In Memory of Mukhtar Auezov

and and outstanding scientist and public figure, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR, first doctor of philology in Kazakhstan, professor. He was born on September 28, 1897 in Kaskabulak area of Abai district of the East Kazakhstan region. 

Bright-minded Mukhtar Auezov devoted his whole life to the service of his people, in the difficult years of the formation of professional art and literature of the twentieth century, contributed to the development of democratic literature, progressive thought, especially relevant in periods of social and political transformations, and the fermentation of minds. Mukhtar Auezov used to recall his childhood with interesting stories. He was about five or six years old, when one evening, having a pleasant expectation of dinner, his grandfather decided to check whether he was capable of reading and writing. He was unable to clearly pronounce different sounds, and there was no need to think about reading and writing: for children who did not cope with it, mullahs twisted their tongue, because the first lessons began with memorizing the first words of Koran. He remembered a cloudless warm spring morning.

On the lawn, before the winter, the calves frolic, the lovely lambs and goats were jumping to the children's heart, and swans, illuminated by the sun, swam in the sky, like the white-winged peri of grandmother's tales, a barely audible song came from an incomprehensible height. And suddenly all the charm of the spring day disappeared - they were called into a stifling low wintering to the grandfather. Seeing in his hands a thick hand-written book, Mukhtar realized why they were called, and he was grieved even more. His grandfather began showing him Arabic letters in the book, and each of them had such a difficult name.

This book was a collection of poems by Abai. Auez - a friend of the poet and a sincere admirer of his talent, ordered a mullah to rewrite them in one book and decided to teach us to read through the poems of his beloved poet, hoping to inspire love for them and his grandchildren. Mukhtar's grandfather had his own method of training. He said that 'probably, he greatly facilitated the work of the teacher, but the poor student forced to shed a lot of tears: as soon as I began to distinguish letters, I had to learn by heart one poem after another. 

The verses were long, incomprehensible, in them now and then came across strange, unusual, never ridged names. Grandfather, imitating the mullah teachers, held us over the book from morning till sunset, and everything learned for the day had to be read before him and the father by heart. The spring sun was dim for me, I did not see all my lambs for days on end, and the Abaev pages with Tatyana's heartfelt complaints were wet from the bitter tears of another victim of fate. But my grandfather firmly adhered to his method of teaching; did not help, and the intercession of the compassionate grandmother, who feared that from the continuous memorization of poetry her little grandson would become stupefied'.

After graduating from the school, the young man entered the local teachers' seminary. Here he read a lot, and he was interested in literature of different peoples. At the same time he begins to write the first stories and plays. Many of these plays were staged on the stages of the first Kazakh theaters and fell in love with the audience. In his stories, the young writer Mukhtar Auezov truly portrayed life, which he had to observe in childhood and adolescence. Often in the stories the author draws pictures of gloomy antiquity, the hopelessly hard life of the people and those who plunged people into poverty and poverty.

During his career, he created more than twenty plays, many excellent stories and novels, written libretto for operas and screenplays. The crown of his work was a four-volume epic about Abai. Driven by love for truth, harmony and for his long-suffering Kazakh people, he led him to self-affirmation in the path of deep spiritual search and constant improvement. He spoke all Turkic languages, Russian and Farsi, raised Kazakh literary and humanitarian-scientific language to unprecedented heights. His works are appreciatively perceived from Beijing and Istanbul to Paris and New York. And although Mukhtar Auezov once said that there was not and can not be a universal figure like Aristotle, Avicenna, Leonardo da Vinci; he himself was such a person - a person creating the Renaissance.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a noble, life-loving cult-the cult of enlightenment and profound knowledge-spread rapidly across the steppe. In a decisive degree, Abai's creativity contributed to this. The fascinating, transforming power of his poems and songs, the exclusively intellectual power of the philosophical edifications of Abai and then Shakarim predetermined the intensity of the spiritual quest of their followers. And also their awareness of the special, historical, decisive for the destiny of the people of responsibility for the results. This activity of the founders of the famous Chingistau school, of which Mukhtar Aueztov was a descendant, gave excellent shoots. The twenties in the public life of Kazakhstan - a truly Renaissance era, marked by the names of outstanding people.

