home from the universities of Vienna and Budapest. They were from my
native Voyvodina, and not from Serbia, as I found out later. Their
appearance did not impress me very agreeably, but nevertheless I
quivered with delight when I heard their Serb language. They spoke
freely, although they must have noticed that they attracted my
attention. One of them remarked that I could pass for a Serb, if it
were not for my manner, my dress, and my very ruddy complexion. The
voyage across the Atlantic and a week’s tramping in Switzerland were
responsible for my exaggerated ruddiness. A second one thought that
young Serb peasants in Banat are just as ruddy, particularly during
the harvest season, but he admitted that my appearance did not suggest
that my occupation was that of a peasant. Another one suggested that
I was probably a rich South American with very much red Indian blood
in my veins. I laughed and, introducing myself, informed him, speaking
Serb with some difficulty, that I was neither a South American nor an
Indian, but just a Serb student who was a citizen of the United States.
A Serb from the United States was a very rare bird in those days and,
needless to say, I was invited most cordially to join the group,
which I did. Not one of them reminded me of the alert, well-groomed,
athletic, and playful American college boys. They all had long hair
brushed back in a careless fashion, affecting the appearance of dreamy
poets or disciples of radical doctrines. Most of them had slouch hats
with wide brims, indicating radical tendencies. Their faces looked
pale and suggested excessive indoor confinement in Vienna and Budapest
cafés, playing chess or cards, or discussing radical doctrines. Most
of them would have been hazed if they had matriculated in any American
college without modifying much their appearance and manner. They
certainly took themselves very seriously. They knew, I thought, many
things which they had read in books, principally in books dealing
with radical social-science theories. Tolstoy’s name was mentioned
quite often, and the latest apostles of socialistic doctrines also had
their share of adulation. They must have observed that conversation
about these things bored me, and they asked me, with some display
of sarcasm, I thought, whether American college students took any
interest in modern advanced thought. “They do,” said I, considerably
irritated, “and if it were not for Maxwell’s new electrical theory and
for other advanced theories in modern physics I should not have come
to your moribund old Europe.” “Advanced thought in social and not in
physical sciences,” they said, explaining their original question,
and I answered that the most popular American doctrine in social
science still rested upon foundations laid a hundred years before
that time, in a document called the Declaration of Independence. They
knew very little about it, and I knew even less about their radical
social-science theories, and we changed the subject of our conversation.
Late in the afternoon the boat approached Karlovci and the hills of
Frushka Gora. I could not help reminiscing, and entertained my Serb
acquaintances with a description of my experiences with the theological
students eleven years before, including the disappearance of my roast
goose. My Serbian vocabulary was quite shaky, but nevertheless I
made quite a hit, and they begged me to go on with my reminiscences.
Whenever I was at a loss for a word, they helped me out. Toward sunset
Belgrade hove in sight, and its majestic appearance thrilled me and
made my Serb vocabulary run as smoothly as ever. I saluted Belgrade as
the acropolis of all the Serbs, and expressed the hope that it might
soon become the metropolis of all the southern Slavs. “This is the
kind of advanced thought in social and political science that American
students are interested in,” I said, reminding them of their former
question, and I added a few sarcastic remarks about advanced thoughts
in social and political science which are not born in the heart of
a nation but imported from the dens of French, German, and Russian
theorists. They quickly caught what I called the American point of
view, but they did not oppose it, for fear, I thought, of offending
me. They saw the American chip on my shoulder, and did not care to
knock it off.
I had not seen Belgrade since I was a little boy, and as the boat
approached it I saw its high fort rising like a Gibraltar above
the waters of the Danube and looking anxiously across the endless
plains of Austria-Hungary, which, like wide-open jaws of a hungry
dragon, seemed to threaten to swallow it up. Everything I saw in
Austria-Hungary looked small and shrivelled up, but Belgrade looked
to me as if its proud head would touch the stars. The history of the
long-suffering Serb race was grouped around it, and that lifted it up
in my imagination to sublime heights. I was much tempted to stop there
and climb up to the top of Mount Avala, near Belgrade, and from there
send my greetings to heroic Serbia, just as I had sent my greetings to
heroic Switzerland from the top of snow-covered Titlis. But I was told
to look sharp if I wished to catch the last local boat to Panchevo,
and so I bade good-by and au revoir to white-towered Belgrade, as the
Serbian guslars call it.
