Central Asia Workshop: How Tatiana's Voice Rang Across the Steppe": The "Miraculous" Russian Text in the Formation of the Modern Kazakh Canon

Presentation by Naomi Caffee

Thursday, October 16, 2014
11:45 AM - 1:00 PM
11377 Bunche Hall

A paper titled "How Tatiana's Voice Rang Across the Steppe": The "Miraculous" Russian Text in the Formation of the Modern Kazakh Canon. 

Naomi's paper examines the cultivation of a literary legend in Stalin-era Kazakhstan.  Today the ninenineteenth-century poet Abai Kunanbaev enjoys a dual legacy as the father of modern Kazakh literature (as distinct from its oral tradition), and also as an enlightener, who translated classic works of Russian Romantic literature into Kazakh. Much of Abai’s reputation owes its existence to the twentieth-century Kazakh writer and literary scholar Mukhtar Auezov, whose multivolume biography of the poet became the standard narrative of his life and work. Naomi will analyze a key element in Auezov’s canonization of Abai: his depictions of the poet’s acquisition of the Russian language and early transformative encounters with Russian-language texts, culminating in his adaptation of Pushkin’s Evgenii Onegin into traditional Kazakh song form

Sponsor(s): Program on Central Asia