Poetry
Goşgular
Not translated into English
Gurbandurdy Zelili · 1820
Synopsis
Poems in quatrains, many of them born of the deportation to Khiva. The poet speaks of his people driven from their villages in midwinter, under snow and rain, few of whom survived, of his longing for the Etrek and the Gorgan, “my heart desires you, O my country”, and of the misery of the Turkmens of the Etrek, oppressed by the rich, the mullahs and the khans. Others are love poems addressed to Döndi, from whom he was separated, and letters in verse to his friend Seýdi.
Context
According to the Turkish scholar who studied his work, his nickname means “the oppressed”, and his poems fall into the years before exile, those of exile and those of the return. They have come down in manuscript collections copied together with the work of other poets: the Manuscripts Institute in Ashgabat holds nineteen of them, the richest of which, copied in 1926 or 1927, brings together one hundred and one poems. The verses he exchanged with Seýdi form a poetic correspondence. A Russian translation by Naum Grebnev appeared in Ashgabat in 1981.
Who it is for
In Turkmen, with no French or English translation; short pieces, to be read one at a time.
Prizes and reception
The bicentenary of his birth gave rise in 1990 to a collection of studies, Zelili-200, published in Ashgabat.