When the local boat arrived in Panchevo a delegation of young men,
including one of the Serb students who had come with me from Budapest,
transferred me to another boat, which was crowded with what looked like
a gay wedding-party. The singing society of Panchevo had chartered
this boat to take it and its friends to Karlovci, where a great
national gathering of Serbs was to take place on the following day.
The earthly remains of the great Serb poet Branko Radichevich were to
arrive there from Vienna, where, when still a youth, he died and had
been buried thirty years before. His body was to be transferred to and
buried near Karlovci, on Strazhilovo hill, which was glorified by his
immortal verses. His lyrics were messages to all Serbs, calling upon
them to nurse their traditions and prepare for their national reunion.
Representative Serbs from all parts of Serbdom were to assemble in
Karlovci to escort the earthly remains of the popular poet to his last
resting-place. I was to represent America, hence the invitation to join
the Panchevo delegation. Serb nationalism flamed up in my heart again.
Our boat arrived at Karlovci in the early hours of the following
morning, and there we found many singing societies and delegates
from Voyvodina, Serbia, Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Montenegro--a most
picturesque gathering of splendid-looking young men and women, many
of them in their national costumes of brilliant colors. The funeral
procession started early in the afternoon. The singing societies from
the principal centres of Serbdom, lined up in the march in proper
succession, took up in turn the singing of the solemn and wonderfully
harmonious funeral hymn: “Holy God, almighty God, immortal God, have
mercy upon us.”
The Orthodox church permits no instrumental music. Those who have had
the good fortune to listen to Russian choirs know the power and the
spiritual charm of their choral singing. Serb choirs are not their
inferiors. No music appeals to our hearts so strongly as the music
of the human voice. Every one of the singers in that procession at
Karlovci felt that he was paying his last vocal tribute to the sacred
memory of the national poet, and his voice rose up to the heavens above
as if carried there by the wings of his inspired soul. The effect was
irresistible, and there was not a single dry eye in the great national
gathering. A dismembered nation united in tears was a most solemn
and inspiring spectacle. One could not help feeling that these tears
were welcome to the thirsty soil which nourished the roots of Serb
nationalism. A nation which is united in song and in tears will never
lose its unity. If the governments of Vienna and Budapest had foreseen
the emotions which that solemn ceremony would arouse in the hearts of
that vast and representative gathering coming from every part of the
dismembered Serbdom, they would never have permitted it. But that would
have meant the exercise of the perceptions of subtle psychology, which
these governments never had.
When the boat returned to Panchevo, Protoyeray Zhivkovich, the
poet-priest, who had first suggested my transference from Panchevo to
Prague, was watching for my arrival, and received me with tears of
joy in his eyes. He was a protecting friend and adviser of my boyhood
days, and he always considered himself indirectly responsible for my
wandering away to the distant shores of America. When I thanked him for
the choice feast which he had prepared for me, he assured me that his
feast was only a feast of food, whereas the feast which I spread out
before him when I answered his questions about America was a feast for
his soul. I certainly did it, if I interpreted correctly the luminous
flashes of his intelligent eyes. He was a man of about sixty, but his
vigorous eye was still just as eloquent as the stirring verses of his
younger days. “Tell your mother,” he said, “that I am happy to bear the
whole responsibility for your wandering away to distant America. It is
no longer distant; it is now in my heart; you have brought America to
us. It was a new world in my terrestrial geography; it is now a new
world in my spiritual geography.” His generous enthusiasm threatened to
undo some of the sobering effects of Niven’s conference at Cambridge.
