Читать книгу The City of the Sultan (Vol.1&2) - Miss Pardoe - Страница 14

Table of Contents

Cheerful Cemeteries—Burial-ground of Pera—Superiority of the Turkish Cemeteries—Cypresses—Singular Superstition—The Grand Champs—Greek Grave-yard—Sultan Selim’s Barrack—Village of St. Demetrius—European Burial-ground—Grave-stones—The Kiosk—Noble View—Legend of the Maiden’s Tower—Plague Hospital of the Turks—The Plague-Caïque—Armenian Cemetery—Curious Inscriptions—Turkish Burial-place—Distinctive Head-stones—Graves of the Janissaries—Wild Superstition—Cemetery of Scutari—Splendid Cypresses—Ancient Prophecy—Extent of Burial-ground—The Headless Dead—Exclusive Enclosures—Aspect of the Cemetery from the Summer Palace of Heybetoullah Sultane—Local Superstition—The Damnèd Souls.

I have alluded elsewhere to the apparent care with which the Turks select the most lovely spots for burying their dead, and how they have, by such means, divested death of its most gloomy attributes. Like the ancient Romans, they form grave-yards by the road-side; and, like them, they inscribe upon their tombs the most beautiful lessons of resignation and philosophy.

The Cemetery of Pera offers a singular spectacle; and the rather that the “Champ des Morts” is the promenade of the whole population, Turk, Frank, Greek, and Armenian; the lesser burial-place, or Petit Champs, is sacred to the Mussulmauns, and fringes with its dark cypresses the crest of the hill that dominates the port; it is hemmed in with houses—overlooked by a hundred casements—grazed by cattle—loud with greetings and gossipry—and commands an extensive view of the shipping in the harbour and the opposite shore. There are footpaths among the funereal trees; sunny glades gleaming out amid the dark shadows; head-stones clustered against the grassy slopes, and guard-houses, with their portals thronged with lounging soldiers, mocking the defencelessness of the dead. Nor must I forget to mention the small octagonal building, which, seated in the very depth of the valley, and generally remarkable from the dense volume of smoke exuding from its tall chimney, marks the spot where the last profane duties are paid to the dead; where the body is washed, the beard is shorn, the nails are cut, and the limbs are decently composed, ere what was so lately a True Believer is laid to rest in the narrow grave, to be aroused only by the sound of the last trumpet.

The superiority of the Turkish cemeteries over those of Europe may be accounted for in several ways. Their head-stones are more picturesque and various—their situation better chosen—and, above all things, the Mussulmaun never disturbs the ashes of the dead. There is no burying and re-burying on the same spot, as with us. The remains of the departed are sacred.

When a body is committed to the earth, the priest plants a cypress at the head, and another at the foot, of the grave; and hence those far-spreading forests, those bough o’er-canopied cities of the dead, which form so remarkable a feature in Turkish scenery. Should only one tree in six survive, enough still remain to form a dense and solemn grove; but the Turks have a singular superstition with regard to those that, instead of lancing their tall heads towards the sky, take a downward bend, as though they would fain return to the earth from whence they sprang; they hold that these imply the damnation of the soul whose mortal remains they overshadow; and as, from the closeness with which they are planted, and their consequent number, such accidents are by no means rare, it must be at best a most uncomfortable creed.

But it is to the “Grand Champs” that the stranger should direct his steps, if he would contemplate a scene to which the world probably can produce no parallel. Emerging from the all but interminable High Street, whose projecting upper stories form a canopy above your head for nearly its whole length, you have on your left hand the plague-hospital for the Franks, and on your right a stretch of higher land, which is the burial-ground of the Greeks. Here there is nothing to arrest your steps; it is ill-kept, and, were it not for the houses that surround it, would be dreary and desolate from its very disorder. The Greek is the creature of to-day—yesterday is blotted from his tablets.

Having passed the grave-yard, the road widens into an esplanade, in front of an extensive block of building, erected by Sultan Selim as a cavalry barrack. It is painted rose-colour, has a noble entrance, and possesses a look of order and regularity almost European. It is not until you descend the gentle declivity that slopes onward to the Grand Champs des Morts, that you discover the whole extent of the edifice, which is a quadrangle, having three fronts; its fourth side being devoted to a range of stabling.

