Rivers in World Cultures and Languages

Abstract

Rivers in World Cultures and Languages Mary Rees From deep in our past, rivers have meant refreshment, cleansing, sustenance, transportation to and communication with places far and near. Rivers have brought melted snow from mountain heights to valley fields, relief to thirsting lips and revival to parched crops. The Russians recognize the life-bearing and life-sustaining force of water in referring to their mightiest river as, e.g., matushka Volga, “Mother Volga.” In some cultures, rivers bear away the dead, as the rivers Styx and Lethe of the Greek literary tradition transport the souls of the dead to the underworld and wipe away memory, and, as on the banks of the Ganges in India, rivers embrace the physical cremated remains of those who have died. Rivers thus serve to delineate life from death, just as they can mark boundaries between landholdings or political entities, whether towns, counties, or states. Rivers are revered as holy places; for example, according to Christian tradition, Jesus was baptized in the River Jordan, where a dove appears as a mighty voice proclaims him to be the Son of God.1 For poet Uri Tsvi Greenberg, a particular river where he fought a fierce battle as a young Jewish conscript in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I offered neither solace nor respite, but burned itself into his memory as a place of revelation, where he gained sudden insight into his own identity and position in this world. That river was the Sava River, which flows through Slovenia and Croatia, “then forms the border between Croatia and Bosnia before entering Serbia and joining the Danube River at Belgrade.”2 [End Page 99] Greenberg fought in the Battle of Cer, which raged on both sides of the Sava River, between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Serbs.3 In this battle the Austro-Hungarian forces lost to the Serbs.4 In almost every way, by surviving the battle on the Sava, Greenberg turned those earlier cultural traditions on their head. Rather than join the dead, Greenberg survived and left that riverbank on foot, over land. Rather than forget, he strove throughout his writing life to recall and resurrect that moment of epiphany. Glenda Abramson calls this “a compulsion, perhaps unconscious, born of trauma, and a need to memorialize as witness.”5 According to Abramson, quoting a poem he wrote in 1928, “Greenberg has ‘wept’ for these men and for this scene throughout his poetic life.”6 Rather than receive Christian baptism on the riverbank, Greenberg reembraced his Jewish heritage, since he recognized that he and his fellow Jewish soldiers had been placed on the front lines as cannon fodder for the two great Christian powers that were warring against each other. Glenda Abramson reports that as he crossed the river during the battle, Greenberg was greeted by the horrific scene of young soldiers’ bodies suspended upside-down on barbed wire.7 Like Christ’s body, theirs were pierced and bloody, but unlike his, they hung inverted. Greenberg emerged from that battle on the Sava River a poet who gave voice to Jewish experiences of World War I, which are often overshadowed by the soon-to-follow devastation of the Holocaust of World War II. In the Serbian translation of “That Night in Belgrade,” which Greenberg wrote in Hebrew in 1914, the narrator addresses the Sava River as if it is alive, like a person or domestic animal, using the vocative case, “Savo reko,”8 and asking the Sava River to act as a messenger and carry his message to Belgrade. [End Page 100] Are the Roots of Serbian rijeka and reći Related? On the poetic level, Greenberg’s emergence as a poet finding full voice on the banks of the Sava River implies a connection between “river” and “speaking,” even though he did not speak Serbian himself. Indeed, the similarly spelled roots of Serbian rijeka “river” and reći “to speak,” in both contemporary Serbian and Old Church Slavic, may lead to speculation that they are related. At least one renowned Russian philologist hypothesized just such a connection for the equivalent two Russian words, reka and rech’. However, despite the fact that both words...