Selected Poetry / Избранное (англ.). Gabdullah Tukai
ALL DREAMS MUST SOAR…»
Each and every nation of the world has its national poet who succeeds in truly, magnificently, powerfully and often painfully expressing the beauty of its heart and soul. Such poets are the resounding presence of their respective nations in the Divine silence of the Universe.
It is as if they are saying on behalf of all their native people: «Here we are – this is what we are.»
Amazingly, it is they who, in all their presumed «utter nationalism», will be the most easily and profoundly understood and appreciated by other nations and peoples. One remembers only too well how during the 1989 celebrations of the millennium of the arrival of Islam on the banks of the Volga River, an impressive cultural performance was staged in the Kazan city stadium. There and then, even before the Republic of Tatarstan had attained its limited sovereignty within the borders of the Russian Federation1, tens of thousands of Kazan Tatars with tears in their eyes joined in singing «Mother Tongue», a folk song and an unofficial national anthem, the simple and beautiful lines of which, composed in 1907 by the greatest Tatar poet Gabdullah Tukai, are dear to every Tatar since childhood:
My mother tongue! Fair tongue of mine!
My father’s and my mother’s speech;
Through you so much I bear and learn;
So many people can I reach.
Beside my cradle in your lilt
My mother sang a lullaby;
My grandmother would tell me tales,
As evening’s dusk came creeping by.
My mother tongue! Your kind support
Has helped my life to run its course;
And since my childhood you have borne
My hopes, my joys and my remorse.
My mother tongue! In you I prayed,
Beseeching God to save my soul.
Forgiveness for my parents too
I sought through you. You made me whole2.
Of course, to truly appreciate the unified message of this massive choir, one has to know something of the painful history of the Kazan (Volga) Tatar people. Also, certain national feelings are impossible to communicate and explain to others, and there is no need to do so. There are depths of national feelings, which a stranger simply cannot register or understand.
Yet, paradoxically, it is equally true that, the deeper we penetrate into the most intimate recesses of the national soul, the more universal it becomes. Thus, the unique attributes of every nation, which, at times, it seems quite impossible to convey to others, are, in fact, what unites it, as kith and kin, with all of humanity.
Only truly great poets are capable of releasing this secret energy of universal brotherhood from the motherly bonds of their national culture, while remaining the most distinct representative voices of their nation for all its past, present and future.
Gabdullah Tukai, the national classical poet of the Kazan Tatar people, was exactly such a poet.
He was born on April 26, 1886 in the small hamlet of Kushlavych in the Kazan province of the Russian Empire. Very early in his life, he became an orphan, unwelcome everywhere, belonging to no one. Little did the people around him know that this poor unloved child was to become the most cherished and enduring figure in the thousand-year-old Kazan Tatar history. It is to his poems, which so beautifully articulate in their mother tongue all the hitherto silent grief and glory of this universally misunderstood and belied history that his native people will always turn for solace and advice. His poetic lines will be embroidered on velvet, framed and put on walls in village log houses and imposing urban flats.
Tukai was a forthright and candid man and a poetic genius, yet he was doomed in his short life to all the bitterness of homelessness and human alienation. But in his tragic fate and his poetry, all the best qualities of the Tatar people are reflected: directness, truthfulness, generosity, selflessness and grandeur of soul. His heartfelt poems written in a living, clear and convincing language, are permeated with the starry solitude of the Tatar people and its lofty sadness. Many of Tukai’s poems have become folk songs; he has also created a new literary language that was close to the people, and in his tragic verses and long satirical poems, as in an honest mirror, he showed his people their true nature and their true destiny.
The life story of Tukai is a tragedy of the solitary genius, as even those who valued him did not understand the universal scope of his talent. He never had any worthwhile material possessions, never owned a home; he was living and writing his poetry, essays, and newspaper and magazine articles in various cheaper Kazan hotels. Having done an immeasurable amount of work in the short span of his life, Tukai died from tuberculosis on April 15, 1913, at the age of barely 27.
«He was seen off to where ‘the truth is buried’ by a huge crowd, and the Kazan Tatars have never seen such a respectful funeral», wrote one of his contemporaries. And Michael Friedrich, Bamberg University Professor and Tukai’s German biographer, wrote of him: «This Tatar youth from a tiny village… became a poet of world standing and forms part of the cultural history of all mankind.» This book presents, for the first time, the wealth of Tukai’s poetry in the English language. Paying tribute to his contribution to world poetry, it is dedicated to the 125th anniversary of Tukai’s birth.
Its preparation and publishing became possible through the generous support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Tatarstan and the dedicated efforts of the Worldwide Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
All the poems in this collection, with the notable exception of the poetic tales of Shuraleh and The Haymarket, are translated by writer, journalist, and translator Ilya Genn (United States), who has performed the nearly impossible task of capturing the inimitable spirit of Tukai’s poetry in the English language.
Gabdullah Tukai
WHAT I REMEMBER ABOUT MYSELF
It was initially the request from a number of publishers who asked me to send them my autobiography that prompted me to write these notes I called What I Remember About Myself.
I put pen to paper with the intent of providing a brief outline of my life from birth until the present but my story somehow stretched beyond what was anticipated.
My life (readers will see that) was an unappealing and rather bleak affair, but at the same time it was interesting, because once I began writing, I felt like describing everything that remained in my memory.
Therefore, it seemed appropriate to me to have all that I experienced before moving to Uralsk, and all I remember from that time until the present day when I sit and write these lines to be published in two booklets.
My father Muhammedgarif, the son of Muhammedgalim, who was the mullah of Kushlavych village, began to attend a madrassah in the Kyshkar village when he was 14 or 15 years old; after spending as many years there as were necessary to complete his studies he returned to our Kushlavych village when his father, advanced in years, was still alive and became the local mullah.
After becoming a mullah, he got married but he only lived a few years with his wife: his wife passed away, leaving him with two young children on his hands, a son and a daughter.
My father then remarried. Mamduda, his second wife and my mother, was the daughter of Zinatulla, the mullah of the village of Uchila.
I, their first child, was born a year and half into the marriage3.
When I was five months old, my father died after a short illness.
After living for some time with my widowed mother, I was given temporarily away to be cared for by a poor elderly woman from our village by
It happened on August 30, 1990 – see, for example, Ravil Bukharaev, Non-Violent Quest for National Identity: The Case of Tatarstan, Nations and Nationalism Around the Globe, vol. II, Warsaw, 2006. On the past and present ofl the Kazan Tatar people and their culture, see also the following books by Ravil Bukharaev: The Model of Tatarstan under President Mintimer Shaimievu, Curzon Press Ltd., London and St Martin’s Press, New York, 1999; Islam in Russia. The Four Seasons, Curzon Press Ltd., London and St Martin’s Press, New York, 2000; Historical Anthology of Kazan Tatar Verse (with D.J. Matthews), Curzon Press Ltd., London, 2000; Saga of Kazan, Slavia, St Petersburg, 2005; Tatarstan:-A Can-Do Culture, Global Oriental, London, 2006; Kol GCalil, Story of Joseph (historical introductory essays and translation of the grand medieval Bulgar-Tatar poem by Fred Beake and Ravil Bukharaev), Global Oriental (Brill), UK, 2010.
Translation by David Matthews and Ravil Bukharaev. A new translation of the same poem see on page 127.
On April 14, 1886 according to the Old Style (Greigorian Calendar).