When a shiny object is under the Sunlight in its full glory, it is barely possible to notice its blemishes. When the Great writer – Chingiz Aitmatov was busking in the full glory of the Soviet propaganda, it was almost impossible to observe the big or small discrepancies in the sea of the literary criticism about him. The official version of the early years of Aitmatov’s career as a writer is a Cinderella story of how a Kyrgyz-speaking, young veterinarian of rural ail heritage authored less than ten short stories. Then he magically produced a novelette, which brought him worldwide praise. The magic happened due to the Russian translation of that masterpiece in the well-established and popular Russian literary magazine Novyi mir; then, the communist-writer Louis Aragon translated it into French and named it the best love story. However, stories contradict that beautiful fairy tale, but they all count as rumors for decades.
As Kyrgyz culture gradually got rid of the consequences of the Soviet national policy of russification, the necessity of the complete and objective research of the history of Kyrgyz literature in general and specifically the work of Chingiz Aitmatov is an actual issue for the contemporary Kyrgyz literary science and criticism. Salijan JigitovKogda Chyngyz Aitmatov tol’ko prishel v literaturu is a significant contribution to the case because it is an objective and reliable source regarding the preliminary stages of Aitmatov’s oeuvre. The information about Salijan Jigitov and his research of the initial Aitmatov’s short stories is in the blog posts. It is complicated. In that blog post, I write about Jigitov and his research and analyses of the Aitmatov short stories written in the 50s XX century.
In 1956, Chingiz Aitmatov started his two-year-long postgraduate literary courses at the Union of Writers. Later, the program became part of the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute. The Union established them for high-potential writers from rural Russia and other Soviet republics who do not have degrees in humanities. Chingiz Aitmatov is one of the first participants of that institution. During the study, Aitmatov authored the short novels Litsom k litsu (Face to face) in 1957 and Jamila in 1958. The scientists and critics claim that Aitmatov had written them in Kyrgyz, then translated them into Russian, and then Moscow literary magazines published the translations.
Jigitov described a different situation in his essay. He recalls how he had heard a discussion about the short novel Litsom k litsu (Face to face) published in the local Russian-language newspaper Sovetskaia Kirgizia. The Russian passengers labeled the novel as a new political trend. Jigitov assumed that novel attracted readers by realistic picturing the life of ordinary people during World War II. He read the Russian variant of the novel in Literaturnyi Kirgizstan than the translation by Aitmatov in Kyrgyz language magazine Ala-Too in 1957. Jigitov remembered how surprised he was when he saw the novel's publication as a translation from Kyrgyz by Aleksey Drozdov in the Moscow literary magazine Znamya in early 1958. Jigitov knew that Chingiz Aitmatov had authored a novel in Russian, and he assumed that Aitmatov's version needed professional editing. The editorial board assigned the work to the Russian writer Alexei Drozdov. Regarding Jigitov, the writer managed to give the Russian language of the story bright, sublime, and artistic properties. In other words, Chingiz Aitmatov authors the first novelette in Russian, the 1957 publication, claimed as a translation from Kyrgyz to Russian, is heavily edited by a well-known Russian writer’s version of the Aitmatov’s Russian language text.
The prestigious literary magazine Novyi Mir published Aitmatos's second short novel Jamila written during the writer's study in Moscow, as a translation from Kyrgyz in 1958. Chingiz Aitmatov authors Jamila in the Russian language. After two months of publication of the novel’s Russian variant, the Ala-Too magazine published the author’s Kyrgyz translation under the title Obon (A Melody) in 1958. The scholars and critics, including the writer himself, tell that Jamila caused an adverse reaction in the author's homeland, despite his worldwide popularity.
On the contrary, Jigitov described a different situation. He recalled his astonishment at the unusually high Kyrgyz young author level of the novel's craftmanship. According to Jigitov, that work literarily exploded the Russian-speaking reading audience of the Soviet Union. The novelette Jamila attracted Kyrgyz- Russian bilingual youth by picturing the personages, situations, and events through the images and plot created by the highly artistic pictorial, expressive, and language means. The educated, bilingual youth from the national republics, including Kyrgyzstan, stood in long lines for the magazine's issues and passed them. The author's translation was also met with great interest and received enthusiastic and warm reviews.
Unquestionably, the text of Aitmatov’s novel has been professionally edited. However, there is a question - to what degree. Bakhytjan Kanapyanov - a writer of Kazakstan and a friend of Aitmatov, recalls the remark that Aitmatov is crying in the transcript of the students of Gorky Institut's discussion about the novelette. Aitmatov and anyone writing about him dismiss the negative opinions, including fellow students’ thoughts expressed during ordinary debates, as hostile, jealous, and arrogant. Based on the banal but still unquestionable truth that nothing is perfect under Sun, even the manuscripts of the genius writer Chingiz Aitmatov, I assume that any work needs to be professionally edited for publication in a Moscow prestige literary magazine. But the question is whether the work has been edited or rewrote. The radical contemporary Russian critics such as Vladimir Bondarenko and Mikhail Bitov are certain that professional editors did not edit but rewrote Aitmatov's works, including his first novels. Hence, it is evident that Kyrgyzstan scholars need to do severe textual studies comparing the manuscripts and the texts of publications in Moscow Russian magazines.
There is no necessity to look to find something suspicious about why the novelettes are written in Russian. The language of instruction at the institute, which Chingiz Aitmatov attended, is in that tongue.
