Man, remarks Wilhelm von Humboldt, belongs to the singing species of
animals. True it is, that wherever found, he has some notion of music,
cultivates the accord of sounds by some sort of instrument, and gives
expression to his most acute emotions in modulations of vocal tone.
The earliest and simplest poetry is nothing more than such modulated
sounds; it is not in definite words, and hence, is not capable of
translation; it is but the expression of feeling through the voice, as
is the wail of the infant, the rippling laughter of youth, the crooning
of senility, the groans of pain or sorrow.
Perhaps this first is also the highest expression of the aesthetic
sense. The most admired cantatrices of to-day drown the words in a
wealth of vocalization, and the meaning is lost, even were the language
one known to their hearers, which it usually is not. I have heard a
living poet, himself of no mean eminence, maintain that the harmony of
versification is a far higher test of true poetic power than the ideas
conveyed.
These principles must be borne in mind when we apply the canons of
criticism to the poetry of the ruder races. It is not composed to be
read, or even recited, but to be sung; its aim is, not to awaken thought
or convey information, but solely to excite emotion. It can have a
meaning only when heard, and only in the surroundings which gave it
birth.
Hence it is, that the notices of the poetry of American nations are so
scant and unsatisfactory. While all travelers agree that the tribes have
songs and chants, war songs, peace songs, love songs, and others, few
satisfactory specimens have been recorded. Those who have examined the
subject most accurately have found that many so-called songs are mere
repetitions of a few words, or even of simple interjections, over and
over again, with an endless iteration, in a chanting voice. The Dakota
songs which have been preserved by Riggs, the Chippeway songs obtained
from the interpreter Tanner, and the numerous specimens of native
Californian chants recorded by Powers, as well as many others of this
class which might be mentioned, are mainly of this character.
Consequently, they show very poorly in a translation, and
are apt to convey an unjustly depreciatory notion of the
nations which produce them. To estimate them aright, the
meter and the music must be taken into consideration, and also
their suitability to the minds to which they were addressed.[69]
But the anthology of America is not limited to specimens of this kind.
In the Iroquois _Book of Rites_ there are funeral dirges of
considerable length, expressive and touching in meaning; and in the
Algonkin a few have been preserved in the original, which are authentic
and pleasing. Here, for instance, is a nearly literal version of a
Chippeway love song:--
"I will walk into somebody's dwelling,
Into somebody's dwelling will I walk.
To thy dwelling, my dearly beloved,
Some night will I walk, will I walk.
Some night in the winter, my beloved,
To thy dwelling will I walk, will I walk.
This very night, my beloved,
To thy dwelling will I walk, will I walk."[70]
Much more striking, and to me strangely so, are the songs of the Taensa,
a small tribe who dwelt on the banks of the lower Mississippi. They are
now extinct, but a very curious account of their language, by a Spanish
missionary, has been preserved and recently published. The early
travelers speak of them as an unusually cultivated people, but one
cannot but be surprised to find them capable of composing an
epithalamium like the following:--
"Tikaens, thou buildest a house, thou bringest thy wife to live in it.
"Thou art married, Tikaens, thou art married.
"Thou wilt become famous; thy children will name thee among the elders.
Think of Tikaens as an old man!
"By what name is thy bride known? Is she beautiful? Are her eyes soft
as the light of the moon? Is she a strong woman? Didst thou understand
her signs during the dance?
"I know not whether thou lovest her, Tikaens.
"What said the old man, her father, when thou askedst for his pretty
daughter?
"What betrothal presents didst thou give?
"Rejoice, Tikaens! be glad, be happy!
"Build thyself a happy home.
"This is the song of its building!"
Some of the songs of war and death are quite Ossianic in
style, and yet they appear to be accurate translations.[71]
The comparatively elevated style of such poems need not cast doubt upon
them. The first European who wrote about the songs of the natives of
America, who was none other than the witty and learned Montaigne, paid a
high tribute to their true poetic spirit. Montaigne knew a man who had
lived among the Tupis of Brazil for ten or twelve years, and had learned
their language and customs. He remembered several of their songs of war
and love, and translated them to gratify the insatiable thirst for
knowledge of the famous essayist. The refrain of one of them, supposed
to be addressed to one of those beautiful serpents of the tropical
forests, ran thus:--
"O serpent, stay! stay, O serpent! that thy painted skin may serve my
sister as a pattern for the design and form of a rich cord, which I may
give to my love; for this favor, may thy beauty and grace be esteemed
beyond those of all other serpents."
"I have had enough to do with poetry," comments Montaigne on this
couplet, "to say about this that not only is there nothing barbarous in
this fancy, but that it is altogether worthy of Anacreon." Such is his
enthusiasm, indeed, that he finds in this simple and faithful expression
of sentiment the highest form of poesy; "the true, the supreme, the
divine; that which is above rules and beyond reasoning."[72]
Scarcely can we call these words extravagant, when, in our own century,
another Frenchman, eminent as a scientific observer, and speaking from
the results of personal study on the spot, has said of the songs of a
tribe of this same Tupi stock, the Guarayos, that they cannot be
surpassed for grace of language and delicacy of expression.[73]
Many interesting Klamath, Omaha and Zuni verses have been collected by
the efforts of Gatschet, Dorsey, Cushing and other zealous laborers
connected with the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington, and these will
shortly be accessible to all through the accurate publications of the
government press.
