XXI
OUR LAST DAYS IN THE CAUCASUS
The Dedopali’s death · Death of my mother · Prospect of coming home · Translation of “The Tiger’s Skin” · Sojourn in a Mingrelian village · A bit of Georgian history · Queen Tamara
In the summer of 1882 the Dedopali was taken ill. We were just at that time her guests again at Gordi. The physicians whom her son summoned from Tiflis prescribed a “cure” at Karlsbad. But she refused to leave her fatherland.
“I hope to get well again,” she said to me, “but if this should really be my last illness I desire to die here near the Convent of Marthvilli, where I shall be buried. I should not like to make the long journey back from Europe in a box.”
Her condition gradually grew worse, and when we left Gordi in the autumn we had no hope of ever seeing her again; and, in fact, we soon received from Prince Niko by telegraph the news that his mother had passed away painlessly and with Christian resignation. Although I was prepared for the news, it was a sore grief to me, and I deeply mourned for this friend of many years. She was laid away in the crypt of the Convent of Marthvilli, in the midst of a gigantic mourning assembly, in which the population of all the neighboring provinces participated; thousands and thousands had made the pilgrimage to the ancient cloister which contained the ancestral tomb of the princes, to pay the last honors to the “Queen of Mothers.”
At the beginning of the year 1884 I suffered a far heavier bereavement—my mother. I had confidently hoped to see her again very soon, for our home-coming was now in immediate prospect, and she herself was looking forward to this reunion with yearning joy. In that moment death snatched her away with only a brief illness. Full of sympathy and love, My Own did his best to console and comfort me.
The period of our exile was coming to an end. The parents, who now recognized how faithfully and happily we clung to each other, how bravely we had made our way without ever claiming their help, had given over their obstinate rancor and were bidding us to come to Harmannsdorf. We had in the meantime reached a position of independence, and could therefore return home without any sense of humiliation. To be sure, nothing had come of the hoped-for situations at the Russian court, and the various plans for business undertakings that were to bring us a competency; but we had both won a place in literature which gave us the prospect of a sufficient and increasing income and assured us an honorable position. The critics lauded us, editors asked for articles, publishers wanted manuscripts. My husband’s Caucasian stories and novels were meeting with great success, and my Inventarium einer Seele, in which I had set forth all my views about nature and life, about science and politics, had made somewhat of a sensation; my belles-lettres were equally in demand. And we both felt that we still had a good deal to say, that the fountain of inspiration would yet pour abundant streams; the new calling had become for us “the one important thing.”
Our return was set for the month of May; it was still three months to that time. We proposed to use these on a work which one of my husband’s friends, a Tiflis journalist, had urged us to undertake. This was a French and German translation of the national epic of Georgia, “The Tiger’s Skin,” by Shosta Rustaveli. As we did not know the Georgian language thoroughly, the work was to be done in this way: Mr. M—— (his name, all except the initial, has slipped from my memory) was to give us the poetry literally in such imperfect French as he knew; we would then translate this into correct French, and from that into German. There was at that time a plan of bringing out a great holiday edition of “The Tiger’s Skin,” for which the painter Zychy had drawn splendid illustrations. In order to be able to carry out this work undisturbed, we accepted Mr. M——’s invitation to move with him to a remote Mingrelian village where his father was the pope and owned a little house, in which he would take us as boarders for a nominal sum. There we could regularly devote two morning hours and two afternoon hours to “The Tiger’s Skin,” and the rest of the time we spent in walking, reading, and “looking forward” (a business in itself) to the coming journey home.
We enjoyed twice as much as ever the wildness, the primitive conditions, of that Caucasian solitude, in anticipation of once more plunging into the bustle of European civilization. The little house that we inhabited was, so to speak, not furnished at all; we had brought with us for our room our own takhta and a few other conveniences, among them a zither. This is, to be sure, not one of the indispensable comforts of life; but, as we had no piano, we satisfied our craving for music with the little Styrian instrument, on which I played accompaniments for my sentimental songs and My Own twanged most lively heel-tapping Ländler.
The room in which the pope, his son, the son’s old nurse, and we took our meals contained nothing but a table and the necessary number of chairs. The menu alternated between two dishes, one day chicken, the next day mutton; and the napkins were changed only once a fortnight. The pope supped his broth with a noise that reminded one of sporting whales. Below our room was a cellar in which sauerkraut was being made, and the odor from it came up to us through the cracks in the flooring; but nothing, nothing disturbed our good humor, and the actively progressing translation of the Georgian poem gave us lively satisfaction. A whole vanished world opened before us—the world of the thirteenth century in this remote corner of the earth. An epoch to which the Georgians look back with pride, because it was the climax of their country’s glory—the epoch when the great Queen Tamara was on the throne. Shosta Rustaveli sang at her court and celebrated her fame, her power, her charms. We learned from the mouth of our patriotic journalist even more of the past of his country, and of the departed splendor of Queen Tamara, than we did from the poetry of the Georgian bard. Her name stirs the Georgians to real religious devotion; the memory of those ancient days celebrated by Rustaveli lives as something sublime and immortal.