Coherence of their actions is obvious. Together they complemented each other and mastered the most important spheres of humanitarian and natural scientific knowledge, scientific and technical practice. Together, they created a new spiritual, creative, social and political situation on earth, understood by them as their homeland, which demanded a civil action from them. Ahmet Baitursynov, Alikhan Bukeikhanov, Mirzhakip Dulatov, Mukhamedzhan Tynyshpaev, Khalel Dosmukhamedov, Turar Ryskulov, Sanjar Asfendiyarov - dozens, hundreds of names of educators, publicists, artists of the word, scientists, public and political figures. A brilliant galaxy of intelligentsia, which influenced not only the Central Asian Turkestan, but also the entire Turkic world.

Social ideals, conditioned by the ideological vicissitudes of his era - were the reasons of reorganization, mixing and shifting of values ​​in favor of a certain group of people with political power. Mukhtar Auezov was thinking about the welfare of his people, about man as a carrier of spirituality. Educated on Eastern philosophy and poetry, he expands his horizons, worldview boundaries, turning his face to European, Russian culture, armed with an artistically critical approach not only to literature, but also to life itself. Mukhtar Auezov devotes his famous scenic canvas 'Enlik-Kebek' to the theme of love, which in the conditions of the thirties of the last century expressed not the actuality, not the situation, which, as time showed, is transitory, but the spiritual world of people aspiring to priceless ideals .

This is something that always excited and attracted artists at all times; which has always remained the main object and object of art. As the first dramatic experience not only of Mukhtar Auezov, but also of Kazakh literature, the play 'Enlik-Kebek' immediately won widespread public recognition. After her comes the musical play "Ayman-Sholpan", which gave life and dramatic plays. The moral and ethical and psychological essence of the characters, the ability to involve in the orbit the reasoning, reflections and evaluation criteria of the characters everything that happens around, including elements of everyday life and clothing, natural phenomena with their changeability, color and severity, the metaphysics of the transitory and dialectic of the eternal, as well as the epic breadth of coverage material and the specifics of everyday and everyday everyday life are inherent in the prose works of Mukhtar Auezov.

For instance, Mukhtar Auezov's novel about Abai is really a book that deserves a special attention. This is the first great novel written by the Kazakh writer, the son of a people who, before the Great October Socialist Revolution, until the 1920s, along with other peoples of the so-called outskirts of tsarist Russia, was largely illiterate. This novel was written by the largest modern Kazakh writer, historian and linguist Mukhtar Auezov about his predecessor, the founder of Kazakh written literature, the enlightened people's watchdog, the Kazakh democrat of the second half of the nineteenth century, Abay.

 
In this work, which received the State premium of the first degree in 1949, the life of the Kazakh people in the last century is expressively and expressively illustrated. This artistic chronicle embraces the traditions and customs of the Kazakhs, in addition to the life of Abai, beginning with the rituals of matchmaking and the funeral wake for the dead, their weekdays and holidays. The writer depicts the social structure, the hierarchy of the then society, from the oldest aksakals auls to the all-powerful representatives of the Russian Empire. Especially clearly, he shows a complex stratification of society from the Kazakhs themselves, which by that time were far from uniform. On the contrary, it was a period in which class differences deepened more than ever, and the gulf between wealthy bais and shepherds hammered by need grew.
 
Mukhtar Auezov remembersthe hard times and conditions of life of the Kazakhs since his childhood. Before writing this great novel, he was closely acquainted with the living conditions that existed in the territory of today's Kazakhstan in the second half of the nineteenth century. The past of the Kazakh people always occupied the first place in his artistic creations and scientific works. So it was in nineteen seventeen, when the twenty-year-old author wrote his first dramatic work. The performance took place in the ordinary nomadic yurt, because the Kazakhs did not have a single theater yet. In his work, Auezov was helped by his profound knowledge of history and Russian literature. Mukhtar, an advanced Kazakh scientist, was interested in the history of Kazakh culture, literary criticism and linguistics. He studied in Leningrad, where he had an opportunity to thoroughly get acquainted with Russian classical and Soviet literature. Therefore, his considerable merits include the fact that he translated into Kazakh a number of works of Russian literature of the past and modern times.
 
Auezov picked up the plot for his novel not by chance. He wrote about Abai for the simple reason that the poet occupies a special place in the history of Kazakh culture. It can not be avoided, because it stands high above its contemporaries. Auezov as a writer attracted the fact that the fate of the founder of Kazakh written literature was in itself very interesting, full of dramatic events, peculiar to the time in which he lived. Abai, the son of Kunanbai, was born in 1845 in the family of a rich and influential elders of the clan. About this environment, the conditions that surrounded him in his youth, we will not speak for now, because Auezov writes about them in great detail in the novel. At the age of twenty eight, Abai finally broke up with his father. He became friends with folk poets - akyns, began to study Kazakh folklore thoroughly and consistently, studied Russian and became interested in Russian literature, which until then was completely unknown in the Kazakh steppes. He met with Russian exiles - students Chernyshevsky.

