Written without method, dotted down carelessly and _currente calamo_ on
the leaves of my pocket-book, the notes I now publish were never
intended to be read by any one but myself. A wanderer for many long
years, I have contracted the habit of making daily memoranda of the
fleeting, evanescent impressions of my travels, and thus giving them a
more tangible form. These notes, drawn up hastily and for myself alone,
have no literary merit whatever, but they most unequivocally tell the
truth. Is this an adequate compensation for the numerous negligences of
style which criticism may discover in them? You answer my question
affirmatively, my dear M----. Be that as it may, these reminiscences of
travel have often solaced the ennui and fatigue of my erratic life. In
writing of the present, the bitterness of the past vanished; and again,
if the present were tedious or fraught with care, I reverted to the
sunny pages of the time that is no more, and revived the sweet emotions
of the long-forgotten past.
Under your patronage I now place these poor leaves. They have been the
partners of my joys and my griefs, of my toils and my leisure, during
the last three years that have whirled me relentlessly in that most
monotonous, yet agitated circle, yclept "a life of concerts." Should you
find evidence too flagrant, even for your prepossessed eyes, of the
inexperience of my pen, bear in mind, I pray you, that I am but a
musician, and only a pianist at that.
* * * * *
_January, 1862._ Once more in New York, after an absence of six
years!--Six years madly squandered, scattered to the winds, as if life
were infinite, and youth--eternal! Six years, in the space of which I
have wandered at random beneath the blue skies of the tropics, yielding
myself up indolently to the caprice of Fortune, giving a concert
wherever I happened to find a piano, sleeping wherever night overtook
me, on the green grass of the savanna, or under the palm-leafed roof of
a _veguero_, who shared with me his corn-_tortilla_, coffee, and
bananas, and thought himself amply renumerated, when, at dawn, I took my
departure with a "_Dios se lo pague á V._" (May God reward you!) to
which he responded by a "_Vaya V. con Dios!_" (God be with you!)--these
two formulæ constituting, in such unsophisticated countries, the entire
operation, so ingeniously perfected by civilized nations, which
generally is known by the name of "settling the hotel-bill." And when at
last I became weary of the same horizon, I crossed an arm of the sea,
and landed on some neighboring isle, or on the Spanish Main. Thus, in
succession, I have visited all the Antilles,--Spanish, French, English,
Dutch, Swedish, Danish; the Guianas, and the coasts of Para. At times,
having become the idol of some obscure _pueblo_, whose untutored ears I
had charmed with its own simple ballads, I would pitch my tent for five,
six, eight months, deferring my departure from day to day, until finally
I began seriously to entertain the idea of remaining there forevermore.
Abandoning myself to such influences, I lived without care, as the bird
sings, as the flower expands, as the brook flows, oblivious of the past,
reckless of the future, and sowed both my heart and my purse with the
ardor of a husbandman who hopes to reap a hundred ears for every grain
he confides to the earth. But, alas! the fields, where is garnered the
harvest of expended doubloons, and where vernal loves bloom anew, are
yet to be discovered; and the result of my double prodigality was, that
one fine morning I found myself a bankrupt in heart, with my purse at
ebb-tide.
Suddenly disgusted with the world and with myself, weary, discouraged,
mistrusting men, (ay, and women, too,) I fled to a desert on the extinct
volcano of M----, where, for several months, I lived the life of a
cenobite, with no companion but a poor lunatic, whom I had met on a
small island, and who had attached himself to me. He followed me
everywhere, and loved me with that absurd and touching constancy of
which dogs and madmen alone are capable. My friend, whose insanity was
of a mild and harmless character, fancied himself the greatest genius in
the world. He was, moreover, under the impression that he suffered from
a gigantic, monstrous tooth. Of the two idiosyncrasies, the latter alone
made his lunacy discernible,--too many individuals being affected with
the other symptom to render it an anomalous feature of the human mind.
My friend was in the habit of protesting that this enormous tooth
increased periodically and threatened to encroach upon his entire jaw.
Tormented, at the same time, with the desire of regenerating humanity,
he divided his leisure between the study of dentistry, to which he
applied himself in order to impede the progress of his hypothetical
tyrant, and a voluminous correspondence which he kept up with the Pope,
his brother, and the Emperor of the French, his cousin. In the latter
occupation he pleaded the interests of humanity, styled himself "the
prince of thought," and exalted me to the dignity of his illustrious
friend and benefactor. In the midst of the wreck of his intellect, one
thing still survived,--his love of music. He played the violin, and,
strange as it may appear, although insane, he could not understand the
so-called _music of the future_.
