covered up; the separation of the sexes prevents the corruption from
being apparent. Sloth wears the mask of leisure, dignity is a cloak for
pride. That well-bred composure which seems to indicate a thoughtful
nature hides in reality a mortal intellectual inertia; what appears to
be sombre moderation in their manner of life is nothing in the world
but an utter absence of any life at all. The character and philosophy,
the entire life, of this people may be understood by a particular
condition of the body and spirit called _kief_, which represents their
ideal of supreme happiness. This is it, after partaking sparingly of
food, drinking a glass of water from the fountain, and saying some
prayers, to establish yourself, with the body thus satisfied and the
conscience at ease, in some spot from whence a wide stretch of the
horizon may be seen, and there, beneath the shade of a tree, to remain,
following the movements of the pigeons in the opposite cemetery, the
distant ships, the insects close at hand, the clouds in the sky, and
the smoke from your narghileh, reflecting the while vaguely on God
and death, on the vanity of earthly things, and the sweetness of the
eternal repose and the other life. That is _kief_; in other words, to
be an idle spectator in the world’s great theatre is the Turk’s most
lofty aspiration toward which he is impelled by the originally pastoral
temperament of his race, at once slow and contemplative, his religion,
which ties men’s hands in committing all to God, and his traditions as
a soldier of Islamism for whom there exists no other really great or
necessary sphere of action but that of the battlefield, upon which he
must gain the mastery for his own faith; that done, every duty has been
performed. His point of view is that of the fatalist: man is merely an
instrument in the hands of Providence, and it is quite useless for him
to attempt to alter the course of events as it has been prescribed in
heaven; this world is but a caravansary, through which man has been
created by God to pass, praying and admiring His works: leave all to
God; let what is dying, die, what is passing away, pass; why should we
trouble ourselves to restore or preserve? The supreme desire of the
Turk is for peace, and he protects himself with the utmost care from
all that threatens the calm monotony of his existence; consequently,
no thirst for knowledge disturbs him, no passion for gain, no vague,
unsatisfied longings either of love or ambition. The utter absence
of those innumerable intellectual and physical tastes, in order to
satisfy which we are willing to labor so incessantly, prevents him
from being able to so much as understand why we do it, and he sees in
it only an indication of a morbid aberration of mind. The final aim
of all endeavor being, in his judgment, the attainment of that peace
which he enjoys without being at any trouble to obtain, it seems to him
self-evident that his course is the most sensible. The most stupendous
intellectual and physical achievements of the other European nations
seem to him nothing more than the results of a puerile restlessness,
since they fail to gain for them an increased possession of his ideal
of happiness. Never working himself, he has no sense of the value
of time, and so neither desires nor appreciates all those fruits of
human ingenuity which tend to quicken and facilitate the progress of
the human race: he is quite capable of questioning the benefits to be
derived from a railroad unless it could transport you to a place where
you would be happier than you were before. This fatalistic belief,
which leads him to condemn as useless any taking of thought for the
future, is the cause of his utter disregard of everything apart from
the certain and immediate advantage it may bring him. Thus a European
who looks ahead and plans and schemes, and lays the foundations of
enterprises whose completion he cannot hope to see, exhausting his
powers and sacrificing his ease for a distant and uncertain end, he
regards in the light of a visionary. We seem to him to be a frivolous
people, despicable, presumptuous, degenerate, whose only boast lies
in a sort of science of those earthly things which he scorns just as
far as he is able to without allowing them to get the better of him.
