Not a cuckoo in the forest cool doth sing,
Not in the gardens sings a nightingale;
In the prison dark a brave youth sighs,
He sighs and pours out many parting tears.
The frequency of standing epithets, characteristic more or less of all popular poetry, is particularly observable among the Slavic nations. The translator will be troubled to find corresponding terms; but whatever he may select, it is essential always[pg.325] to employ the same; for instance, he must not translate the far-extended idea of bjeloi, white, alternately by white, bright, snowy, fair. In Slavic, not only things really white are called so, but every thing laudable and beautiful is called white; as, the white God, i.e. the good God; the white Tzar, i, e. the monarch of white, or great and powerful, Russia. In most cases the poet himself no longer thinks of the signification and original meaning of the word. Yards, walls, bodies, breasts, hands, etc. are invariably white; even the breast and the hand of the tawny Moor. The sea is seldom mentioned without the epithet blue; Russian heroes have black hair, but the head of the Servian hero is called Rusja glava, fair-haired, with a reddish shade. Russian youths, together with their steeds, are invariably dobroe, that is, good or brave; the heart is in the poetry of the same nation retivoe, cheerful, rash, light. The sun is in Servian yarko, bright; in Russian krasnoi, which signifies fair and red. Doves are in both languages gray. How much the poets are accustomed to these epithets, and how heedlessly they use them, appears from a Servian tale, called "Haykuna's Wedding," a charming poem, and even much more elaborated than is common, where the breasts of a beautiful girl are compared to two gray doves. To remind our readers of the father of popular poetry, Homer, and of the like use by him of stereotype epithets, is unnecessary.
The Slavic popular ballads, like the Spanish, very seldom lay any claim to completeness. They do not pretend to give you a whole story, but only a scene. They are, for the most part, little pictures of isolated situations, from which it is left to the imagination of the hearers to infer the whole. The narrative part is almost always descriptive, and, as such, eminently plastic. If the picture represented has not the dramatic vivacity of the ballads of the Teutonic nations, it has the distinctness, the prominent forms, and often the perfection of the best executed bas-reliefs of the ancients. Like these, the Slavic poems seldom represent wild passions or complicated actions; but, [pg.326] by preference, scenes of rest, and mostly scenes of domestic grief or joy. When we look at the celebrated Greek bas-relief, which represents an affianced maiden the evening before her wedding, weeping, or bashfully hiding her fair face, while a servant girl washes her feet,[[331]] we cannot help being impressed with just the same feelings, which seize us when we hear or read one of the numerous Slavic songs devoted to similar scenes. To illustrate our remarks, and to make our readers understand exactly what we call the plastic character of Slavic popular songs, we insert here the following Servian love-scene. We add, that it was one of Goethe's favourites, worthy, in his opinion, to be compared with the Canticles.[[332]] There is a melody in the language of this song, not to be imitated in any translation. We confess that Frederic Schlegel's definition of architecture, "frozen music," occurs to us when we read it in the original.
JOVO AND MARIA.
'Cross the field a breeze it bore the roses,
Bore them far into the tent of Jovo;
In the tent were Jovo and Maria,