My hut, perched on the verge of the crater, at the very summit of the
mountain, commanded a view of all the surrounding country. The rock upon
which it was built projected over a precipice, whose abysses were
concealed by creeping plants, cactus, and bamboos. The species of
table-rock thus formed had been encircled with a railing and transformed
into a terrace, on a level with the sleeping-room, by my predecessor in
this hermitage. His last wish had been to be buried there; and from my
bed I could see his white tombstone gleaming in the moonlight, a few
steps from my window. Every evening I rolled my piano out upon the
terrace, and there, facing the most incomparably beautiful landscape,
all bathed in the soft and limpid atmosphere of the tropics, I poured
forth on the instrument, and for myself alone, the thoughts with which
that scene inspired me. And what a scene! Picture to yourself a gigantic
amphitheatre hewn out of the mountains by an army of Titans: right and
left, immense virgin forests, full of those subdued and distant
harmonies which are, as it were, the voices of Silence; before me, a
prospect of twenty leagues, marvellously enhanced by the extreme
transparency of the air; above, the azure of the sky; beneath, the
creviced sides of the mountain sweeping down to the plain; afar, the
waving savannas; beyond them, a grayish speck (the distant city); and
encompassing them all, the immensity of the ocean, closing the horizon
with its deep blue line. Behind me was a rock on which a torrent of
melted snow dashes its white foam, and there, diverted from its course,
rushes with a mad leap and plunges headlong into the gulf that yawns
beneath my window.
Amid such scenes I composed "Réponds-moi la Marche des Gibaros,"
"Polonia," "Columbia," "Pastorella e Cavaliere," "Jeunesse," and many
other unpublished works. I allowed my fingers to run over the keys,
wrapped up in the contemplation of these wonders, while my poor friend,
whom I heeded but little, revealed to me, with a childish loquacity, the
lofty destiny he held in reserve for humanity. Can you conceive the
contrast produced by this shattered intellect, expressing at random its
disjointed thoughts, as a disordered clock strikes by chance any hour,
and the majestic serenity of the scene around me? I felt it
instinctively. My misanthropy gave way; I became indulgent towards
myself and mankind, and the wounds of my heart closed once more. My
despair was soothed, and soon the sun of the tropics, which tinges all
things with gold, dreams as well as fruits, restored me with new
confidence and vigor to my wanderings.
I relapsed into the life and manners of these primitive countries; if
not strictly virtuous, they are, at all events, terribly attractive.
Existence in a tropical wilderness, in the midst of a voluptuous and
half-civilized race, bears no resemblance to that of a London cockney, a
Parisian lounger, or an American Quaker. Times there were, indeed, when
a voice was heard within me that spoke of nobler aims. It reminded me of
what I once was, of what I yet might be, and commanded imperatively a
return to a healthier and more active life. But I had allowed myself to
be enervated by this baneful languor, this insidious _far niente_, and
my moral torpor was such that the mere thought of reappearing before a
polished audience struck me as superlatively absurd. "Where was the
object?" I would ask myself. Moreover, it was too late; and I went on
dreaming with open eyes, careering on horseback through the savannas,
listening at break of day to the prattle of the parrots in the
guava-trees, at nightfall to the chirp of the _grillos_ in the
cane-fields, or else smoking my cigar, taking my coffee, rocking myself
in a hammock,--in short, enjoying all the delights that are the very
heart-blood of a _guajiro_, and out of the sphere of which he can see
but death, or, what is worse to him, the feverish agitation of our
Northern society. Go and talk of the funds, of the landed interest, of
stock-jobbing to this Sybarite, lord of the wilderness, who can live all
the year round on luscious bananas and delicious cocoa-nuts, which he is
not even at the trouble of planting,--who has the best tobacco in the
world to smoke,--who replaces to-day the horse he had yesterday by a
better one chosen from the first _caballada_ he meets,--who requires no
further protection from the cold, than a pair of linen trousers, in that
favored clime where the seasons roll on in one perennial summer,--who,
more than all this, finds at eve, under the rustling palm-trees, pensive
beauties eager to reward with their smiles the one who murmurs in their
ears those three words, ever new, ever beautiful, "_Yo te quiero_."
Moralists, I am aware, condemn this life of inaction and mere pleasure;
and they are right. But poetry is often in antagonism with virtuous
purposes; and now that I am shivering under the icy wind and dull sky of
the North,--that I must needs listen to discussions on Erie, Prairie du
Chien, Harlem, and Cumberland,--that I read in the papers the lists of
the killed and wounded,--that havoc and conflagration, violence and
murder, are perpetrated all around me,--I find myself excusing the
half-civilized inhabitant of the savanna, who prefers his poetical
barbarism to our barbarous progress.
Unexpectedly brought back to the stern realities of life by a great
affliction, I wished to destroy every link that connected me with the
six years I had thrown away. It was at this period that Strakosch wrote
to me, offering an engagement for a tour of concerts through the United
States. I hesitated an instant; one sad look was cast upon the vanished
days, I breathed a regret, and--signed. The dream was over; I was saved;
but who could say, if, in the rescue, youth and poetry had not perished?
Poetry and youth are of a volatile mood,--they are butterflies. Shut
them up in a cage, and they will dash their delicate wings to pieces
against its bars. Endeavor to direct them as they soar, and you cramp
their flight, you deprive them of their audacity,--two qualities which
are often to be met with in inexperience, and the loss of which--am I
wrong in saying so?--is not always compensated by maturity of talent.