And how he despises us! For my own part, I am convinced that this is
the ruling sentiment with which we inspire those real Turks who still
constitute the large majority of the nation: one may deny or pretend
not to believe this, but any one who has lived among them more or less
cannot fail to be conscious of it. This feeling of disdain comes from
various causes: first of all--and this, from their standpoint, is a
most significant circumstance--they have maintained their supremacy
over a large tract of Europe, whose population is of a different faith
from their own, for more than four centuries, notwithstanding their
comparatively small numbers and in the teeth of all that has happened
and is still happening. To a small number of Turks this is merely
to be attributed to the rival jealousies and discords of the great
European powers, but the rest of the nation see in it only additional
proof of their own superiority and our degradation. Indeed, it has
never entered the mind of a Turk of the lower orders that Islam Europe
ever could or would submit to the affront of Christian conquest from
the Dardanelles to the Danube. To the boasts of our civilization they
oppose the fact of their dominion. Naturally haughty, their pride fed
and strengthened by the habit of ruling, accustomed to being assured
in the name of God that they belong to a race of conquerors, born to
fight, but not to work, and wont to subsist off the labors of the
vanquished, they cannot so much as take in the idea that the people
subdued by their arms could ever lay claim to the right of civil
equality with themselves. Possessed as they are by a blind faith in
the visible overrulings of Providence, their conquest of Europe was
but a fulfilment of the will of God, and it is God who invested them,
as a mark of His power, with this earthly sovereignty. The fact of
His continuing to maintain them in it in the face of so many hostile
forces is an incontestable proof of their divine right and of the
truth of their religion. Against this line of argument the claims of
civilization for human rights and equality are urged in vain. For
them civilization means nothing but a hostile force which is trying
to disarm them without coming to an open fight: little by little, and
stealthily, it would lower them in the estimation of their own subjects
and steal away their ascendency. So, in addition to despising it as
a vain thing, they fear it as an enemy, and, unable to oppose it by
force, they offer the resistance of their own invincible inertia. To be
transformed, civilized, is to put themselves on an equality with the
people they have conquered, to endeavor to emulate them in intellectual
achievements, study, work, acquire a new superiority, win again, this
time with the mind, the victory already gained by their swords. To such
an enterprise as this is opposed, apart from their natural interests
as rulers, their religious contempt for unbelievers, their military
pride, their indolence, which is second nature, and the character of
their intellect, entirely wanting as it is in the creative faculty and
dulled and blunted by the continued iteration of those same few ideas
which form the entire intellectual patrimony of their nation. Moreover,
those among themselves who have adopted what they are pleased to call
European civilization, and represent the state to which they believe
Europe would like to see all the sons of Osman brought,--those of their
brethren who wear long coats and gloves and chatter French and neglect
the mosque, hardly set such an example as might reasonably be expected
to convert the others. In what way has the so-called civilization
affected them? On this point at least there is little difference of
opinion: the new Turk is not worth as much as the old; he has adopted
our dress, our conveniences, our vices, and our vanity, but thus far
neither our beliefs nor our ideas, and has succeeded, moreover, in the
course of this partial transformation, in losing whatever good points
he may once have possessed in the depths of his genuine Ottoman nature.
Thus far, the only fruits of civilization evident to the conservative
Turk is a more widely diffused _peste dicasterica_, an innumerable
host of idle, inefficient, discreditable, rapacious officials, wearing
the mask of Europeans and despising all the ancient traditions of the
nation, and a sort of _jeunesse dorée_, corrupt and shameless, who
give promise of being many degrees worse than their fathers were. To
live and dress as they do is, in the opinion of the real Turk, to be
civilized, and as a matter of fact he calls it doing or thinking or
living, as the case may be, like the Frank whenever it is a question
of anything which not only the conscience of a strict Mohammedan would
condemn, but that of any decent man of whatever religion. And so the
“uncivilized,” instead of looking upon these others as enlightened
Mussulmans who have gained certain advantages in advance of their
fellow-countrymen, regard them as degenerate beings, led astray, hardly
less than apostates, traitors to the nation; and they fear and resist
everything like change with all the force they possess, if for no other
reason than because it proceeds from that quarter where its fatal
results are daily before their eyes. Every European innovation means
to them simply a fresh attempt upon their national life and interests.
The government is revolutionary, the people conservative; the seed of
the new ideas falls upon a dry, compact soil, which refuses to yield
up the necessary moisture for its nutriment; he who rules the nation’s
affairs draws and manipulates the hilt, but the blade merely spins
around in the haft. That is why all those efforts at reform which have
been started during the past fifty years have never penetrated farther
than the national skin; if in some instances names have been changed,
the things have remained the same. What little has been accomplished
has been by force, and at its door the people lay the increasing
audacity of the unbelievers, the corruption which is eating away the
heart of the empire, and all the national misfortunes. Why, they ask,
should we change our institutions, since they are the same with which
we have prevailed against and overcome our enemies for centuries? Why
adopt those of the people who were unable to withstand the power of our
sword? The organism, life, and traditions of the Turkish people are
like those of a victorious army encamped upon European soil, enjoying
the idleness and privileges, wielding the authority, and exhibiting
the pride of conquerors, and, like all armies, they prefer that iron
discipline which accords the pre-eminence to them over the vanquished,
to a milder rule which would restrict their arbitrary rights. Now,
the idea that this state of things, which has existed unchanged for
centuries, can be altered in the course of a few years is simply an
idle dream. The light vanguard of the “civilized” may march ahead as
rapidly as they choose, but the body of the army, laden still with the
ponderous armor of mediæval times, either remains stationary or else
follows at a great distance and with hardly perceptible steps.
