Epic
Alpomish
Anonymous · 1928
Synopsis
Alpomish and Barchin are promised to each other from birth. After a quarrel, the girl's father takes his people to the land of the Kalmyks, and Alpomish sets out to find her. He overcomes the trials imposed on suitors, with the help of a Kalmyk champion who has become his friend. Later, held captive by the Kalmyk khan, he spends seven years at the bottom of a dungeon, from which the khan's daughter pulls him out. He then returns home in the clothes of an old shepherd, on the day his half-brother is about to marry Barchin.
Context
The reference version was dictated in 1928 by the bakhshi Fozil Yo'ldosh o'g'li, last master of the Bulung'ur school; it runs to thirteen to fourteen thousand verses, sung, and prose passages that carry the action. Hamid Olimjon published it for the first time in 1938 or 1939, depending on the source. The epic was printed more than fifty times between 1899 and 1984, but the Soviet authorities attacked it in the fifties. The return of the unrecognizable hero at his wife's wedding has been compared to that of Ulysses; the Kazakhs sing the same story under another name.
Who it is for
A long epic, to be read in episodes, with no French version. It helps to know that the singer alternates spoken narrative and song.
Prizes and reception
At the request of Uzbekistan, UNESCO celebrated in 1999 the supposed millennium of the epic.