Poetry
Октябрдын келген кези
Not translated into English
Aaly Tokombaev · 1924
Synopsis
A poem about the coming of October, published by the very first Kyrgyz-language newspaper. No line of this collection is quoted or discussed.
Context
The text appeared on 7 November 1924 in the first issue of Erkin-Too, the first newspaper in the Kyrgyz language. Its author later wrote in his autobiography that the letters written in the country begin on that day, and that he had chosen that date as his birthday. He was twenty. His first collection appeared in Tashkent in 1927 under the title Sur Lénine, reissued nine years later under the title Lénine. Having turned to prose in the late thirties, he produced a novel whose first part came out in 1935 and whose whole received the State Prize of the republic in 1967.
Who it is for
In Kyrgyz. His works appeared in Russian and in several languages of the Union, never in French; this poem is hardly read other than in anthologies.
Prizes and reception
The text with which literary historians date the start of professional Kyrgyz letters, and the date its author adopted as his own.