Kyrgyz literature

Table of Contents

Introduction References & Edit History Related Topics

Images

Kyrgyz literature

Written by Daniel G. Prior

Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Related Topics:: literature; Central Asian literatures; Kyrgyz language

See all related content

Kyrgyz literature, the written works of the Kyrgyz people of Central Asia, most of whom live in Kyrgyzstan. A smaller population of Kyrgyz in China also produces works of literary significance.

The literary history of the modern-day Kyrgyz begins in the early 19th century, notwithstanding disputed attempts by scholars to identify as “Old Kyrgyz” the language of runic Turkic inscriptions from the Yenisey River basin (9th to 11th centuries). The language of the earliest surviving works of Kyrgyz literature in manuscript, including the 19th-century poems of Moldo Nïyaz, is Chagatai, the common Turkic literary language of Central Asia, modified with features drawn from spoken Kyrgyz. (See also Chagatai literature.) From the Russian Revolution of 1917 until the 1930s, written Kyrgyz continued to develop under influences from the related Kazakh, Uzbek, and Tatar languages, owing in part to the slow development of Kyrgyz-language instruction. Prerevolutionary Kyrgyz was written in the Arabic alphabet; this was reformed and standardized in 1924. In 1927 the Kyrgyz writing system was switched to one based on the Latin alphabet, and in 1941 this was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet, which continues in use today in Kyrgyzstan. (The Kyrgyz of the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang in China still use an Arabic alphabet.)

Written Kyrgyz literature arose from rich oral traditions and was at the outset exclusively poetic. Manuscript poems derived from the oral epic cycle Manas written by Kyrgyz in their own language survive from around the turn of the 20th century. One of the earliest books printed in an idiom close to modern Kyrgyz, Qïssa-i zilzila (1911; “Tale of the Earthquake”) by Moldo Qïlïch, is in the lyric genre sanat-nasïyat (“maxims and wise instructions”), a form used by poets for social commentary. The book’s elegiac tone, expression of disillusionment with Russian colonial rule, and yearning for an idealized Muslim society reflected the zar-zaman (“time of sorrow”) vogue that predominated in Kyrgyz and Kazakh poetry of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

4:043 Dickinson, Emily: A Life of Letters, This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to me; I'll tell you how the Sun Rose/A Ribbon at a time; Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul

Britannica Quiz

Famous Poets and Poetic Form

The tremendous growth in literacy among Kyrgyz during the Soviet period was mirrored by significant strides in the sphere of creative writing. Kyrgyz folklore provided the blueprint and materials for poetry of the first half of the 20th century by Aalï Tokombaev, Joomart Bökönbaev, Kubanïchbek Malikov, and Jusup Turusbekov. Prose fiction was among new literary forms that appeared under Soviet auspices and reached a high level of cultivation. The first short story published in Kyrgyz was Kasïmalï Bayalinov’s “Ajar” (1927); the first Kyrgyz novel was Tügölbay Sïdïkbekov’s Keng-Suu (1937–38; “Broad River,” the name of the village that is the novel’s setting). The essay and the pamphlet also flourished, as did drama, literary translation, and children’s literature. The Kyrgyz press was inaugurated in 1924 with the newspaper Erkin Too (“Free Mountains”).

Soviet Kyrgyz literature was defined in relation to the political and social agendas of the state and the Communist Party. The “pessimism” and “mysticism” that the party found in works by Moldo Qïlïch and the zar-zaman poets were proscribed; writers were instead urged to incorporate progressive themes, such as land and water reform, the emancipation of women, and the struggle to overcome feudal and tribal authority. In working out their own approach to the artistic methods of Socialist Realism, Kyrgyz authors used models from Russian literature. The poet Alïkul Osmonov departed from Kyrgyz folklore and invented new verse forms inspired in part by the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. The international character of Soviet society is reflected in such works as Maidan (1961–66; “The War Front”), Uzak Abdukaimov’s novel about World War II.

The short-story writer, novelist, and essayist Chingiz Aytmatov enjoyed international acclaim and a dominant position in Kyrgyz literature in the second half of the 20th century with such early works as Jamila (1958; Eng. trans. Jamilia), a tale of love amid changing times. After Kyrgyzstan gained independence in 1991, Kyrgyz writers took up issues of the nation’s past, such as the people’s Muslim heritage, traditional social structure, and colonial experience under Russia, in such works as Sooronbai Jusuev’s Kurmanjan Datka (1994), a verse novel about the female leader of the southern Kyrgyz during and after the tsarist expansion. Starkly reflecting the calamitous post-Soviet experience, Aytmatov’s Kassandra tamgasy (1996; “The Mark of Cassandra”; first published in Russian in 1995 as Tavro Kassandry) is a novel of global dystopia. In the first decade of the 21st century, poets, prose writers, and dramatists suffered from the contraction and reordering of literary markets in Kyrgyzstan that took place after the collapse of the U.S.S.R., but along with state support Communist Party censorship also vanished. Though deplored by the old guard, the new commercial climate created opportunities for authors to publish unvarnished portrayals of painful realities, as in the prison novels of Melis Makenbaev and the popular genre of detective and crime fiction.

