Poetry · A way to begin
Songs from the Steppes of Central Asia
Diwan
Magtymguly Pyragy · 1770
Synopsis
Short poems, in quatrains close to popular song, in which the poet slips his name or his pen name into the last stanza. They speak of his love for Mengli, given in marriage to another, of the loss of two brothers who left on an embassy, of the discord of the Turkmen tribes, whom he urges to unite, of the injustice of the powerful and the vices of the clergy, and of the quest of the Sufi, drunk with love and struck with awe before God.
Context
The poet brought the language of Turkmen poetry closer to popular speech and replaced the Arabo-Persian metre with a syllabic verse. More than eighty manuscript collections of his poems were copied by his relatives, villagers, poets, scholars and bards; copies are preserved in Tashkent, Saint Petersburg, London, Budapest and Istanbul. An English version of the whole, versified by Brian Aldiss from the prose of Youssef Azemoun, appeared in 1995; French has only a selection, translated by Louis Bazin and Pertev Boratav in 1975.
Who it is for
Short, rhymed poems, easy to read one by one; the English edition gives everything, the French only a selection.
Prizes and reception
Manuscripts inscribed in 2023 in UNESCO's Memory of the World register; the Organization of Turkic Culture made 2024 the year of the poet.