He was persecuted by the rulers of the clans, bai as a dangerous rebel, violator of old, sacred traditions and the enemy of the existing social order. The Russian government was also opposed to his enlightenment activities. In the village where Abai lived, a thorough police search was carried out, his students were harassed, and friends from Russian exiles were sent away from these places. However, everything was in vain. The glory of Abai and the love of the common people for him continued to grow. Often people came to him from afar, so that he, a wise and fair man, would judge their disputes and give advice. Akyns sang his songs, spread them all over the edge. And when in 1904 Abai died, all the people wept about him.

He was the greatest poet of the Kazakh people - the singer of his dreams. In fact, it is great because in the area of ​​present-day Kazakhstan it is possible that such states as Czechoslovakia would fit in Kazakhstan twenty times. However, a little more than 6 million people live on this vast area, 3.5 of which are Kazakhs. The rest of the population is long settled here by Russians, Ukrainians, Uzbeks, as well as Uighurs and Dungans. Why is there a very rare population on such a large territory, can be seen from Auezov's novel, where he writes about the catastrophic consequences of jute, ie, periods when modest grazing is covered with an icy layer of snow that sheep can not break and die from lack of food. And if the herds died, people soon died. Only a small part of the pastures was protected from frosty winds. And these grazing took more powerful genera, mostly their rulers.

Modern Kazakhstan is famous for its natural resources. In the depths of the earth, sometimes several meters deep, untouched treasures lay for centuries, of which the poor peasants who had grazed their lean herds above them had not the slightest idea. If they even knew that they were going over hundreds of thousands of tons of copper, zinc, lead and nickel, nothing would have changed. After all, the mines in Russia belonged mainly to overseas joint-stock companies, and they used Russian workers as cheap labor. The tsarist government was not interested in the industrial development of the so-called suburbs.

 
Only under Soviet power the mining industry was fully developed in the steppe, and Kazakhstan became the largest supplier of non-ferrous metals to all the fraternal republics of the Soviet Union. The traditional occupation of the inhabitants of Kazakhstan - livestock - was put on a more solid foundation. The Republic is the largest supplier of lamb and wool. Here breed innumerable herds of cattle and mounted horses. Irrevocably gone is the old lifestyle of nomads. Until now, many national costumes and customs have been preserved, because the Kazakh people, like all other peoples, are proud of their traditions. Remnants of feudalism are destroyed. Education in Kazakh yurts. Before the Great October Socialist Revolution, the Kazakh was very rare, and he could read and write. Two out of hundreds had the good fortune to get the basics of education in their youth. And it was, as it is clear from the fate of Abai himself, only the sons of the rich.
 
At the beginning of Auezov's novel, we learn about one of the most severe punishments that the sharia knew - throwing stones at a living person. Nobody checked whether the old Kodar and his daughter-in-law Kamka were to blame for anything. Kunanbay, Abai's father, it was simply necessary to destroy his counterpart Kodar in order to unhinderedly implement their insidious plans. Little Abai witnessed this tragedy. Already at that time a deep aversion to the existing lawlessness was awakened in him, already then he began to think about his father's wrong actions. Abai did not dare to express his disgust. The bonds of the environment and upbringing were too strong, and no one had heard that the son had ever disobeyed his father. But the child's pure love for her father left him forever. He began to think deeply about many things and much did not seem to him, as before, by itself understandable and correct.

 
Even greater disempowerment was seen by Abai during the dispute between Kunanbay and other person. The case ended with the fact that, in accordance with the decision of the judges, the little sister of Abay Kamshat was given upbringing to the family of Bozhei. God was not the worst. He even gained Abai's respect, and yet little Kamshat-the innocent victim of the ruthless, proud, grumpy Kunan-bai-is soon dying, in all probability, because of poor care for her. Abay begins to understand that it is not only the fault of the family of God, but the first duty of his father. In this tragic episode, the author proves the disenfranchised position of a woman in the then society. Kunanbai did not deem it necessary even to tell his wife that they would take a child. What does he care about his wife's feelings? Kunanbai has four wives and several children; what will happen if one child becomes less, but everything is just a daughter!

