Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, November, 1878

by Various

This impassioned speech fell like a lighted torch into a perfect powder-magazine of religious enthusiasm. Copies of it in Arabic were borne from village to village by mounted Murids; other mullahs took up Kazi's cry of gazavat (war for the faith), using his speech as a text for their excited harangues; and in less than a month the whole district was in a blaze of insurrection. Kazi Mullah himself was the first victim of the fire of war which his eloquence had kindled. He was killed while fighting desperately at the storming of the aoul of Ghimry by a column of Russian infantry under Baron Rosen, on October 17, 1832.

I have endeavored to give in the preceding songs and in the speech of Kazi Mullah an idea of the nature and the spirit of Caucasian heroic literature. I will turn now in closing to the literature of sorrow and suffering, which is the black shadow cast by heroism across the threshold of domestic life. Heroic literature is the voice of Caucasian manhood: the literature of suffering is the cry of bereaved women.

The following lines are the lament of an Avarian girl whose lover has been killed while making a raid with a troop of Lesghian horsemen through the valley of Georgia:

My beloved went away into the valley of the Alazan, and as he left me he looked over his shoulder at every step.
My clear-eyed one rode down into the lowlands of Georgia, and his horse was fleet and fearless as a mountain-wolf.
But from the depths of the lowlands has come the bitter news that our mountain-hawks will never more return:
From the far-away valley of Georgia have come the scorching tidings that our lions lie dead in the pass with broken talons.
O merciful God! if I were only an eagle, that I might touch once more those cold dead hands!
O almighty One! if I were only a wild dove of the cliffs, that I might look once more into that pale dead face!
I envy thee, I envy thee, O jackal of Georgia! thou feedest upon the bodies of those who wore weapons of steel!
I envy thee, I envy thee, O raven of the river! thou drinkest the eyes of those who rode to battle on swift horses.
The jackal devours the bodies of the warriors who bore weapons of steel, and skulks away into the depths of the forest:
The raven drinks up the eyes of those who rode to battle on swift horses, and with hoarse croaks vanishes in the blue sky.

There is no attempt in this wild lament to soften or mitigate the horrors of a violent death by throwing around it a halo of heroism and glory. The woman cares not what prodigies of valor her lover performed, but she dwells with self-torturing vividness of imagination upon the helpless and abandoned body which she can never again see or touch, but which the ravens and jackals can tear and mutilate at will.

Compare with this the following lament of a Lesghian woman over the body of her dead husband:

I would stand on the shore of the green ocean if I only knew
That I should see the diamond which has fallen into its surges:
I would climb to the lonely summit of the highest mountain if I only knew
That I should find a spring flower blossoming in the blue ice.
If one look carefully one may see the diamond which has fallen into the ocean,
But never again shall I see the life which has gone:
If one search patiently one may find a spring flower rooted in the blue ice,
But never again shall I find the swift falcon which has flown away.
Henceforth I live upon an earth which is no longer a world,
And in a world which has no longer a heaven.

There is a certain rude art in the way in which the asserted possibility of two evident impossibilities is made to lead up to and heighten the utter hopelessness of the third. The diamond may be recovered from the depths of the ocean; the flower which has withered and died may spring again even from glacier-ice; but the soul once gone is gone for ever: the great disaster of death is irretrievable even in imagination. There is no hint or suggestion here of any possible resurrection of the body or of reunion beyond the grave: I cannot recall any Caucasian lament in which there is. But whether the omission is due to the breaking down of faith under the strain of grief, or whether it is conventionally improper in a lament to allude to anything which would lighten the sense of bereavement, I do not know.

With these two characteristic illustrations of the form of expression which sorrow takes in Caucasian life, I must close my brief and imperfect sketch of Caucasian literature. I hope I have amply proved the assertions which I made in a previous paper with regard to the originality and innate intellectual capacity of the Caucasian highlanders; but whether I have or not, the reader must, I am sure, admit that the proverbs, songs and anecdotes above translated are at least indications of great latent capability, of unusual versatility of talent, and of a wide range of human feeling and sympathy. It is possible that I overestimate their value on account of my inability to separate the impressions made upon me by the people themselves from those made by their literature; but I am confident that the general outlines of the Caucasian character as I have tried here to sketch them are accurate, and that the reader would fully appreciate and admit the significance of the literature if he could make the personal acquaintance of the people.

In conclusion, I cannot better express my own opinion of the Caucasian mountaineers than by adopting the words of A. Viskovatof, one of the fairest and most discriminating of Russian travellers: "Nature has not properly brought out the moral and intellectual capacity of the Caucasian highlanders. Through the superficial crust of ignorance and wildness you may see in every mountaineer a frank and acute intellect, and, brigand though he may be, he still shows evidences of human feeling and of a soul. His brigandage, indeed, is only the external roughness which results naturally from his education, his circumstances and his mode of life. Beneath it there are intellect, feeling, manliness and strength of character. Under certain conditions of course these very traits go to make up the daring, skilful mountain-brigand whom we know; but separate him from his surroundings, educate him in the civilized world, and you have a capable, energetic, intellectual and feeling man. Love of honor and love of fame are, generally speaking, among the strongest actuating impulses of the mountaineer's character; and these were the very impulses which kept him always hostile to the Russians, which impelled him constantly to engage in partisan warfare, and which enabled him to resist so long and with such terrible strength all Russia's efforts to subdue him. Was it merely for plunder that parties of mountaineers used to assemble in front of our lines and throw themselves furiously upon our outposts? No: the leaders of those parties reminded them in forcible and eloquent speeches of the deeds of their heroic fathers and forefathers, of the glory to be won in battle with the giours, of the exploits of their brothers and countrymen who had left their bodies on Russian soil; and they fought for honor and fame. What made the Chechenses hold out so long and so desperately, suffering hunger and peril and hardship, dying, and sending their children to die, in battle? Was it a spirit of blind submission to Shamyl and their religious leaders, or an unreasoning hatred of infidels, or a thirst for plunder and rapine? Not at all. It was the love of independence—the natural devotion of brave men who were fighting for their country, their honor and their freedom."