[CHAPTER XXXII.]
THE TZIGANES: LISZT AND LENAU.
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 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.