Epic
Курманбек
Not translated into English
Kalyk Akiev · 1938
Synopsis
Centuries ago, near Andijan, in the town of Jazy, there reigned the khan Teyitbek, too weak to resist the Kalmyks who ravaged the lands of the Kyrgyz-Kipchaks every year. His son Kurmanbek grows up to become the defender of his people against Dölön, khan of the Kalmyks; but between the hero and his jealous and fainthearted father, relations grow tense, and the epic weaves a long love story into the fighting.
Context
The text was taken down from the akyn's own lips in 1933, some five thousand five hundred lines, and was published in Frunze and Kazan in 1938 under the title of poem; it was reissued in 1957 as a heroic epic. Other versions exist: two thousand five hundred lines taken down in 1923 from a manaschi, and a prose account published in 1924 in a Kazakh journal. The following year appeared, dictated by the same akyn, a second popular epic.
Who it is for
In Kyrgyz; a Russian verse translation appeared in Moscow in 2009, nothing in French. The narrative, nearly six thousand lines long, is read in cantos.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the most complete of the three surviving versions of the epic, it served as the basis for its Russian translation.