The question is, why are they published as translations from Kyrgyz? The literature about Aitmatov and his oeuvre represents him as Kyrgyz - Russian bilingual. As Aitmatov acknowledged, both languages are like two mothers for him. His compatriots' joke that the Kyrgyz have been a stepmother for him because the writer had not used it much. Russian is a native language for Chingiz Aitmatov: he grew up in a Russian speaking family, wrote the first short stories and short novels in it, was a chief editor of a Russian language literary magazine for six years, was a special correspondent of the major newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Pravda, and in 1967 switched to the Russian language for good. As an ambassador of Kyrgyzstan, Chingiz Aitmatov spoke only Russian during official events. These facts contradict a propaganda story about a talented village gay writing in Kyrgyz, an unknown language of the obsolete tribal people, who become a world-known author due to Russian language literature.
The greatness of Aitmatov lies in the fact that he was able to bring the experience and traditions of written Russian culture to the Kyrgyz centuries-old oral ethos. According to Salijan Jigitov, Aitmatov’s short novels appear as a phenomenon when Kyrgyz literature was at an initial developmental stage, and the Kyrgyz literates could not reach the professional level artistry at that time. Meanwhile, Jigitov argues that the author’s debut works in Russian are amateur illustrations for Communist Party slogans. The Soviet press, which functioned as a messenger and conductor of government policy, needed texts propagating topical ideological campaigns in several ways. Feeling this need and understanding the demands of the press and eager to see his writings in print, Aitmatov produced basic plots that do not correspond to real life, concludes Jigitov. Then, he says that the writer’s Kyrgyz language short stories represent a slight improvement: they are not simple illustrations of political slogans now, but they are still far from a genuine picture of reality.
Talking about his time at Gorky Institute, Aitmatov acknowledges that two years of intense study gave an ordinary veterinarian humanitarian, theoretical knowledge, and practical skills like me. Our seminars and discussions have become a great school of experience in creating works. And I made a lot of efforts to absorb and learn all the novelties of the culture, especially the literary and theatrical life of Moscow. Explaining an unexpected and sudden appearance of highly artistic Aitmatov’s short novels, Jigitov points out the indisputable talent of young Aitmatov. Then, he assumes that the writer’s studies at Gorky institute have played a significant role in improving Aitmatov’s creative abilities.
In addition, he underscores that Aitmatov’s Kyrgyz language short stories make him known to the readers and have been the ground for his acceptance as a member of the Writers Union of Kyrgyzstan, which opens the doors of the institute for him.
Jigitov pointed to the foremost importance of the historical period when Aitmatov had studied at Gorky Institute. It is a time of the so-called Khrushchev Thaw from the mid-1950s to 1960 when the Communist party and Soviet authorities loosen their grip on the different spheres of civil life and social consciousness. The relaxed censorship brought the relative liberalization of culture and literature. The books of foreign writers who have been unknown to Soviet readers for political and ideological reasons were translated and published. A significant part of that process belongs to the literary magazine Inostrannaya Literatura. It was founded in 1955 and has been the only chance for Soviet readers to get aware of the works of many prominent Western writers.
The articles in Moscow and Leningrad newspapers and magazines criticized, contested, and rethought the political dogmas and stereotyped myths of radical Soviet ideology.
Jigitov referred to the success of Aitmatov's novels when he lived in the capital of the Soviet Union. He had been confident that two years spent in Moscow became a period of spiritual growth, the formation of independent critical thinking, the free flight of his creative imagination, the enrichment of the writer's experience, and the development of a refined aesthetic taste.
Jigitov’s work Kogda Chyngyz Aitmatov tol’ko prishel v literaturu is simply an article firstly published in a newspaper in 2006. However, it occupies such a place in the extensive literature about Aitmatov that multi-page monographs cannot fill. Jigitov changes the Soviet Aitmatov’s bilingualism propagandist discourse. The official biographies start with stories about how a talented young man from the rural countryside authors short stories and novels in the Kyrgyz language. After getting noticed, he gets his works translated into Russian, and one morning wakes up to his worldwide fame. Corresponding to Jigitov, the Aitmatov’s debuts in short stories and novels initially are the works in the Russian language, later camouflaged as the translations from Kyrgyz. The article of Salijan Jigitov is academic, scientifically proven research of a prodigy philologist and specialist in the field of Turkic language and literature. It is not the findings and opinions of someone from outside of the national literature territory. It is the scholar's work whose importance for the Kyrgyz national identity is not less than the significance of Aitmatov himself.
REFERENCES
Chingiz Aitmatov. Time to speak. - New York, International Publishers,1989
Vladimir Bondarenko. Protukhshiye marginalii. V kn.Russkiy vyzov/ Otv.red.O. A. Platonov - M., Institut Russkoi TSivilizatsii, 2011
Chingiz Guseinov. K voprosu o rysskosti nerusskich. Web. Druzhba narodov, no. 4,2014. intelros.ru/readroom/druzhba-narodov/d4-
Salijan Jigitov. "Kogda Chyngyz Aitmatov tol’ko prishel v literaturu." Novaya literature Kyrgyzstana. Web. literatura.kg/articles/?aid=2727
Tentemishev, Munduzbek, "Chyngyz Aitmatovdu kordunuzbu," Ala-Too no.6 (Kulzha 2017) 29-62
Azatkul Kudaibergenova, Ph.D., independent scholar