Blind despotism, the corps of the Janissaries, the Seraglio adorned
with human heads, a firm belief in the invincibility of the Osman
dynasty, the _rayâh_ regarded as an unclean being, the French
ambassadors dressed and fed at the confines of the throne-room to
symbolize the miserable poverty of the unbeliever in the eyes of the
supreme lord,--all of these, it must be remembered, are but things
of yesterday, and, as a matter of fact, I suppose there is not much
divergence of opinion on this head, even between Europeans and the
Turks themselves: that about which there is the greatest disagreement,
and consequently great difficulty for a stranger who wishes to arrive
at a correct judgement, is the estimation in which the private and
personal characteristics of the individual Turk is held. If you
question a _rayâh_, you hear only the complaints of the oppressed
against the oppressor, while from the free European colonists, who have
no cause either to dislike or fear the Ottomans, but, on the contrary,
every reason for congratulating themselves on the existing condition
of things, you get nothing, as a rule, but opinions which are possibly
sincere, but certainly are excessively favorable. The majority of
these last agree in pronouncing the Turk to be frank, loyal, honest,
and sincerely religious; but in crediting him with this sentiment
of religion, it must always be borne in mind that the faith which
he upholds so loyally does not interfere with any one of his tastes
or interests; in fact, it caters to his sensual nature, justifies
his indolence, upholds his rule: he clings to it tenaciously because
his national life is in its dogmas and upon belief in it depends his
fate. With regard to his probity, many individual cases are brought
forward of the same kind as hundreds of others which might be cited
with equal force about the most corrupt peoples of Europe; and it must
be remembered in this connection that the Turk in his dealings with
Christians often assumes a sort of ostentatious honesty, acting, out of
sheer pride, in a manner which he would never dream of doing if he were
influenced by his conscience alone; he simply cannot bear to appear
of small account in the eyes of those whom he considers his inferiors
both in race and in moral worth. Hence his attitude as a ruler gives
birth to certain characteristics, praiseworthy enough in the abstract,
such as frankness, pride, and dignity, but which he would certainly
never have developed had he been subjected to the same conditions as
the people under his sway. At the same time, though, he undoubtedly
possesses some admirable qualities, such, for instance, as liberality
in the giving of alms, which, even though it does encourage sloth and
thus add to the general wretchedness, constitutes almost the sole
alleviation for the innumerable miseries of his ill-ordered society;
and he has other traits indicative of a kindly spirit, such as his
undying gratitude for the smallest act of kindness, his reverence for
the dead, his cordial hospitality, and his gentleness toward animals;
then his attitude in regard to the equality of all classes of society
is admirable, and there is no denying that there is a sort of severe
moderation in his character, which crops out in innumerable proverbs
full of wisdom and sagacity; a certain patriarchal simplicity, a
dreamy love of solitude, and a vague melancholy which tend to rid the
soul of vulgarity and vice. All these qualities float, as it were, on
the surface as long as the tranquillity of his ordinary life remains
undisturbed, but below them sleep his violent Asiatic nature, his
fanaticism, his warlike ardor, and barbarous ferocity, ready to blaze
forth and transform him into another being. Thus the saying that the
Turk is the most amiable of men except when he cuts off people’s heads
is really quite correct. The Tartar, chained and sleeping, is in him
still, and his natural vigor too, rather preserved than otherwise
by the slothful ease of his habit of life, which only makes demands
upon it at some great crisis. He has preserved his physical courage
intact, not having loosened its springs by the cultivation of the
intellect, which raises the value of human life and makes men less
willing to throw it away, as it offers them more to live for. In him
the sentiment both of religion and warfare finds a field unspoiled by
doubts or the spirit of rebellion or clashing beliefs; it is a soil
which can be instantly set fire to--a man cut out of a single block,
who needs but a touch to unsheathe his sword and strike out in all
directions, while upon its blade is inscribed the name of but one God
and one sovereign. Social life has worked but very little change in
him from the ancient inhabitant of the steppe and hut: in the city
he still leads, in spirit, much the same sort of life as he formerly