The Georgians look back on a history extending over twenty-three centuries; their first king, Phamawaz by name, was elected three hundred and two years before Christ, and the Christian religion was introduced four hundred years after Christ by Saint Nino. Like every ancient history, that of Georgia is a history of wars. The land was surrounded by hostile nations and tribes; in particular, it was constantly assailed by the Ottomans and Persians. Of course the chronicles tell of the victorious battles which the Georgians fought against their enemies, and their pride in this finds expression in their greeting. “Good-morning” in Georgia is gamardjoba, which means victory; the reply is gamardjosse, “May he (God) make you victorious.”
The reign of Queen Tamara is regarded as the golden age of the land. The chronicles aver that under this queen prosperity prevailed, the fine arts flourished, splendid buildings were erected,—the same as you find it in all the ancient documents of flattery under the name of history, where all possible achievements are always ascribed to the then reigning monarch. If the rulers were cruel, the strictness of their rule is praised; if they were not, then this negative virtue is extolled to the skies. So it is to be read in the chronicle concerning Tamara, “No one at her command was deprived of his limbs or of his eyesight”; and that is the more noteworthy as at her time and afterwards the principle laid down by one of her ancestors, the heroic Wakhtang Gorgaslan, was in full force: “Whoever in war escapes death and fails to bring back the head or the hand of an enemy shall die by our hand.”
How little it does take to kindle admiration in the biographer of a king; among us too there are very many people who have no predilection for tearing off limbs and putting out eyes, and no one heaps glory and praise upon us on that account.
At the beginning of her reign Tamara’s kingdom was threatened by the Persian caliph Nasir-ed-Din, who marched against the borders with a “numberless” host. Then Tamara summoned her troops; in ten days she collected battle-joyous legions from all quarters, had them march before her in review, and addressed them with the following words: “Brothers, let not your hearts sink when you compare the throng of your foes with your own small numbers. Surely you have heard of Gideon’s three hundred men and the innumerable multitude of Midianites that they overcame. Remain fearless, and put your confidence in the bravery of each.” Then she delivered to them the banner of her ancestor, the banner of Gorgaslan (author of the above-mentioned edict, “Whoever in war escapes death,” etc.). Of course the troops went and won a brilliant victory over the foe. When they returned home the queen hastened to meet them, and the soldiers, enraptured to see her in their midst, compelled all the chieftains of the Persian army to bend their knees before the queen. Probably the incident is related differently in the Persian chronicles.
A few years later Rokn-ed-Din, sultan of Asia Minor, collected eight hundred thousand (!) men and marched against Georgia. He sent the queen, by his ambassador, the following polite message: “I would have thee to know, O Tamara, sultana of the Georgians, that all women are of weak understanding. Now I come to teach thee, thee and thy people, no longer to draw the sword, which God has given into our hands alone.” This note was signed with the writer’s name and titles; among others, “Highest of all Sultans on Earth, Equal to the Angels, God’s Privy Councilor,” and the like.
Tamara read the message “without haste.” She gave her commands for the troops to assemble, and she herself rode out at the head of her army against the enemy. Of course the victory was complete; the streets of Tiflis were decorated and the queen made her triumphal entry glittering like the sun....
That the chronicles have as much to say of her piety as of her bravery is a matter of course. The alliance of “saber and aspergillum” is as old as these two symbols, whatever forms they have been, and are, exchanged into. There is a national poem of Georgia, which every peasant knows by heart, in which the following story is told of that famous queen: It was again on a great day of victorious rejoicing. Tamara had put on all her precious ornaments—her crown of precious stones, her gold brooches and strings of pearls. Anew she glitters like the sun. She desires that all her people be happy. She has given orders to her treasurer to distribute gifts and alms to all the great and all the small. “Hast thou fulfilled my command?” she asks. “Are all satisfied?” He answers, “Lady, I have distributed gifts in accordance with thy will; only one beggar woman received nothing, for she insisted on coming to thee to receive her alms from thine own hands. We refused to admit her—she would take nothing from us, and with angry face she went away.” The queen is in consternation, and gives orders to make search for the beggar woman and bring her into her presence. But she waits in vain; the couriers cannot find the woman again. Then suddenly an inspiration comes to the queen; she sinks on her knees before the sacred icons, crosses herself, and cries in an ecstasy: “I know, I know now who that beggar woman was; thou, O holy mother of God, hast sent her to me.” And she tears all the precious ornaments from her body and carries everything, the pearls and the diamonds, to the nunnery of Gaenathi, dedicated to the Madonna.
And in this nunnery, which is situated not far from Kutais, it is said that Tamara was buried.
Our translation of “The Tiger’s Skin” was never published; but we did not regret the time which we spent in this work. Through that, and through the tales and observations which our enthusiastic Georgian patriot connected with it, we were thoroughly initiated into the nature, the history, and the spirit of the people and of that magical land in which we had spent so many years; and we learned the chronicles of all the families with which we had been associated, whose names—the Orbelianis, the Zeretellis, the Gruzinskys, the Dadianis, the Mukhranskys, the Tchavtchavadzes—have as proud a ring in that land as the Montmorencys, Manchesters, Borgheses, Liechtensteins, etc. have with us. And we were able to penetrate deeply not only into the history but also and especially into the nature of the country, to observe the customs of the people in this rural solitude, in the nearer or remoter inns where our landlord took us to weddings, funerals, and baptisms.
But, interesting as all this was, we counted the days that separated us from our return home, and the nearer this came the more we rejoiced in the anticipation of it.