Here, images of living people and scenes of people's life are complex, eventful and emotional series, in which the reader is extremely frank, tormenting the reader's soul and mind to the heartache, awaken a feeling of compassion, and in something filled with softness, mystery, philosophy , which raises a healthy interest in unraveling the secrets inherent in the context of the narrative and the characters' images. In all cases, the presence of the author is invariably felt - the person of a great soul who, together with the heroes, rejoices, grieves, is poor, leaves his head in someone else's destiny, but can not change the course of things. Here one involuntarily thinks about how many survived and learned, dying and reviving, moving along with their heroes over the great historical time and space of the Kazakh steppe, himself Mukhtar Auezov. His novel-epic 'The path of Abai' is remarkable not only for the sharpness of psychological characteristics, deep immersion in the world of the artist and personality, combining two different epochs and reflecting its sharp, painful themes, but also the personal, civic participation of the author in comprehending historical time and place in he was Abai.

In the novel, Abai is represented as a person who accumulated in himself the priceless spiritual and moral qualities of a resident of the Kazakh aul with a world outlook, a world view of a steppe man who survived in severe climatic conditions, standing in the struggle not only with the elements, but also in acute confrontation with hostile neighbors. Despite the difficult and moral and spiritual tests, the hero of the novel Abai retained freedom and steadfastness of the spirit, kindness, wisdom and insight of the mind and heart. Ahead of the time with his moral, intellectual and philosophical attitudes, Mukhtar Auezov sought in Abai universal traits, without taking him from his native soil, personal turning into a general, universal. And in this generalization the real ideological and artistic value of the work.

Mukhtar Auezov is widely known as a researcher of lyrical genres of folk art, including domestic songs performed by akyns. Brought up in love to the song traditions of the famous poets of Arqa (this is how Central Kazakhstan is called in a literature), such as Birzhan sal, Akhan seri, Abai Kunanbayev, he carried this love through his whole life. Enjoying the pleasant voice of a soft timbre, a connoisseur and admirer of musical and poetic folklore performed famous folk tunes accompanied by a two-stringed dombra. What could he think of at that moment? About what was done and what was to be done? About your heroes who remained to live in his heart? How to make people happy? Or about yourself? About your thoughts and dreams? But he probably could not break away from music, could not and did not want to. Too she was "eaten" into his body, becoming his spiritual head, the spiritual core. He treats Abai as someone who is very close. Therefore, music as an integral part of the life of the Kazakhs is invariably present in the novel "The path of Abai", filling it with lyrics, poetics of the author's statement. Serving as a friend, adviser, interlocutor and companion of the central hero who performs a long, dangerous and risky way in life, creating good and justice, bringing bright illumination to many erring hearts and minds, opening boundless spaces of knowledge and virtue, she plays an important role in the novel .

And what else, if not music, can give the product emotional colors and human depth. This factor was used skillfully by Mukhtar Auezov, "musicalized" literary prose. This factor determined the value of the work and as the basis for the future libretto of the opera "Abai" by Akhmet Zhubanov and Latif Hamidi. The abilities of Mukhtar Auezov - an art critic appeared in the analysis of Abaev's songs, such as "Bright month in the dark night", "The song of Tatiana", in which he shows knowledge in the field of stylistics, metro-rhythmics, finds synthetic components, dynamic features of sound, emphasizes the importance attentive to the text. Mukhtar Auezov notes the presence of elements of entertainment and theatricality in folk-everyday and ritual songs and genres ('bata', 'zhoqtau', 'qargys', 'ant', 'tolgau', 'terme'), which in subsequently successfully implemented in the operas of Kazakh composers. He speaks of the theatricality of the genre 'Sheshendik soz' ('oratorical art'), which compiled the best dialogical and mass culminating scenes of a number of operatic librettos, expressing the intense drama of events.

As a scholar and a folklorist, Mukhtar Auezov speaks of syncretism in the genres of oral folk art of a verbal and melodic text, reveals the types of folk poetry, the presence in it of an improvisational beginning, recitative, recitative styles that impart a certain sound to the works. As a prominent public figure and scientist, shrewd in his predictions, he proclaimed the idea of ​​preserving the spiritual heritage, including Asan Kaigy, Abyz, Korkyt and others who left a deep imprint in the history of Kazakhstan. As a citizen and educator of youth, Mukhtar Auezov calls for love of the fatherland, respect for the spiritual values ​​of other peoples, for dialogue with other cultures, for the revival of historical memory, which is especially important today. Auezov devoted works of theater, music, visual and cinematographic art. 