During my several visits at his house that summer I had to repeat again
and again my description of Beecher and of his sermons. He called him
the brother of Joan of Arc of the new spiritual world; her flaming
sword, he said, was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
My older sister and her husband drove to Panchevo and escorted me to
Idvor. When Idvor’s territory was reached I begged them to make a
detour which would take me through the pasturelands and vineyards of
Idvor, where I had seen my happiest boyhood days. There, as if in a
dream, I saw the boys of Idvor watching herds of oxen just as I used
to do, and playing the same games which I used to play. The vineyards,
the summer sky above them, and the river Tamish in the distance, where
I had learned to swim and dive, looked the same as ever. Presently the
familiar church-spire of Idvor hove in sight, and gradually the sweet
sound of the church-bells, announcing vespers, awakened countless
memories in my mind and I found it difficult to control my emotions. As
we drove slowly through little Idvor everything looked exactly as it
had looked eleven years before. There were no new houses, and the old
ones looked as old as ever. The people were doing the same work which
they always did during that season of the year, and they were doing it
in the same way. When we reached the village green I saw the gate of
my mother’s yard wide open, a sign that she expected a welcome guest.
She sat alone on the bench under a tree in front of her house, and
waited, looking in the direction from which she expected me to come.
When she saw my sister’s team, I observed that suddenly she raised her
white handkerchief to her eyes, and my sister whispered to me: “Mayka
plache!” (“Mother is weeping!”) I jumped out of the wagon and hastened
to embrace her. Oh, how wonderful is the power of tears, and how
clear is our spiritual vision when a shower of tears has purified the
turbulent atmosphere of our emotions! Mother’s love and love for mother
are the sweetest messages of God to the living earth.
Everything in Idvor looked the same, but my mother had changed; she
looked much older, and much more beautiful. There was a saintly light
in her eyes which disclosed to me the serene firmament of the spiritual
world in which she lived. Raphael and Titian, I thought, never painted
a more beautiful saint. I gazed and worshipped and felt most humble.
“Come,” she said, “and walk with me; we shall be alone; I want to
hear your voice and see the light of your face, undisturbed.” We
walked slowly, and my mother recalled many things, reminding me of the
familiar objects of my boyhood days, as: “Here is the path on which you
walked to school; there is the church where you read the epistles on
Sundays and holidays; there is the mill with the funnel-shaped thatched
roof from the top of which you once removed the shining new tin star,
imagining that it was a star from heaven; there is the house where Baba
Batikin, of blessed memory, lived and taught you so many ancient tales;
there is the house where old Aunt Tina cured your whooping-cough with
charms and with herbs steeped in honey; here lived old Lyubomir, of
blessed memory, who was so fond of you, and made your sheepskin coats
and caps; here is the field where every evening you brought our horses
to the chikosh (the village herdsman) to take them to the pasturelands.”
By that time we had reached the end of the little village, but my
mother prolonged our leisurely walk and presently we stood at the gate
of the village cemetery. Pointing to a cross of red marble my mother
said that it marked the grave of my father. When we reached it I kissed
the cross, and, kneeling upon the grave, I prayed. My mother, loyal
to Serb traditions, addressed the grave, saying: “Kosta, my faithful
husband, here is your boy whom you loved more dearly than your own
life, and whose name was on your lips when you breathed your last.
Accept his prayer and his tears as his affectionate tribute to your
blessed memory, which he will cherish forever.”
On the way back we stopped at the church and kissed the icons of our
patron saint and of St. Sava, and lighted two wax candles which mother
had brought with her. I confessed to her that I felt as if a sacred
communion had reunited me with the spirit of Idvor. That was her wish,
she said, because she did not want Idvor to think that I was like a
proud stranger from a proud, strange land. “I did not recognize you,”
she said, “when I first saw you in your sister’s wagon until you smiled
with the smile of your boyhood days, and then I shed the sweetest tears
of my life. You looked so learned and so far above us plain folks of
Idvor that nobody will recognize the Misha they used to know, and whom
they long to see, unless you show them the boy that they used to know.”
My promise to return to Idvor “rich in learning and academic honors”
was evidently made good, according to my mother’s opinion. But did not
this learning and these academic honors carry with them an air which
did not harmonize with the old-fashioned notions of Idvor? This, I
believed, was in my mother’s mind, and I made a careful note of it.
Idvor came to see me, and it assured me that there was no youngster
in all the great plains of Voyvodina who was nearer to the heart of
his native village than Misha. This affectionate regard was won by my
strict observance of all the old customs of Idvor, as, for instance,
kissing the hand of the old people of Idvor, and in return being
kissed by them on the forehead. On the other hand, young peasant boys
and girls of Idvor kissed my hand, and I kissed them on the cheek and
petted them. My cousin, much older than I, was an ex-soldier and a
stern _Knez_ (chief) of the village. He was the oldest male member
and, therefore, the head of the Pupins. I was expected to keep this in
mind constantly, and I did it whenever I stood in his mighty presence.
