Lazar against the foe without, and suspicions, dissensions, blunders, even treacheries, within. Certain characters stand out with the uncompromising exactness of some biblical story: the Czar himself; his over-zealous Vojvode; Milosh Obilich, whose murder of Sultan Murad precipitated the disaster; and certain haughty and passionate women, like the Empress Militza and her two daughters. Also "Marko, the King's son," whose half-mythical figure is of the race of Achilles.
"There was one thing," said Mme. Grouitch, "which the Turk could not take away from the Serb—the heavenly gift of poetry; that continued to dwell hidden in the breast of the southern Slav. His body was enslaved, but his soul was not; his physical life was oppressed, but his spiritual being remained free. In the eighteenth century Europe re-discovered the Servian national poetry, and became conscious that the race survived as well as its ideals. Then Serb and Bulgar again appeared in current history, and began to retrace the ancient boundaries.
"All the conferences of all the powers can never diminish the hopes, nor eclipse the glory of the Serb race in the minds of the Balkan peoples; because the Guslar, who is their supreme national leader, is forever telling them of that glory, and urging them to concerted action against all outside foes. It was the Guslar who led the Montenegrin Serbs from one heroic victory to another, so that 'their war annals,' as Gladstone said, 'are more glorious than those of all the rest of the world.' It was the Guslar who inspired Kara George and his heroic band of Servian peasants to keep up their battle until free Servia was born.
"Amid the roar of cannon at Lule Burgas and Monastir, I could hear the mighty voice of the Guslar reminding Serb and Bulgar that their fight was for 'the honored cross and golden liberty.' And they obeyed because it was the voice of their nation. It is this irresistible national spirit which leads their armies, and beside it the spirit of German training behind the Turk is a lifeless shadow. The Ottoman power in Europe is in ruins now, a wreck in the path of a national earthquake which the Guslar has prophesied for five hundred years. The Guslar has done his duty, and he stands today in a blaze of glory at the head of the united and victorious nations of the Balkans."
The speaker told of an impressive ceremony at the Servian legation in London. Young Servians, recalled home for military service last autumn, met there on the eve of departure. Wine being served, the minister and his young patriots rose with lifted glasses, and chanted the ancient summons of Czar Lazar to his people:
Whoever born of Serbian blood or kin Comes not to fight the Turk on Kossovo, To him be never son or daughter born, No child to heir his lands or bear his name! For him no grape grow red, no corn grow white; In his hands nothing prosper! May he live Alone, unloved! and die unmourned, alone!
H. M.
IMAGISME [C]
Some curiosity has been aroused concerning Imagisme, and as I was unable to find anything definite about it in print, I sought out an imagiste, with intent to discover whether the group itself knew anything about the "movement." I gleaned these facts.
The imagistes admitted that they were contemporaries of the Post Impressionists and the Futurists; but they had nothing in common with these schools. They had not published a manifesto. They were not a revolutionary school; their only endeavor was to write in accordance with the best tradition, as they found it in the best writers of all time,—in Sappho, Catullus, Villon. They seemed to be absolutely intolerant of all poetry that was not written in such endeavor, ignorance of the best tradition forming no excuse. They had a few rules, drawn up for their own satisfaction only, and they had not published them. They were:
1. Direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that did not contribute to the presentation.
3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.
By these standards they judged all poetry, and found most of it wanting. They held also a certain 'Doctrine of the Image,' which they had not committed to writing; they said that it did not concern the public, and would provoke useless discussion.
The devices whereby they persuaded approaching poetasters to attend their instruction were:
1. They showed him his own thought already splendidly expressed in some classic
(and the school musters altogether a most formidable erudition).
2. They re-wrote his verses before his eyes, using about ten words to his fifty.
Even their opponents admit of them—ruefully—"At least they do keep bad poets from writing!"
I found among them an earnestness that is amazing to one accustomed to the usual London air of poetic dilettantism. They consider that Art is all science, all religion, philosophy and metaphysic. It is true that snobisme may be urged against them; but it is at least snobisme in its most dynamic form, with a great deal of sound sense and energy behind it; and they are stricter with themselves than with any outsider.
F. S. Flint