The road to Therapia and the “Sweet Waters” skirts the burial-ground; and the little Greek village or colony of St. Demetrius covers an opposite height.

The first plot of ground, after passing the barrack, is the grave-yard of the Franks; and here you are greeted on all sides with inscriptions in Latin: injunctions to pray for the souls of the departed; flourishes of French sentiment; calembourgs graven into the everlasting stone, treating of roses and reine Marguerites; concise English records of births, deaths, ages, and diseases; Italian elaborations of regret and despair; and all the commonplaces of an ordinary burial-ground.

Along the edge of this piece of land, a wide road conducts you to a steep descent leading to the Sultan’s Palace of Dolma Batché; the crest of the hill commanding a noble view of the channel; while, on the verge of the descent, and almost touching the graves, stands a kiosk of wood, rudely put together, and serving as a coffee room; and immediately in front of it, a group of cypresses form a pleasant shade, beneath which parties of Turks, Greeks, and Armenians, seated on low stools, smoke their eternal chibouks, sip their sugarless coffee, and contemplate one of the loveliest views over which the eye of a painter ever lingered.

From this height, the hill slopes rapidly downward, clothed with fruit trees, and bright with vegetation. At its foot flows the blue Bosphorus, clear and sparkling as the sky, whose tint it rivals. Immediately across the channel stretches Scutari, the gem of the Asian shore, with its forest of cypresses, its belt of palaces, its hill-seated kiosks, and its sky-kissing minarets. Further in the distance are two pigmy islands, heaving up their dark sides from the bright wave, like aquatic monsters revelling in the sunshine; beyond is a stretch of sea—the Sea of Marmora—laughing in the light, as though no storms had ever rent its bosom—while, above all, on the extreme verge of the horizon, almost blending with the dark purple clouds that rest upon it, towers Mount Olympus, the dwelling of the gods, crowned with snows, and flinging its long shadows over the pleasant town and mulberry groves of Broussa. And here, a little to the right, (where Scutari, after advancing with a graceful curve, as though to do homage to her European sister, again recedes), upon a rock so small that its foundations cover the whole surface, stands the “Maiden’s Tower;” an object in itself so picturesque that it would arrest the eye though it possessed no legend to attract the sympathy—but such is far from being the case.

This Tower, so runs the tale, was erected by a former Sultan, as a residence for his only daughter, of whom it was foretold by the astrologers that she would, before the completion of her eighteenth year, be destroyed by a serpent. Every precaution was taken to overcome destiny; but it was not to be—an adder, accidentally concealed in a box of figs, fastened upon the hand of the princess, and she was found dead on her sofa.

The Maiden’s Tower is now the plague-hospital of the Turks: and his heart must be atrophised indeed who can look around on the bright and beautiful scene amid which it stands, and not feel how much the bitter pang of the plague-smitten must be enhanced by the contrast of all around them with their own probable fate—for, alas! the long gaze of the sickening victim is too frequently his last! The dying wretch should pass to his infected home by a road of gloom and shadow, where no image of gladness can mock him by its intrusive and harrowing presence—but to be swiftly borne along that blue sea, with those magnificent shores stretching away into the distance, far beyond his failing vision—to be carried to his narrow chamber, probably to die—cut off from his fellow-men—from all the glory and the majesty around him—surely no after-pang can be so keen as that which grapples at his heart during his brief voyage to the Maiden’s Tower!

Rapidly darts forward the slender caïque; it shoots from the shore like a wild bird—no sound of revelry, no shout of greeting, no pealing laughter, heralds its departure—the sturdy rowers bend to their oars; the resisting waters yield before the vigorous stroke—there is no pause—no interval—the errand is contagion—the freight is death! The eyes are dim that roll languidly in their sockets: the lips are livid that quiver with agony in lieu of words: the brow is pale and clammy that is turned upwards to the cloudless sky—the hands are nerveless that are flung listlessly across the panting breast—and as men watch from afar the rapid progress of the laden boat, their own breath comes thickly, and their pulses throb; and, when they at length turn aside to pursue their way, they move onward with a slower and a less steady step—their brows are clouded—they have looked upon the plague!

