Language of Azerbaijani National Literature
RAHILYA G EYBULLAYEVA
Background
Throughout history, many nations, languages, and cultures have crossed paths and diverged into distinctive new entities, influenced through confluence. For instance, Arabic cultures of people accepted Islam, growing into an Islamic-Arabic tradition. Moreover, the socia
list ideology was integrated into a new country o f nations, which be
came the Soviet Union. The manner in which other nations as
similated into this practice exemplifies the function o f convergence.
Other ethnicities run parallel, but never touch, as in the indepen
dent development of the ancient Egyptian and Aztec civilizations. A third historical connection illustrates the divergence o f one culture into another with common genetic roots, such as how the Slavic culture ultimately became unique in Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus, Po
land, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Similar too is how the Turkic culture diverged to become the Turkish, Azeri, Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Gagauz national cultures.
Each of these precedents brought change and modernization to different degrees during various historical periods, and appear in disparate contexts and zones of influence. Accordingly, the dominant factors o f each have determined a new orientation and method of cultural development. The determining factor becomes the context.
These changes affect traditional canonical elements of the culture, which then appear through a new sphere of influence and result in both successes and failures.
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Part 1
There are different dominant factors that determine the basic orien
tation of general literary guidelines. During different historical periods, various factors determined the types o f cultures and literature, including genetic-patrimonial, cultural, geographical-regional, and philosophic-religious generalities. Each reveals stratifications of the previous types.
Among the attributes of these new types, new generalities appear in the literature in a new historical-cultural context while also remaining in the various form, becoming the carrier of the former as well as of the new dominant traits.
With literature in a nation o f a confluence o f ethnicities, the investigation o f a variety of literary types within one nation’s litera
ture results in a national literature. A problem results from treating this issue on a vertical diachronic level and horizontal synchronic level.
What kind o f large, appreciable historical and responding cultural changes, or insignificant, collateral influences have led to the new features o f a national literature and generated the need to update a literary type?
The characteristics o f modem Azerbaijani literature have developed from the following:
The genetic Turkic generality, as reflected in the monuments of culture, including language, ceremonies, folklore genres, and epics.
For example, The Book o f Grandfather Gorgut, and Kyor-oglu.
The religious generality within the Muslim religion, as reflected in language (Arab, Farsi, and the twisted languages that resulted from laws concerning language and the borrowing and transferring of ele
ments o f the lexicon and affixes). Also: within plots (the epic Asli and Kerem, about love between a Christian Armenian girl and the Moslem-Azerbaijani Kerem); the metrics (aruz), genres (gaside and rubai) that were peculiar before Arabian verses were added with corresponding genres, such as gazelle. These are customary in both the Farsi and Turkic groups of languages, including Azerbaijani and those used in our literature to this day.
The regional generality, since Avesta. This factor typically affects different archetypes, such as the plot and symbols. A popular sample o f a plot is the archetype in which it is possible to count the poems on
the Arabian plot about Leyli and Mejnuon, written by the Azerbaija
nians Nizami Ganjevi and Fizuli, the Uzbek Alisher Navoi, the Indian Emir Hosrov Dahlevi. Possibly, one could also include authors of other non-Muslim regions. For example, consider the story of Leyli and Medium written by Velimir Hlebnikov.
And, at last, the state-political association o f the Soviet state has resulted not only in destruction of a lot o f talented writers and poets due to a lack o f dependence from their nationality. This is not only alongside the preservation o f the national origin o f the literature made within the nationality, but also the certain changes o f the ideology and sociological orientation that resulted. The basic principle o f the Soviet society was the Marxist-Leninist ideology on which the society was formed. The literary method o f socialist realism has been generated on the same basis. New tendencies have resulted not only in irreversible losses, which were inevitable, but also in the enrichment of culture and literature that possess new characteristic directions, from J. Jab- barly, S. Rustam, M. S. Ordubadi at the beginning of the twentieth century to Anar, I. Huseynov, A. Aylisly, Y. Samed-oglu, V. Jebrail- zade, and R. Rovshan. The literature o f this period, on the one hand, became a mirror o f the changes in Azerbaijan society. These new elements have funneled all the way down to a new bilingualism; this time, the second language o f the Azerbaijani literature became Russian. It was not the law, but a necessity in order to be known in the whole country o f the Soviet Union, which included Azerbaijan among many others. Thus, Azerbaijan literature, as well as other national literatures of this period, kept the national features, a tendency that was proclaimed one o f the main principles of a new literary method.
The contents from a socialist perspective, and the form representing the nationalist.
Thus, as with any national literature, contours o f the modem Azerbaijani literature are defined not only by the modem dominant factors and conditions o f the world literary process, but also by how they developed from significant or somehow imperceptible traces of the previous dominant factors. And, as with any culture, frequently it is impossible to separate one’s own and that of another.
In each formation o f a new ethnos, its parts infiltrate the literature and culture with its traditions, not always being distributed to the entire nation. Quite often, they are kept to each part.
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Literatures quite often intermingle and cross-fertilize by virtue of socio-historical processes. Literature that belongs to one national m ilieu with little co n ta ct with another national milieu is observed in periods of historical change. The concrete national milieu, with an already available heritage, rotates (within the changes) to a various degree within boundaries and undergoes changes during each new epoch. This paper will examine how these factors affect the contours o f national literature with reference, in particular, to Azerbaijani literature.
What is considered national literature when, for example, Indian literature itself encompasses thirteen multiethnic literatures? Another example is how, at different times, the Arabic and then the Farsi became the languages of the literature of the Muslim East.
Regarding other communities of literature or literature types, Soviet literature also represents a m ultinational palette of literary works and the cross-fertilization of cultures. Not only American litera
ture, but also modem British literature represents an alloy of distinct national traditions. The definition o f national literature includes the p ro b le m o f historical context as w ell the question, “ What is a nation, in g en era l? ” All nations consist of various ethnos that grow out of historical development — through wars and colonization, either through the peaceful connection o f countries or the great resettlement of peoples. History abounds with similar formations of diverse ethnos into one unity. Zaporozhskaya Sech, for instance, was formed as a shelter for the destitute people of many different ethnos, including Russians, Turks, Moldavians, Poles, and Ukrainians, under the condi
tion o f acceptance of the one belief o f Pravoslavnaya (Orthodoxy).
The Zaporozhye Cossacks did not become a separate nation, but became a part of the Ukraine, even though they comprised the majority o f the new population. They were called “Cossack,” which in Turkic genesis means the homeless, the wanderer. This word also designated people without a throne, including princes from the dynasty o f Teymur.
Different peoples have mixed during the formation of the Roman pouter. Ancient Roman literature arose on the basis of the dying of ancient Greek literature. A part of the Norwegian populace, the Normans who had lodged in France, merged with local people, and a segment moved during another historical epoch to Iceland, thereby forming a new country.
Part 2
At the bridge o f two centuries and millennia, during the aggravation of the rekindling o f national conflicts to the point of the wreckage of several countries, the more pressing question remained on criteria of a national literature, particularly concerning which literature is consi
dered as such or which literary products or authors comprise it.
This question existed more than ten centuries ago. For example, with the distribution o f Islam in the East, the main literary language was considered Arabian. And, many Muslim poets, including non- Arabs, were compelled to write mostly in Arabian, and then later in Farsi. Even now, Nizami is considered both an Azerbaijani poet in terms of national belonging and birthplace, and an Iranian, as he wrote in Farsi, as that was demanded at the time.
Thus, Azerbaijan shares the poetry of twelfth-century Nizami with Iran. Although he was bom, grew up, and is buried in the Azerbaijani city of Gandzha during a period when the Turkish Sheddadis ruled. He wrote in Farsi, according to the requirements of the time. Yet, his poetry differs from the ingenious Iranian poet Firdousi, who also wrote in Farsi, not only in the phrases of his native language, but also in many moments o f the content.
For example, characteristic to Turkic cultures, Nizami maintained the attitude o f women. In this connection, we shall notice that, the common Turkic epic, The Book o f Grandfather Gorgud, written in the eleventh century, two centuries after the acceptance of Islam in Azerbaijan, gives women the dominating attitude in the Turkic tribes.
The woman battles and rides a horse like a man, and leads a tribe in the absence o f her husband.