led among his tribe--surrounded, that is, by people, but alone with
his thoughts. And there is really no social life among the Turks. The
existence of the two sexes suggests the idea of two rivers which run
parallel to one another, their waters never mingling except here and
there in some subterranean passage-way. The men meet together, but
there is no actual intimacy between them; they approach, but obtain no
hold on one another, each one preferring what a great poet has called
the _vegetazione sorda delle idee_ to the expansion of himself. Our
conversations, rapid, varied, playful, instructive, or humorous, our
demand for the interchange of ideas, for human intercourse, for the
spur to our intellects and warmth for our hearts which are obtained by
association with others, are hardly known among them. Their discourse
is all of earthly things, comprehending only the material necessities
of life; love is excluded from it, literature is the privilege of
the few, science is a myth, politics but little more than a question
of names, and business occupies but a very small place in the lives
of most of them. The nature of their intellect prohibits discussions
upon abstract topics, as they can only grasp clearly the idea of such
things as they are able to see and touch, their language itself giving
proof of this in its inability to express an abstraction. When such a
necessity arises the learned Turk has recourse to the Arabic or Persian
or some European language. They see, moreover, no necessity for making
any mental effort in order to understand what lies outside their own
immediate sphere: the Persian is inquiring, the Arabian curious. As
for the Turk, he experiences only the most supreme indifference toward
all he does not know, and, as he has no ideas to interchange, he
naturally does not care for the society of Europeans, disliking their
interminable and subtle discussions, and, still more, themselves. There
cannot, in the nature of things, be anything like confidence between
them, since the Turk resolutely keeps back all that part of himself
which relates to his household, his pleasures, his closest ties, and,
what is still more important, the real nature of his feeling for the
other, which is nothing less than an invincible distrust. He tolerates
the Armenian, despises the Jew, hates the Greek, distrusts the Frank.
Generally speaking, he puts up with them all in much the same spirit
that a big animal will allow a swarm of flies to alight on his back,
contenting himself with giving an occasional sweep with his tail when
they begin to sting; he lets them interfere and change his surroundings
as much as they want to; knows how to value those Europeans who can
be of use to him; accepts such innovations in material things as can
offer some palpable advantage; listens without a tremor of the eyelid
to all the lectures on civilization which are read to him; alters
laws, customs, and ceremonials, learns by heart and repeats fluently
the sayings of our philosophers; allows himself to be travestied,
caricatured, burlesqued; but at bottom he remains immutably, hopelessly
the same.
And yet reason refuses to believe that the slow onward march of
civilization will not eventually succeed in implanting a spark of new
life in this gigantic Asiatic soldier who lies sprawling fast asleep
across two continents, only arousing to brandish the sword. But when
we consider the efforts which have been made as compared with the
results obtained up to the present time, that day appears to be so
very distant, especially in view of the needs and the impatience of
the Christian population of the East, that it seems vain to hope that
the question which is occupying the mind of all Europe can have for
its solution the progressive and orderly civilization of the Turkish
people. Such, at all events, is the conclusion arrived at by me in the
course of my brief sojourn in Constantinople. What other solution is
there? Ah, gentlemen, that is a question which you must really excuse
me if I decline to answer. Were I to do so, it would seem as though I
were giving advice to Europe, an idea which shocks my modesty. And,
moreover, as I have already mentioned, there is a certain Austrian boat
getting up steam down there in the Golden Horn off Galata, which is
ready to start for the Black Sea, and the reader knows very well what
that boat is going to pass through.
THE BOSPHORUS.
Hardly were we well on board when a gray curtain seemed to stretch
itself over Constantinople, upon which were portrayed the outlines of
the Morravian and Hungarian Mountains and the Alps of Lower Austria.
Such rapid changes of scene occur not infrequently upon the decks of
outgoing steamers, where one is apt to recognize the features and
hear beforehand the language of the country for which he is bound.
