Poetry
Kulager
Құлагер
Ilyas Zhansugurov · 1936
Synopsis
A narrative poem about the akyn Akan seri and his horse Kulager, a chestnut with a black mane, winner of every race and coveted by the rich. At the great funeral feast given by Sagynai, where more than one thousand three hundred horses take the start, Kulager leads the race, ridden by the young Boribai; but the men of a jealous rival, Batyrach, lie in wait for him along the course. The poem tells of the feast, of what is at stake in it for the families, and paints nomadic society, its songs and its landscapes of mountains and lakes.
Context
The poem appeared in 1937 as a serial in the newspaper Sotsialistik Qazaqstan, one canto per issue; the issues were then seized and destroyed, and the writer Sapargali Begalin saved sixteen of them by hiding them in pillows. The manuscript was found in the 1960s among the papers of a former investigator of the political police and is held in the state archives. The translator Belinda Cooke reads in it a thinly veiled allegory of the fate of many Kazakh writers; Adebiportal, the symbol of a moral decline in which envy cuts down whatever stands out.
Who it is for
In Kazakh, a narrative poem. It is best to know that the great races were held at the funerals of notables and that winning them committed a whole clan.
Prizes and reception
Translated into Russian in 1958, into German in 2016 and into English by Belinda Cooke, whose version was presented in 2019 for the poet's one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary.