Essay
Az i Ya
Olzhas Suleimenov · 1975
Synopsis
An essay on the Dit de la campagne d'Igor, subtitled “A Book by a Well-Intentioned Reader”. The author argues that the poem was written for bilingual readers by a man who knew Turkic, and that the copyists, no longer understanding its Turkic words, replaced them with familiar Russian ones; he proposes new readings of it. A second part looks for Turkic words even in the Sumerian tablets. Joined together, Az and Ya, the first and last letters of the alphabet, make Aziya, Asia.
Context
The book appeared in Alma-Ata in 1975. Harsha Ram describes it as a mixture of poetry, history and linguistics, read as a defence of the nomads. A first hostile review appeared in December in Molodaya gvardiya; in 1976, the historian Boris Rybakov judged it furiously anti-Russian. Without being formally banned, it was withdrawn from circulation, and its author, accused of national chauvinism, was not published again for eight years; Dinmukhamed Kunaev interceded for him with Brezhnev. The book was reissued in 1989, then in Moscow in 2005, and translated into English.
Who it is for
A passionate and contested philological essay, to be read to understand how one reading of a medieval poem became a political affair.
Prizes and reception
The journal Problems of Communism counted it among the works that prepared the way for perestroika; its fiftieth anniversary was celebrated in Almaty with an international conference.
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