American citizenship eliminated my allegiance to the Emperor of
Austria-Hungary but not to the autocratic _Knez_ of Idvor. There was
another great person in Idvor whose presence inspired awe. He was my
_koum_ (godfather). My mother had lost all her children that were born
in her earlier years, and was left childless for many years. She then
bore two daughters when she was over thirty. I was born when she was
over forty, in answer to her fervent prayer, she firmly believed, that
God grant her a son. A boy born late in life, if he is to live, must,
according to a popular belief in Idvor, be handed out through the front
window to the first person who comes along, and that person has to
carry the baby to church quickly and have it baptized. In this manner
a very poor and humble peasant of Idvor became my _koum_. A _koum’s_
authority over his godchild is, theoretically at least, unlimited,
according to Serbian custom. In practice, a godchild must eat humble
pie when the _koum_ is present. Between my cousin, who, as _Knez_,
was at the head of the village, and my _koum_, who was somewhere near
the bottom of the village, I had some difficulty to steer the correct
course of conduct. I succeeded, thanks to my efforts to please my
mother; and the peasants of Idvor most cheerfully admitted that America
must be a fine Christian country, since it had given me a training
which harmonized so well with the Christian traditions of Idvor. My
presidency in the junior year at Columbia College, my undisputed
authority among some of the young aristocrats of New York, and the
many scholastic successes in my academic career had sown some seeds of
vanity and false pride in my heart. But these seeds were smothered by
the inexorable rigors of Idvor’s traditions. Humility is the cardinal
virtue in a youth among the peasants of Idvor.
Needless to say, the story of my life since I had left Idvor was
retold many a time, until my mother and my sisters knew it by heart.
It was sweet music to their ears. I enjoyed it, too, because summer
evenings in a Serbian garden are most conducive to the spinning out of
reminiscent tales. The village worthies spent many Sunday afternoons in
my mother’s garden asking many, many a question about America. Tales
about things like the Brooklyn Bridge, the elevated railroad, the tall
buildings in New York, and the agricultural operations of the West were
received with many expressions of wonder, but at times also, I thought,
with some reserve. A simple peasant mind could not accept without
considerable reserve the statement that a machine can cut, bind, and
load the seasoned wheat, all at the same time, with nothing but a few
stupid horses to drag it along. After a while my store of information
became exhausted, and I had much less to say, but the wise men of
Idvor urged me to go on. They met my apologies with the statement that
peasant Ghiga had never left Idvor in all his life until one day he
went to a neighboring village, about ten miles away, and saw the county
fair. He returned to Idvor on the same day, and for six weeks he never
ceased talking about the great things which he had seen at that county
fair. “Just imagine,” said the priest, “how much he would have had to
say if he had been nine years in great America!”
I was overwhelmed with invitations to attend concerts and festivals
in many places of my native Banat, and when I attended I was often
called upon to say something about America, and, of course, I spoke
about my favorite subject: “The American Doctrine of Freedom.” People
talked and papers wrote about it. One day the Fehispan, the governor of
Torontal, where Idvor belonged under the new division of Hungary, sent
for me, and appointed the hour for a conference. I went, carrying my
American citizenship papers and my Columbia diploma in my pocket. When
I entered his office I saw a handsome young man of about thirty, quite
athletic in appearance, and looking like an English aristocrat in dress
and in manner. I was told beforehand that he was a young Hungarian
nobleman who prided himself upon his English university training. I
wondered how he would act when he saw before him a Serb youth from
the peasant village of Idvor who prided himself upon his American
college training. He looked puzzled when I entered and saluted him with
a Serbian “Dobroytro gospodine!” (“Good morning, sir”), accompanying
my salute with an Anglo-Saxon bow, that is a jerky motion of the head
from the shoulders up. The bow of continental Europe is much more
elaborate. After some hesitation he asked me to sit down, and then,
as if by an afterthought, he brought a chair himself and offered it
to me. We spoke in English, since I did not understand Hungarian, and
he did not care to speak Serb. By way of introduction I showed him
my American citizenship papers and my diploma, and he remarked that
these documents agreed with my appearance and manner, adding quickly
that he meant a compliment. He asked me how I liked Idvor and Hungary.