On this occasion we found ourselves hemmed in by a circle of German
faces and felt a premonitory breath of the cold and dampness of the
North. Our friends have left us. Three white handkerchiefs fluttering
from a distant käik show where they are threading their way through
the dark mass of boats coming and going in front of the custom-house.
We are in the same spot as that in which our Sicilian boat anchored
on the day of our arrival. It is a lovely autumnal evening, clear and
warm, and Constantinople has never appeared so vast nor so radiantly
beautiful. Yet once again we endeavor to imprint upon our memories her
mighty outlines, her matchless coloring, like that of an enchanted
city, and for the last time drink in the unutterable beauties of the
Golden Horn, so soon to be for ever hidden from our gaze. Now the white
handkerchiefs have disappeared and our boat is in motion. Everything
seems to have moved out of place: Skutari has come forward, Stambul
stepped back, while Galata revolves around in a circle as though
trying to see the last of us. Farewell to the Golden Horn! One forward
bound of the vessel robs us of Kassim-Pasha, another carries off Eyûb,
another the sixth hill of Stambul; then the fifth disappears, the
fourth is hidden, the third vanishes, the second fades away; only the
Seraglio Hill is left, and that--Heaven be praised!--will still remain
to us for a little longer at least. Already we are in mid stream,
advancing rapidly up the Bosphorus; Topkhâneh flies by, then Fundukli,
then the white and sculptured façades of Dolmabâghcheh; Skutari
presents to us for the last time her amphitheatre of hills covered with
gardens and villas.
[Illustration: Bosphorus: View of Shores of Asia and Europe.]
Farewell, Constantinople, vast and dearly-loved city, dream of my
childhood, desire of my youth, and unfading memory of my life!
Farewell, exquisite and immortal queen of the Orient! May time soften
thy lot without impairing thy beauty, and may my children one day greet
thee with the same ecstasy of youthful enthusiasm with which I bid thee
farewell!
The sadness of parting was, however, soon forgotten in the delight of
finding a new Constantinople, even larger and more exquisitely lovely
than the one we had left upon the banks of the Golden Horn, extending
for about sixteen miles along the two most beautiful shores on earth.
The first village to come into sight upon our left--that is, upon
the European shore--is Beshiktash, a large Turkish suburb of
Constantinople, lying at the foot of a hill and enclosing a small
harbor; behind it a charming valley--the ancient valley of the _allori
di Stefano_ of Byzantium--ascends in the direction of Pera; a group
of plane trees rising in the midst of the houses marks the sepulchre
of the famous corsair Barbarossa; and a large café, always crowded,
extends out over the water supported on piles; the harbor is gay with
käiks and other boats, the shore covered with people, the hillsides
with verdure, and the valley filled with houses and gardens; but it
is no longer like a suburb of Constantinople: already we note the
distinctive character, the matchless radiance and charm peculiar to
the villages along the Bosphorus; the objects are smaller, the foliage
thicker, the coloring more brilliant: it is like a nest of smiling
little houses suspended between sky and water, a tiny city inhabited
by lovers and poets, only designed to last as long as the fires of
passion or genius may burn, and placed there to gratify a whim on some
fair summer’s night. Hardly have our eyes rested well upon it than it
is already gone, and we find ourselves opposite the Cheragan palace,
or rather row of white marble palaces, at once chaste and magnificent,
adorned with long lines of columns and crowned with terraces and
balconies, above which floats an airy cloud of innumerable white birds
of the Bosphorus, standing out clearly against the brilliant foliage of
the hillsides.
But now a most tantalizing experience begins. While our attention
is concentrated upon one beautiful sight we are missing a thousand
others. While we stand gazing at Beshiktash and Cheragan, the Asiatic
shore, whose charming villages tempt one to buy and carry them off like
jewels, is flying by. Kuzgunjik disappears, tinted with every color of
the rainbow, where tradition says the heifer Io landed after swimming
the Bosphorus in order to escape from the gad-flies of Hera; and
Istavros, with its beautiful mosque and two minarets; and the imperial
palace of Beylerbey, with its conical and pyramidal roofs and its gray
and yellow walls, wearing the same strange, mysterious look that a
convent of princesses might have; and then Beylerbey village, reflected
in the water, with Mount Bûlgurlû rising behind it; and all those
other villages, with houses grouped closely together or else scattered
about at the foot of little bright green hills, and so overgrown
with vegetation that it seems as though they would sink out of sight
altogether. Long garlands of villas and little houses, and avenues
of trees connect them, running along the bank or descending in
zigzag lines from the neighboring heights to the water’s edge, through
numberless flower and vegetable gardens, and meadows laid out in
squares, connected by little flights of stone steps and bright with
every conceivable shade of green.