Nizami precedes the traditions o f the Turkic epic. Moreover, the idea of the fair governor, which came to Europe some centuries late, is embodied in the image o f a woman, Nushaba, the governor o f Barda.
Alexander the Great o f Macedon is her visitor. Such elements within the content testify to the distinctive attributes of national and cultural belongings.
The process o f belonging to one national environment while having close contacts with other national environments is observed from antiquity. The reasons were different. For example, from the ninth to the fifteenth century, the majority of the Moslim regions poets, including Turkic, wrote basically in Arabic and Persian — the
literary languages o f the region. Accordingly, they were absorbed together with the language and culture o f the people speaking them.
Therefore, to this day, the poet of the eleventh century, Nizami Gen- jevi, though Azerbaijani in nationality, is considered Turkic-Azer- baijan and Persian-Iranian in terms o f literature. The author of the first Persian tezkire Lyubabul-elbab, which is a mini-encyclopedia about poets and writers that gives brief snippets o f information, Muhammad Ovfi remarked that Nizami is entirely a Turkic poet though he wrote in Persian. Or, the poet was distressed, so that the spelling of the poem about Leyli and Mejnun allowed him to write only in Farsi.
The case is similar when considering English-speaking writers that belong to different cultures, such as Cheng Lee, Jabran Halil, Salman Rushdie, or Jung Chang, who are considered as only American or English authors, and the Englishman Rudyard Kipling, who was bom and lived in India became the author o f M owgli as an Indian author.
During the reign of Emeviler, beginning in 661 AD, particularly the period o f Abdul-Melik Mervan (685-705 AD), the Arabian language illustrated that the study o f religion had been given the prevailing status, and the usage o f other languages was limited.
Naturally, such distribution o f roles to language inevitably led to an inequality among peoples that contradicted the principle of
“ummet,” meaning that the religious unity o f Islam made any racial and national inequality inadmissible. As a result, there came a period when Arabs as winners and conquerors were considered as the supreme nation above the others. They were not considered a second- grade nation. Even the assignment o f posts, including gazi and vali, required the obligatory specification o f a national belonging. To distinguish the supreme race in Iraq, a brand was placed on the hands of those in the Arabian tribes o f “nebati.” And, the Arabian soldiers were released from paying the ground tax, while soldiers of other nationalities received a monthly salary and a share from the plundered.
Only with the rule o f the Abbasids in 750 was the interdiction of marriage with ajams, as Arabs named their non-Arab neighbors, including the Greeks and the Byzantines, removed. Moreover, this step was encouraged. This period is mirrored in the perception of the Soviet and post-Soviet space. Even on a map in the British encyclopedia issued in London during the era o f the USSR, the former country is named as Russia. Though, in spite o f everything, such a
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reduction did not take place in the USSR. By the way, the article in this encyclopedia that is devoted to the USSR, also has other errors, concerning for example, the number of people.
It is still habitual to refer to “Russian” to represent the peoples of the former Union, though there are occasionally Western people who have more exact data on the USSR. The considerable role of Russian as an interethnic language is doubtless. During the nineteenth century, Russian poets living in exile in the Caucasus tried to learn Azerbaijani because it was spoken by M.Y. Lermontov, with the knowledge that, with this language, it was possible to travel all over Asia and the Caucasus.
Another similarity: from time to time, the French language dominated both Russian and Turkish societies. As result, in both Pushkin and Tolstoy, whole paragraphs or dialogues are given in French. Or, in the novel, A Bird the Chorister, the Turkish writer, Reshad Nuri Gyuntekin, underlined the prestigious role o f the French elite.
One interesting reflection regarding the role of dominant languages in literature are found in the novel, The Prince and the Pauper. In Mark Twain’s novel, the disguised prince could confirm the status of the Prince o f England only when his friend, Michael, discovered a letter from this little beggar written in ancient Greek and Latin, an obligatory element of training at a royal court. The same occurred with Mary Stuart, Queen of the Scots during the fifteenth century, who wrote her sonnets in French. Both Mary Stuart and the Queen of England, Elizabeth I, in the fifteenth century, had to know ancient Greek and Latin and modem languages, including French.