Daniel G. Prior

Central Asian literatures

Table of Contents

References & Edit History Related Topics

Images

Bābur inspecting a garden, portrait miniature from the Bābur-nāmeh, 16th century; in the British Library.

Central Asian literatures

Written by Walter Feldman

Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Related Topics:: Uzbek literature; Mongolian literature; Chagatai literature; Kazakh literature; Turkmen literature

See all related content

Central Asian literatures, the poetry and prose writings produced in a variety of languages in Central Asia, roughly defined as the region bounded to the east by the Tarim Basin in China, to the west by the Caspian Sea, and to the south by the Amu Darya (Oxus River). This region includes Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and parts of Russia and China.

The factor most strongly determining the character of the literatures of Central Asia has been the interaction of Turkic and Iranian populations and cultures throughout the region. Historically there was a split between the urban cultures of the Tarim Basin and Transoxania (which today corresponds to Uzbekistan and parts of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan) and the nomadic cultures farther north and west. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, a number of Central Asian literatures developed into modern literatures under tsarist and then Soviet rule. Among the modern literatures treated separately are Kazakh literature, Mongolian literature, Turkmen literature, and Uzbek literature. Chagatai literature, a historical literature, is also treated separately. This article provides a brief overview of the region’s literatures.

Origins and early development

The oldest Central Asian literatures employed Sogdian and Khwarezmian, both Iranian languages. As a result of the Arab conquest of the region, however, New Persian had by the 8th century ce become established in such urban centres as Bukhara (now in Uzbekistan), and it gradually replaced the region’s indigenous languages.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) only confirmed photograph of Emily Dickinson. 1978 scan of a Daguerreotype. ca. 1847; in the Amherst College Archives. American poet. See Notes:

Britannica Quiz

Poetry: First Lines

The use of the Turkic languages as a literary medium also originated in the 8th century. In the ensuing century, during which the Uighurs ruled the Orhon River valley in Mongolia, peoples moved between this region and the cities of the Tarim Basin; the resultant contact between the different populations helped shape Central Asia’s literature. Of the manuscripts in the Uighur language that have been found in the Tarim Basin region, the oldest date to the 8th century. These use the Uighur script, derived from Sogdian. The defeat of the Uighurs by the Kyrgyz in 840 led to the establishment of several Uighur states. The Uighur language continued to be used as a medium for translations until the 14th century and possibly later.

Apart from Uighur, the other major Turkic literary languages were vehicles for Islamic civilization. Although it employed the Uighur script, Qarakhanid does not seem to have been identical to Uighur, but it seems to have absorbed elements from Turkic dialects spoken in the southwestern part of the Tarim Basin and possibly the eastern Fergana Valley (today in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan). The conversion of the Golden Horde to Islam in the 14th century led to the creation of a new Turkic literature closely modeled on Persian. That new literature was created mainly in Khwārezm, a historical region in present-day Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The establishment of the Timurid dynasty diminished Khwārezm’s status as a cultural centre but led to the development of Chagatai literature, which echoed the literary style of works that had been produced in Khwārezm. Chagatai literature flourished in the 15th century and was taken to India by the Mughal emperor Bābur. Although the poet and scholar ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī brought the Chagatai language to new literary heights, during the later 16th century it declined in relation to Persian, both in Transoxania and in India.

From the 17th to the 20th century

By the 17th century, literary innovation was more evident among the nomadic peoples of Central Asia than among the settled cultures. The weakening of the Uzbek khanates and the decline in Chagatai literature led to the emergence of Turkmen literature in the later 17th century, which culminated during the 18th century in the poetry of Makhtumquli. Turkmen literature remained highly influential across the region through the later 19th century. Although lacking a unified state, the Kazakhs consisted of large and powerful tribal groupings that supported a flourishing oral literature created by professional bards. Between the 15th and the 19th centuries, Kazakh literature became increasingly static. Although less politically developed than the Kazakhs, the Kyrgyz created an oral literature that emphasized the epic cycle of Manas, the Kyrgyz national hero. The Uzbek tribes, partly under Turkmen influence, developed their own form of the oral epic, known as the destān, on which all subsequent Uzbek literature was based.

The Russian conquest of Central Asia during the 19th century led to a transitional literature in which traditional literary practices began to give way to modern national literatures. Among the Kazakhs this transition was especially conspicuous: during the second half of the 19th century, Abay Qunanbaev (Abay Ibrahim Kūnanbay-ulï) fused native Kazakh and Russian elements, with little reference to the region’s Islamic cultures. Elsewhere, the emergence of the Soviet Union created the modern literatures of Central Asia. Among the Uzbeks, Turkmen, and Kyrgyz, therefore, literary modernity arrived in a Soviet guise, to which the Kazakhs also would conform. During the 20th century, Abdullah Qadiriy wrote the first successful novels in Uzbek, while Mukhtar Auez-ulï became the outstanding modern writer in the Kazakh language. Among all of these groups, part of their literature is in the Russian language; the most outstanding example of a 20th-century Central Asian writer who wrote in Russian is Kyrgyz novelist Chingiz Aytmatov, whose works were widely translated.

Walter Feldman