The melodious Nahuatl tongue lent itself readily to poetic composition,
and was cultivated enthusiastically in this direction long before the
Conquest. Apparently the poetic dialect never freed itself from the use
of unmeaning particles thrown in to complete the meter; as, indeed, may
also be said of the English popular song dialect, which retains to this
day very many such.[74]
With this exception the Tezcucan poets, for it was in that province that
the muses were most assiduously worshiped, made use of a pure,
brilliant, figurative style, and had developed a large variety of
metrical forms.
One of the most famous disciples of the lyre was Nezahualcoyotl, himself
sovereign of Tezcuco about the year 1460. He left seventy odes on
philosophical and religious subjects, which were borne in memory and
repeated after the Conquest. Translations of a few of them have come
down to us, but my inquiries as to the whereabouts of the originals, if,
indeed, they exist, have been fruitless.[75] The Jesuit, Horatio Carochi,
published some ancient verses in his grammar of the Nahuatl (Mexico,
1645). Several which appear in later works do not seem to merit the
credit of antiquity. They are more like those which Sahagun wrote and
published, in Nahuatl, at a very early period,[76] Christian songs,
intended to take the place of the ditties of love and chants of war,
which the natives had such a passion for singing.
Under the title _Cantares de los Mexicanos_, there was long
preserved in the library of the University of Mexico a manuscript of the
sixteenth or seventeenth century, with a large number of supposed
ancient Aztec songs; but what has become of it now, nobody knows.[77]
Thus it is that these precious monuments of antiquity are allowed to lie
uncared for, through generations, until, at length, they fall a prey to
ignorance or theft.
A few other fragments of Nahuatl poetry, all probably modern, but some
of them the versification of native bards, might be named; but the whole
of it, as now existing, could give us but a faint idea of the perfection
to which the art appears to have attained in the palmy days of the great
Tezcucan poet-prince.
In the literature of the Maya group of dialects, there have been
preserved various sacred chants, some in the _Books of Chilan
Balam_, others in the Kiche _Popol Vuh_. What are known as the
"Maya Prophecies" are, as I have said, evidently the originals, or
echoes of the mystic songs of the priests of Kukulkan and Itzamna,
deities of the Maya pantheon, who were supposed to inspire their
devotees with the power of foretelling the future.
The modern Maya lends itself very readily both to rhyme and rhythm, and
I have in my possession some quite neat specimens of versification in
it, from the pen of the Yucatecan historian, Apolinar Garcia y Garcia.
When we reach Peru we find a race not less poetical in temperament than
the cultured Mexicans. Nothing but their ignorance of an alphabet, and
the indifference or fanatical hatred of the early explorers for the
productions of the native intellect, prevented the perpetuation of a
Qquichua literature, both extensive and noble. As it is, we may expect
many valuable examples of it when the learned Peruvian scholar, Senor
Gavino Pacheco Zegarra, shall publish his long promised _Tresor de la
Langue des Incas_. Among them he has announced the first appearance
of a number of _Yaravis_, or elegiac chants, composed by the
Indians themselves, and sung in memory of their departed friends.
We know, from the testimony of Garcillaso de la Vega, that the Inca
bards formed a separate and highly respected class, and that in their
hands the supple Qquichua tongue had been brought under well recognized
rules of prosody. He mentions the different classes and subjects of
their poems, compares them to similar compositions in Spanish, and even
gives specimens of two short ones, of undoubted antiquity, and adds
that, when a boy, he knew many others. "What would not one now give,"
exclaims Mr. Markham, "for those precious relics of Inca civilization,
which the half-caste lad allowed to slip from his memory."[78] All that
Mr. Markham could collect, in his extensive journeys in Peru, were not
above twenty songs of ancient date, and I regret to say that these have
not yet been published.
Of those charming Tupi songs, to which I have already referred, I fear
that we have but very few preserved in the original tongue. Not that
there is any lack of poems in the _lingoa geral_, or "common
language" of Brazil, as the ordinary and corrupt Tupi there spoken is
called. It is a melodious idiom, lending itself easily to rhyme and
rhythm, and several Brazilian writers of European blood have gained
reputation by their compositions in it. But of genuine aboriginal
productions, there are not many.
The entertaining old voyager, Jean de Lery, who visited Brazil with
Villegagnon in 1557, has recorded a few simple airs, which appear to be
merely choruses or refrains of songs, the delivery of which was,
however, so effective, that to hear them carried him out of himself; and
ever, when his memory recalled them, his heart beat, and it seemed that
he heard the wild cadence once again resounding in his ears through the
tropical forests.[79]
Some strange old poetic invocations in archaic Tupi addressed to the
moon and to the god of love, Ruda, who dwells in the clouds, have been
collected and printed by Dr. Couto de Magalhaes, a writer whose studies
on Tupi poetry, its character and development, merit high praise.[80]
Both the songs and music of the modern natives of that country attracted
the attention of the learned Von Martius, and in his volumes of
_Travels in Brazil_ an appendix is devoted to their discussion.[81]
Many excellent hints for preparing a Tupi anthology are also contained
in an erudite note of Ferdinand Denis to his description of the visit of
fifty native Tupis to France, in 1550.[82]