[Illustration: Mosque of Validêh at Ak Serai.]
Well, there is no help for it; we must resign ourselves to catching
nothing more than a flying glimpse of it all, and can only get that by
turning our heads from side to side with the monotonous regularity of
automatons.
After leaving Cheragan behind, we see on our left the large village
of Orta, above which appears the shining dome of the mosque erected
by the Validéh Sultan, mother of Abdul-Aziz, and the graceful roofs
of the palace of Riza-Pasha at the foot of a hill from whose summit
the light and shining walls of the imperial kiosk of the Star peep out
from amid a dense mass of foliage. Orta Keui contains the residences of
a number of Greek, Armenian, and Frankish bankers, and as we passed,
the Constantinople boat was in the act of landing her passengers. A
crowd of persons went ashore, other crowds stood waiting to embark;
there were Turkish and Armenian gentlemen, officers, monks, eunuchs,
dandies, fezzes, turbans, hats like bushel-measures, little caps, all
jumbled together--a scene similar to that which may be witnessed at any
one of the twenty boat-landings along the Bosphorus, more especially
toward evening. Opposite Orta Keui is the gay little village of
Chengel--village of the _anchor_; from an old iron anchor found on its
shore by Muhammad II.[L] It is surrounded by villas, while on the shore
stands that imperial kiosk of infamous celebrity from which Murad IV.,
transported with envious rage, ordered the execution of those groups of
country-people whom he saw passing happily through the fields singing
as they went.
[L] Chengel Keui takes its name from the bend in the shore at
that point.--TRANS.
Turning again toward the shore of Europe, we find ourselves on a line
with the pretty village and charming harbor of Kuru Chesmeh, the
ancient Anaplus.[M] Here Medea landed with Jason and planted the famous
laurel tree. Then, looking back again to Asia, we see the smiling
villages of Kulehli and Vani spread out along the shore to right and
left of a huge barrack whose reflection in the water resembles more
that of a royal palace. Back of the two villages rises a hill whose
summit is crowned by a large garden, in the midst of which, barely
discernible among the branches of the trees, glimmers the white kiosk
where Suleiman the Great passed three years of his life, hidden away
in a little tower, to escape the spies and executioners of his father,
Selim. While we are trying to identify the tower amid the trees the
steamer has passed Arnaût-Keui--the Albanian village--now peopled by
Greeks, whose houses surround a small bay in the European shore full of
sailing vessels. But there is no use in attempting to see everything.
One village draws away our attention from another; a beautiful mosque
distracts us from an exquisite landscape; and while we are gazing
at villages and harbors we have missed palaces of viziers, pashâs,
sultans, chief eunuchs, and other prominent persons; yellow, blue,
and purple houses hung with vines and creepers, seeming to float upon
the top of the waves or overflow with bloom, half buried in groves of
cypress, laurel, and orange trees; buildings with Corinthian façades
ornamented with rows of white marble columns; Swiss châlets, Japanese
huts, little Moorish palaces, Turkish kiosks, whose three stories
project one beyond the other, the grated galleries of their harems
overhanging the Bosphorus, while little flights of stairs lead down
to gardens washed by the waves. All the buildings are small, light,
unsubstantial, corresponding precisely to the nature of the power
wielded by those who inhabit them--the triumph of youth, the success of
an intrigue, a high office which may be forfeited to-morrow, a glory
doomed to end in exile, a fortune destined to evaporate, a greatness
which will crumble away. There is hardly an unoccupied spot on the
Bosphorus: it is like a sort of Grand Canal running through a huge
rural Venice. Villas, kiosks, and palaces rise one behind the other,
so placed as to leave the façade of each in view, those in the rear
seeming to perch upon the roofs of those in front, while between and
behind them is a mass of green, the tops and points of oaks, plane
trees, maples, poplars, pines, and fig trees, through whose branches
may be seen sparkling fountains and the gleaming domes of lonely
türbehs and solitary mosques.
[M] Arnaût-Keui, the next village, is the Anaplus of the
ancients.--TRANS.