But the goal is gained, and the caïque has discharged its gloomy freight. All around is life, and light, and loveliness. The surface of the channel is crowded with boats, filled with busy human beings, hurrying onward in pursuit of pleasure or of gain; a thousand sounds are on the wind. The swift caïques dart like water-fowl past the Maiden’s Tower, and few within them waste a thought upon the anguish which it conceals!

A few paces from the spot whence you look down upon this various scene—a few paces, and from the refuge of the dying you gaze upon the resting-place of the dead. Where the acacia-trees blossom in their beauty, and shed their withered flowers upon a plain of graves on the right hand, immediately in a line with the European cemetery, is the burial-ground of the Armenians. It is a thickly-peopled spot; and as you wander beneath the leafy boughs of the scented acacias, and thread your way among the tombs, you are struck by the peculiarity of their inscriptions. The noble Armenian character is graven deeply into the stone; name and date are duly set forth; but that which renders an Armenian slab (for there is not a head-stone throughout the cemetery) peculiar and distinctive, is the singular custom that has obtained among this people of chisselling upon the tomb the emblem of the trade or profession of the deceased.

Thus the priest is distinguished even beyond the grave by the mitre that surmounts his name—the diamond merchant by a group of ornaments—the money-changer by a pair of scales—the florist by a knot of flowers—besides many more ignoble hieroglyphics, such as the razor of the barber, the shears of the tailor, and others of this class; and, where the calling is one that may have been followed by either sex, a book, placed immediately above the appropriate emblem, distinguishes the grave of the man.

Nor is this all: the victims of a violent death have also their distinctive mark—and more than one tomb in this extraordinary burial-place presents you with the headless trunk of an individual, from whose severed throat the gushing blood is spirting upwards like a fountain, while the head itself is pillowed on the clasped hands! Many of the more ancient among the tombs are very richly and elaborately wrought, but nearly all the modern ones are perfectly simple; and you seldom pass the spot without seeing groups of people seated upon the graves beneath the shadow of the trees, talking, and even smoking. Death has no gloom for the natives of the East.

The Turkish cemetery stretches along the slope of the hill behind the barrack, and descends far into the valley. Its thickly-planted cypresses form a dense shade, beneath which the tall head-stones gleam out white and ghastly. The grove is intersected by footpaths, and here and there a green glade lets in the sunshine, to glitter upon many a gilded tomb. Plunge into the thick darkness of the more covered spots, and for a moment you will almost think that you stand amid the ruins of some devastated city. You are surrounded by what appear for an instant to be the myriad fragments of some mighty whole—but the gloom has deceived you—you are in the midst of a Nekropolis—a City of the Dead. Those chisselled blocks of stone that lie prostrate at your feet, or lean heavily on one side as if about to fall, and which at the first glance have seemed to you to be the shivered portions of some mighty column—those turban-crowned shafts which rise on all sides—those gilt and lettered slabs erected beside them—are memorials of the departed—the first are of ancient date; the earth has become loosened at their base, and they have lost their hold—the others tell their own tale; the bearded Moslem sleeps beside his wife—the turban surmounting his head-stone, and the rose-branch carved on her’s, define their sex, while the record of their years and virtues is engraven beneath. Would you know more? Note the form and folds of the turban, and you will learn the rank and profession of the deceased—here lies the man of law—and there rests the Pasha—the soldier slumbers yonder, and close beside you repose the ashes of the priest—here and there, scattered over the burial-ground, you may distinguish several head-stones from which the turbans have been recently struck off—so recently that the severed stone is not yet weather-stained; they mark the graves of the Janissaries, desecrated by order of the Sultan after the distinction of their body; who himself stood by while a portion of the work was going forward; and the mutilated turbans that are half buried in the long grass beside these graves are imperishable witnesses to their disgrace—a disgrace which was extended even beyond the grave, and whose depth of ignominy can only be understood in a country where the dead are objects of peculiar veneration.

Those raised terraces enclosed within a railing are family burial-places; and the miniature column crowned with a fèz, painted in bright scarlet, records the rest of some infant Effendi. At the base of many of the shafts are stones hollowed out to contain water, which are carefully filled, during the warm season, by pious individuals, for the supply of the birds, or any wandering animals.

The Turks have a strange superstition attached to this cemetery. They believe that on particular anniversaries sparks of fire exude from many of the graves, and lose themselves among the boughs of the cypresses. The idea is at least highly poetical.

But Constantinople boasts no burial-place of equal beauty with that of Scutari, and probably the world cannot produce such another, either as regards extent or pictorial effect. A forest of the finest cypresses extending over an immense space, clothing hill and valley, and overshadowing, like a huge pall, thousands of dead, is seen far off at sea, and presents an object at once striking and magnificent. Most of the trees are of gigantic height, and their slender and spiral outline cutting sharply against the clear sky is graceful beyond expression. The Turks themselves prefer the great cemetery of Scutari to all others; for, according to an ancient prophecy in which they have the most implicit faith, the followers of Mahomet are, ere the termination of the world, to be expelled from Europe; and, as they are jealous of committing even their ashes to the keeping of the Giaour, they covet, above all things, a grave in this Asiatic wilderness of tombs. Thus, year after year, the cypress forest extends its boundaries, and spreads further and wider its dense shadows; generation after generation sleeps in the same thickly-peopled solitude; and the laughing vineyard and the grassy glade disappear beneath the encroachments of the ever-yawning sepulchre—the living yield up their space to the dead—the blossoming fruit trees are swept away, and the funereal and feathering boughs of the dark grave-tree tower in their stead.

It is not without a sensation of the most solemn awe that you turn aside from the open plain, and abandon the cheerful sunshine, to plunge into the deep gloom of the silent forest; scores of narrow pathways intersect it in all directions; and, should you fail to follow them in your wanderings, your every step must be upon a grave. Here a group of lofty and turban-crowned columns, each with a small square slab of stone at its base, arrests you with a thrill of sickening interest, for that silent and pigmy slab tells you a tale of terror—each covers the severed head of a victim to state policy, or state intrigue—Vizirs and Pashas, Beys and Effendis—the eye that blighted, and the brow that burned, are mouldering, or have mouldered there—the fever of ambition, the thirst of power, the wiliness of treason, and the pride of place—all that frets and fevers the mind of man, is there laid to rest for ever—and the stately turban towers, as if in mockery, above the trunkless head which festers in its dishonoured grave!

Those gilded tombs enclosed within their circling barrier are inscribed with the names and titles of some powerful or wealthy race that has carried its pride beyond the grave, and not suffered even its dust to mingle with that of more common men—the prostrate and perished columns on one hand have yielded reluctantly to time, and now cumber the earth in recordless ruin; while the stately head-stones on the other, yet bright with gilding, and elaborate with ornament, point out to you the resting-places of the newly dead—the pomp of yesterday speaks far less sadly to the heart than the hoar and letterless remains of by-past centuries.

Suddenly a bright light flashes through the gloom; the warm sunshine falls in a flood of radiance, the more startling from the darkness that surrounds it, upon a limited and treeless space, on which time or the tempest have done their work; and where withered boughs and shivered trunks, branchless and gray with moss, are prostrate among sunken tombs and ruined monuments.

Your spirit is oppressed, your eye is blinded, by that mocking light!

Here and there, upon the borders of the forest, a latticed pavilion of the brightest green, contrasting strangely with the cold, white, spectral-looking head-stones which it overtops, causes you to turn aside almost in wonder; but death is even there—it is the tomb of some beloved child, and the slab within is strown with flowers—flowers that have been gathered in anguish, and moistened with tears. Alas! for the breaking heart and the trembling hand that strewed them there!

