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From Egypt to Japan. Field Henry Martyn
Читать онлайн.Название From Egypt to Japan
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Автор произведения Field Henry Martyn
Жанр Книги о Путешествиях
Издательство Public Domain
Thus moving on in these slow and endless marches, what so natural as that the camel-riders should beguile their solitude with song? The lonely heart relieves itself by pouring its loves and its sorrows into the air; and hence come those Arabian melodies, so wild and plaintive and tender, which constitute the music of the desert. Some years since a symphony was produced in Paris, called "The Desert," which created a great sensation, deriving its peculiar charm from its unlikeness to European music. It awakened, as it were, a new sense in those who had been listening all their lives to French and German operas. It seemed to tell – as music only tells – the story of the life of the desert. In listening one could almost see the boundless plain, broken only by the caravan, moving slowly across the waste. He could almost "feel the silence" of that vast solitude, and then faintly in the distance was heard the tinkling of the camel-bells, and the song of the desert rose upon the evening air, as softly as if cloistered nuns were singing their vesper hymns. The novel conception took the fancy of the pleasure seekers of Paris, always eager for a new sensation. The symphony made the fame of the composer, Felicien David, who was thought to have shown a very original genius in the composition of melodies, such as Europe had not heard before. The secret was not discovered until some French travellers in the East, crossing the desert, heard the camel-drivers singing and at once recognized the airs that had so taken the enthusiasm of Paris. They were the songs of the Arabs. The music was born on the desert, and produced such an effect precisely because it was the outburst of a passionate nature brooding in solitude.
Music and poetry go together: the life that produces the one produces the other also. And as there is a music of the desert, so there is a poetry of the desert. Indeed the desert may be almost said to have been the birthplace of poetry. The Book of Job, the oldest poem in the world, older than Homer, and grander than any uninspired composition, was probably written in Arabia, and is full of the imagery of the desert.
But while the mind carols lightly in poetry and music, its deeper musings take the form of Religion. It is easy to see how the life of the desert must act upon a thoughtful and "naturally religious" mind. The absence of outward objects throws it back upon itself; and it broods over the great mystery of existence. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, when he was
"Alone on the wide, wide sea,"
found that
"So lonely 'twas that God himself
Scarce seemèd there to be."
But in the desert one may say there is nothing but God. If there is little of earth, there is much of heaven. The glory of the desert is at night, when the full moon rises out of the level plain, as out of the sea, and walks the unclouded firmament. And when she retires, then all the heavenly host come forth. The atmosphere is of such exquisite purity, that the stars shine with all their splendor. No vapor rises from the earth, no exhalation obscures the firmament, which seems all aglow with the celestial fires. It was such a sight that kindled the mind of Job, as he looked up from the Arabian deserts three thousand years ago, and saw Orion and the Pleiades keeping their endless march; and as led him to sing of the time "when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."
Is it strange that God should choose such a vast and silent temple as this for the education of those whom He would set apart for his own service? Here the Israelites were led apart to receive the law from the immediate presence of God. The desert was their school, the place of their national education. It separated them from their own history. It drew a long track between them and the bitter past. It was a fit introduction to their new life and their new religion, as to their new country.
In such solitudes God has had the most direct communion with the individual soul. It was in the desert that Moses hid himself in a cleft of the rock while the Lord passed by; that the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind; and from it that John the Baptist came forth, as the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
So in later ages holy men who wished to shun the temptations of cities, that they might lead lives of meditation and prayer, fled to the desert, that they might forget the world and live for God alone. This was one of the favorite retreats of Monasticism in the early Christian centuries. The tombs of the Thebaïd were filled with monks. Convents were built on the cliffs of Mount Sinai that remain to this day.
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