Another role that the influence of language plays within the con
text of literature: The Ukrainians belonging to different centuries, N.V. Gogol and M. Bulgakov, are studied as classic authors o f Rus
sian literature. They wrote in Russian, though their creativity is full of Ukrainian folklore and philosophy according to Bulgakov, the Ukrai
nian philosopher Skovoroda, and the Ukrainian chronotop (Mirgorod;
a Kreschatik). The Ukrainian, Taras Shevchenko, who wrote classic Ukrainian poetry also wrote in Russian. The Armenians, Sayat Nova and Miran, who are studied as Armenian poets, wrote in Armenian as well as Azerbaijani and Georgian.
What comes first when considering the author’s nationality? For example, how to classify films by the Georgian-Soviet director, Geor
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giy Danelia? And, how can one categorize the Soviet film, The White Sun o f the Desert, whose authors are Azerbaijani Rustam Ibrahim- beyov and Russian N. Mikhalkov? And, to what national culture or literature does one credit the film, A Silver Lion, that received an award at the Venetian film festival? Does the young Post-Soviet director o f Azerbaijan, Mourad Ibragimbeyov, represent Russia, for a film constructed on the voice of Alim Gasimov, an Azerbaijani performer o f mugam?
The advantages received as a result of a hybrid of cultures by virtue o f various historical circumstances are obvious. But, the same advantages during an epoch of global and national cataclysms result in disputes regarding the criteria of a national literature. In fact, one of the factors o f national identification is based on belonging to one or another culture, a label that includes literature.
So, we approach the next variant of the definition of national literature — that concerning the authors who wrote or write in exile.
Hierarchy within a society of any people results in inequality, to various degrees. This can be connected not only to the factors that form zones within dominant or local literatures, but also to the creativity o f the carrier of a national literature abroad. For example, Russian dissidents wrote not only in Russian, but also in the language of their country of residence. For example, V. Nabokov, who lived in America and Switzerland, wrote in English and Gayto Gazdanov, who represented a chronotop in Paris while using the style of Chekhov in French. Or, there is the Azerbaijani Jeihun Hajibeili and Um-el-Banin, the daughter o f the Baku millionaires, who ran away to France after the October revolution, who both wrote in French.
The sensational novel, Ali and Nino, by Gurban Said, an Azer
baijani emigrant, was written in German in the middle of twentieth century. Is this the property o f Azerbaijani or German literature? The poems of Mirza Shafi from the nineteenth century were translated from Azerbaijani into German by his friend Bodenshtedt. After the success o f them, the translator replaced the author’s name with his own. This is also one o f the questions of national belonging of the literary text.
A similar concern surrounds the names of some disciplines as well.
For example, in private conversations with a scholar from New York, an expert in the area o f Spanish Studies, I asked what Spanish litera
ture means. The traditional consideration of Spanish Studies generally
includes only the literature of Spain. Only in the last decade did Spanish literature o f Latin American countries begin to be examined as part of Spanish Studies. The picture is the same within French and English Studies (including British and American, both which also have diversity along national lines within one language). By virtue of various circumstances, these studies have expanded their borders as a result of countries’ colonizing policies and as a result o f a new wave of emigration from post-socialist countries.
Conclusions
In crossing o f the various periods of history, different nations and ethnos crossed for different reasons. In different cycles of history, maps of the world vary. Tribes move, are at war, or win colonies.
They occupy positions of hegemony, thus introducing their own cul
ture as the leader. At the same time, the new dominant cultures borrow elements of peripheral cultures.
Intermingled cultures, religions, and outlooks, coexisting with modem traditions, have led to new contours within modem national cultures, forming a certain unity within diversity, and ultimately forming a new unity. A dominant factor in forming this new type is the cultural because it penetrates into all spheres — ideology, religion, art, and language.
To reveal the cultural features is not necessary for separation, but for mutual understanding and enrichment to the nations and their peoples. Different details in fiction or film can affect public opinion, change it, or, at least, affect societal moods. In this, it is possible to
To reveal the cultural features is not necessary for separation, but for mutual understanding and enrichment to the nations and their peoples. Different details in fiction or film can affect public opinion, change it, or, at least, affect societal moods. In this, it is possible to