Poetry
My Homeland
Миний нутаг
Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj · 1933
Synopsis
A patriotic poem that celebrates the natural beauty of Mongolia: its mountains and rivers, its lakes, its deserts, its steppes and the course of the seasons. In the widely circulated English version, it has twelve stanzas, each closed by the same refrain that calls Mongolia the beloved country. The landscape stands in for the homeland, with no hero and no plot.
Context
The poem was written in 1932 or 1933. Under socialism, schoolchildren recited it as a model, and a statue of the author, sculpted by L. Makhbal in 1966 and moved in 2013 in front of the Ulaanbaatar Hotel, carries lines of it on its base. Phillip Marzluf notes that a stanza from another poem by the author has been wrongly added to it in online versions, for its nationalist resonance.
Who it is for
A short poem, in Mongolian; it is read in English in translations that circulate under the title My Homeland.
Prizes and reception
The emblematic poem of its author, recited by generations of schoolchildren and engraved on the base of his statue.
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