Then I told him that I never had known much about Hungary, but that
Budapest and even its famous bridge looked to me small and shrivelled
up, probably because I compared things there with things in New York.
“It is big enough, is it not, to be the metropolis of the southern
Slavs in Hungary?” he asked. “It undoubtedly is,” said I, “but somewhat
inconvenient and unnatural.” I volunteered this opinion, seeing from
his somewhat inquisitorial manner that he knew much about my doings,
and that he had heard of my salute to Belgrade when my boat from
Budapest approached it a month earlier.
“This, I suppose, is the doctrine which you preached at Karlovci,
at the national gathering there?” asked the handsome and genial
inquisitor, and I answered: “No; I had no time; I was too busy
carrying the body of the great poet to Strazhilovo. Besides, the
Karlovci ceremony itself was really a grand sermon which glorified
that doctrine, and some day it may prevail, when the slow mind of the
southern Slav wakes up and does the natural thing.” “The quick mind
of the Hungarian crown may wake up sooner and do the natural thing,”
said the young Fehispan, and added: “What you say now confirms my
information that in your public utterances you deny the divine right of
the crown and proclaim the divine right of the people.” “That is one
of the messages of our American Declaration of Independence,” said I,
“and I delivered that message to people here who were anxious to hear
something about America.” Then I added that Kossuth, while in America,
was glorifying the divine right of the Hungarian people and denying the
divine right of the Hapsburg crown in Hungary. I had heard this and
many other Hungarian democratic doctrines from Henry Ward Beecher, who
was a great friend and admirer of Kossuth, and I told him that. He saw
that my trigger was ready if he attempted any further moves in this
direction. “You are certainly frank and honest, like all real Americans
that I know; that makes them most attractive. But why don’t you
naturalized Americans mind your own business when you visit us?” He was
much less stern and serious when he said this, and I was only too glad
to play a more cheerful tune, and said: “Our most important business
here is our mission to make you, our poor relations here, happy and
prosperous by having you adopt the American point of view.”
He was a wealthy Hungarian magnate who owned several villages, each
of them bigger than Idvor, and this answer coming from a son of poor
Idvor amused him much. From that moment on our conference was much
less formal, and became even cordial when he offered me coffee and
cigarettes. I jokingly told him that Magyarism and Teutonism had driven
me away from Panchevo and Prague, and now that I was back for a visit I
wished to pay them back with a little present of a few American ideas.
“Your American ideas,” he retorted jokingly, “will make you even less
popular here than your Serb nationalism did eleven years ago. Drop them
while you are here. You’ll have more fun shooting wild ducks in the
lowlands of the Tamish River near Idvor than clearing up to dullards
the American point of view. The duck season is on, and it is a pity
to miss a single day. I’ll lend you an American gun which is just
right for that sort of business.” He did, and that gun kept me busy
and saved him the trouble of watching my movements. The village notary
accompanied me on my shooting tramps; he was an expert fisherman and
shot, and spared no pains to please me and--the Fehispan. A two weeks’
tramp in the marshes of the Tamish River, chasing the elusive duck,
diminished my haste to harmonize the political point of view of the
Serbs in the Voyvodina with American ideas.
When the vintage was over, toward the end of September, I made ready to
start for Cambridge. I was sorry to leave, because the merry season in
Voyvodina is on when the vintage is over and the new wine has ceased
fermenting. The golden crops are then all in, and the lazy pigs are fat
and round, and ready to be served at wedding-feasts. In other lands it
is the springtime when the young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love;
in the Serb Voyvodina it is the autumn season which has that mysterious
power. It is in the autumn when marriage-bells never cease ringing, and
the bagpipes with the merry songs of wedding-feasts stir up the hearts
from one end of the Banat plains to the other. But my mother diverted
my attention to more serious thoughts, and she assured me that she
was even more happy preparing me for my journey to Cambridge than she
was when, eleven years before, she was preparing me for my journey to
Prague.