I remember nothing more beautiful than the aspect of the burying-ground of Scutari, from the road which winds in front of the summer palace of the Princess Haybètoullah. The crest of the hill is one dense mass of dark foliage, while the slope is only partially clothed with trees, that advance and recede in the most graceful curves; and the contrast between the deep dusky green of the cypresses, and the soft bright tint of the young fresh grass in the open spaces between them, produces an effect almost magical, and which strikes you as being more the result of art than accident, until you convince yourself, by looking around you, that it is to its extent alone that this noble cemetery owes its gloom, for its site is eminently picturesque and beautiful. On one side, an open plain separates it from the channel; on the other, it is bounded by a height clothed with vines and almond trees—the houses of Scutari touch upon its border, and even mingle with its graves in the rear, while before it spreads a wide extent of cultivated land dotted with habitations.

Need I add that the Nekropolis of Scutari, such as I have described it, has also its local superstition? Surely not; and the idea is so wild, and withal so imaginative, that I cannot pass it by without record.

Along the channel may be constantly seen clouds of aquatic birds of dusky plumage, speeding their rapid flight from the Euxine to the Propontis, or bending their restless course from thence back again to the Black Sea, never pausing for a moment to rest their weary wing on the fair green spots of earth that woo them on every side; and it is only when a storm takes place in the Sea of Marmora, or sweeps over the bosom of the Bosphorus, that they fly shrieking to the cypress forest of Scutari for shelter; and these the Turks believe to be the souls of the damned, who have found sepulchre beneath its boughs, and which are permitted, during a period of elementary commotion, to revisit the spot where their mortal bodies moulder; and there mourn together over the crimes and judgment of their misspent existence upon earth—while, during the gentler seasons, they are compelled to pass incessantly within sight of the localities they loved in life, without the privilege of pausing even for one instant in the charmed flight to which they are condemned for all eternity!

My mind was full of this legend when I visited the cemetery—and I can offer no better apology for the wild verses that I strung together as I sat upon a fallen column in one of the gloomiest nooks of the forest, and amid the noon-day twilight of the thick branches, while my companions wandered away among the graves.

THE DAMNÈD SOULS.

Hark! ’tis a night when the storm-god rides

In triumph o’er the deep;

And the howling voice of the tempest chides

The spirits that fain would sleep:

When the clouds, like a sable-bannered host,

Crowd the dense and lurid sky;

And the ship and her crew are in darkness lost

As the blast roars rushing by.

Voices are heard which summon men

To a dark and nameless doom;

And spirits, beyond a mortal’s ken,

Are wandering through the gloom;

While the thunders leap from steep to steep,

And the yellow lightnings flash,

And the rocks reply to the riot on high,

As the wild waves o’er them dash.

And we are here, in this night of fear,

Urged by a potent spell,

Haunting the glade where our bones are laid,

Our tale of crime to tell—

We have hither come, through the midnight gloom,

As the tempest about us rolls,

To spread mid the graves, where the rank grass waves,

The feast of the Damnèd Souls.

Some have flown from the deep sea-caves

Which the storm-won treasures hold;

And these are they who through life were slaves

To the sordid love of gold;

No other light e’er meets their sight,

Save the gleam of the yellow ore;

And loathe they there, in their dark despair,

What they idolized before.

They have swept o’er the rude and rushing tide,

Bestrewn with wreck and spoil,

Where the shrieking seaman writhed and died

’Mid his unavailing toil;

And they rode the wave, without power to save

The wretch as he floated by;

And sighed to think, as they saw him sink,

What a boon it was to die!

Some were cast from the burning womb,

Whence the lava-floods have birth;

From fires which wither, but ne’er consume

The rejected one of earth—

And these are they who were once the prey

Of the thirst that madmen know,

When the world for them is the diadem

That burns into the brow.

They who crouch in the deepest gloom

Where no lightning-flash can dart,

Who, chained in couples, have hither come,

And can never be rent apart;

These are they whose life was a scene of strife,

And who learnt, alas! too late,

That the years flew fast which they each had cast

On the altar of their hate.

But, hark! through the forest there sweeps a wail

More wild than the tempest-blast,

As each commences the darkling tale

Of the stern and shadowy past—

And the spell that has power, in this dread hour,

No pang of our’s controls—

Nor may mortal dare in the watch to share

That is kept by the Damnèd Souls!