According to the undisputed leader of this generation Akhmet Baitursynov, literature should become the main weapon of the growing national consciousness. This explains a lot about the spiritual leaders of the Kazakh intelligentsia of the 1920s to the young, who first confirmed his unique talent, Mukhtar Auezov. Not only recognition of his talent, respectful cooperation with him, but also well-thought-out measures that allowed him to save for the future exactly. The spirituality and creative abilities of these people were so high that many of them, surviving in the waves of repeated repressions, would have created something in their individual creativity commensurate with what Mukhtar Auezov had done for life and continuing their work.

Repression also fell on Auezov, and it was more than once. Archival documents testify that he betrayed no one, adequately withstood a two-year imprisonment in Stalin's prisons in the 1930s and persecutions in the 1950s that forced him to leave his homeland. And through his whole life he carried the fidelity to the ideals of youth. The main weapon in the dialogue with the cruel age was for him literary and humanitarian and scientific activities. Collectivization in Kazakhstan has brought a line under the long history of the Eurasian horse-nomadic civilization. The final was tragic, more than a third of the Kazakh people lost their Kazakhs. It happened in the fatal thirties, when, accused of bourgeois nationalism, Mukhtar Auezov was in prison. In it he writes a "penitential" letter acknowledging ideological errors in his literary work and rejecting a whole series of early stories and plays. For enemies this gave grounds to speak of the insufficient hardness of the writer's spirit. Well-wishers still prefer to ignore this fact of his creative biography. Both those and others would be right if it was not a question of a mighty person who came to the world not for capitulations. 

The author of universally recognized masterpieces of drama and small epic forms. Auezov for a time leaves the well-mastered creative field and proceeds to the novel about Abai in the genre of epic that was unheard of before in the Kazakh literature. And this was the choice of a genius, a visionary, a patriot. The world of nomadism with its special way of life and spiritual experience collapsed. To keep this world as integrity is possible only in consciousness. In the artistic form - only means of a large-scale narrative. Mukhtar Auezov carried out this work at the highest level, which led Academician Qanysh Satpaev to call the epic about Abai a genuine encyclopedia of all the many facets of life and life of the Kazakh people.

Everything to which his hand touched, received the energy of life, had a bright, luminous destiny. His translations of the world literary classics every time confirmed the possibility of an organic entry of various national-artistic systems into the elements of the Kazakh language. The highly professional academic studies of Auezov marked the beginning of a number of directions in the study of folklore, epic, the history of literatures of Turkic peoples, in linguistics, aesthetics, ethics, philosophy, law, and the history of music and plastic arts.

Being a professor at a number of Kazakh universities and Moscow State University, he conducted a huge pedagogical work. His lectures directly influenced the consciousness of young people in student audiences. The tradition of special attention to education, the nurturing of youth and its preparation for service to the homeland, coming from Abai, was at one time supported by Akhmet Baytursynov. Being elevated to the conscious principle of civic duty, it was continued and developed by Mukhtar Auezov.

It should be emphasized that genuine respect and friendly feelings were fed to him by Louis Aragon, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Nazim Hikmet, Anna Seghers, Alfred Kurella and many other prominent figures. He attracted the hearts of these people not only as an undisputed authority and great master of the artistic word. To the highest degree, he inherited the genetically inherent genius of communication in the name of reason and spirituality. Such communication presupposes a special measure of mutual sensitivity and responsibility.

Mukhtar Auezov with all his natural tact showed determination and unbending will, when it was about protecting the spiritual interests of other people. So it was, when he defended the Kyrgyz epos 'Manas', the creative heritage of the outstanding Tatar poet Musa Jalil. In all of his activities there was something that came from nature, a high synonym of which was harmony. In his works, from the first stories and to the last novel about modernity, nature is not an object of description, but a fundamental principle actively acting through its perfect word.

The rupture of harmony, violence over nature caused a special acute reaction on his part. The outstanding force of the protesting humanism was the speech of Mukhtar Auezov in the japanese capital back in nineteen fifty sevent at an event dedicated to prohibition of atomic bombs. His words came from a heart full of pain and compassion. He knew what a nuclear bomb was, not by hearsay or films, he knew that atomic and hydrogen explosions burned his native land, the land of Abai and Shakarim, turned into a nuclear test site. He saw how young people die from incomprehensible illnesses for them, saw horror in the eyes of mothers who give birth to mutants. At the age of the prophet, about sixty-three and a half years, Mukhtar Auezov passed away. His literary work is marked by the highest signs of recognition of the largest and most ruthless state to its citizens. The state has sunk into oblivion. But the movement of Mukhtar Auezov and his creations to the future remains continuous.