Other feasts were held in relation to longer time periods. There were important festivals held in connection with the planet Venus with especially elaborate ones falling at intervals of eight years. Still another ceremony was held at the completion of a fifty-two year period, when the set of years were figuratively bundled up and laid away and a new sacred fire lighted.
Poetry and Music.
The languages of Central America were capable of considerable literary development. This is seen especially in the songs that were used in different religious ceremonies of the Aztecs, as well as in the reflective poems written by educated natives. Several very fine pieces have been preserved, and while there is no rhyme, there is much rhythm. When recited by a person speaking fluently the native tongue these poems are very impressive. Of course, translation is always hazardous, and fundamental differences in language, such as exist between English and Aztecan, make it almost impossible. The most famous poet whose name has come down to us was Nezahualcoyotl, or Famishing Coyote, who was a ruler of Texcoco and died at the advanced age of eighty years in 1472. A few verses from one of his poems on the mutability of life and the certainty of death have been translated as follows:—
All the earth is a grave, and naught escapes it; nothing is so perfect that it does not fall and disappear. The rivers, brooks, fountains and waters flow on, and never return to their joyous beginnings; they hasten on to the vast realms of Tlaloc, and the wider they spread between their marges the more rapidly do they mould their own sepulchral urns. That which was yesterday is not today; and let not that which is today trust to live tomorrow.
The caverns of earth are filled with pestilential dust which once was the bones, the flesh, the bodies of great ones who sat upon thrones, deciding causes, ruling assemblies, governing armies, conquering provinces, possessing treasures, tearing down temples, flattering themselves with pride, majesty, fortune, praise and dominion. These glories have passed like the dark smoke thrown out by the fires of Popocatepetl, leaving no monuments but the rude skins on which they are written.
Another example will serve to emphasize the strain of sadness and the vision of death that characterize so many Aztecan poems.
Sad and strange it is to see and reflect on the prosperity and power of the old and dying king Tezozomoc; watered with ambition and avarice, he grew like a willow tree rising above the grass and flowers of spring, rejoicing for a long time, until at length withered and decayed, the storm wind of death tore him from his roots and dashing him in fragments to the ground. The same fate befell the ancient King Colzatzli, so that no memory was left of him, nor of his lineage.
Fig. 81. A Mexican Orchestra: 1, log drum; 2, kettle drum; 3-4, flageolets; 5, gourd rattle; 6, turtle shell. Manuscrit du Cacique.
The Aztecs held concerts in the open air where poems were sung to the accompaniment of the drum and other simple instruments. Songs were also sung at banquets and in the stress of love and war. The common musical instruments of the Aztecs vary but little from those in use elsewhere in Mexico and Central America. There were two kinds of drums. One was a horizontal hollowed-out log with an H-shaped cutting made longitudinally on its upper surface so as to form two vibrating strips which were struck with wooden drumsticks having tips of rubber. The second sort of drum was an upright log also hollowed out and covered with a drumhead of deerskin. Conches were used for trumpets. Resonator whistles with or without finger holes were made of clay in fanciful shapes. Flageolets were constructed of clay, bone, or wood and flutes were made of reed. Resounding metal disks and tortoise shells were beaten in time. Many sorts of gourd and earthenware rattles were employed as well as notched bones which were rasped with a scraping stick. Copper bells of the sleigh bell type were exceedingly common. The marimba, however, that is such a favorite musical instrument today in Central America is of African origin and fairly recent introduction. No stringed instruments were known to the ancient Mexicans nor does the pan-pipe appear to have been used in this area although common in Peru.