by LOUIS YAKO
Russian poet Rasul Gamzatov (1923-2003) IMAGE/Wikipedia
November 3rd is around the corner. This day of the year may or may not mean something to you. I consider it is a sad day for poetry. On this day 13 years ago the poet of Dagestan, Rasul Gamzatov, left our world. Born on September 8, 1923, Gamzatov is not only the “People’s Poet of Dagestan”, he is the poet of the people who love poetry, nature, home, language, and beauty. In his prolific writings, Gamzatov showed that if we know the place where we come from intimately, we will have enough stories to tell for the rest of our lives. He taught us that it is only by telling stories and paying attention to others’ stories that we truly live. From the remote villages and treacherous mountains of Dagestan, Gamzatov wrote poems and stories whose words are like loaves of bread to feed the hungry. His rhythms like raindrops falling on the endless deserts of the deprived souls. His depth and clarity like clear spring waters from the melting snows of the mountaintops of Dagestan. Some of his poems turn me into a bleeding red rose, a singing wind on a long lonely night, a thunder loudly objecting every form of oppression on this planet. Others silence my vocal cords and sets free a stubborn tear hanging on the corner of my eye. With his stories, I turn into a bird, into a short-lived wild flower on the side of a mountain rock, into a shiny distant star on a silent and cold winter night. Is it a coincidence that Gamzatov died in 2003, the same year Iraq, the land of poetry and beauty, was occupied and turned into rubble and ashes?
The poet arrived to this world in the Avar village of Tsada in the north-east Caucasus. The name of the village means “fire” in the Avar language, which reflects his own poetic fire that was neither tamed nor domesticated nor put out throughout the 80 years of his life. His poems capture the human soul that is like nature: powerful yet also fragile and delicate in other ways. As children of nature, we are capable of doing so much, yet Mother Nature can crush our arrogance in a blink of an eye. Gamzatov understood our delicate existence that can easily be crushed by the cruel rocks of reality. Yet our only bet is on our souls that enable us to fly high and far away. Reminding us of our strengths and weaknesses, he wrote: “Hit a bird with a stone, the bird dies. Hit a stone with a bird, the bird dies.”
The son of the well-known bard, Gamzat Tsadasa, Gamzatov from the early years of his youth showed an extraordinary passion for Avar stories, myths, oral traditions, village songs, and everything the people of the mountains cherished and held dear and sacred. His intellectual character is best captured in a version of an old saying that many mountain peoples worldwide recite: “One should only kneel down in two cases: to drink clear water from a spring, or to smell a wild flower.” This profound expression reminds us of the role of the intellectual in a world where everyone and everything is up for sale. Intellectuals can only kneel down to drink from the spring water of knowledge; or to smell a wild flower whose scent would set their imagination free. If we kneel down for any oppressive power even once, we may forever be cursed, crippled, paralyzed, and perhaps never able to stand up on our feet again. Gamzatov tells us that he first picked the seeds of poetry from his mother’s songs in the cradle. He picked the fire of poems from his father who loved reading and writing poetry, in addition to working long and harsh hours in the fields. From an early age, he was determined to capture the stories of his people to show the world that poetry transcends languages, human differences, and all artificial borders. He once recalled his father, Tsadasa, reacting to one of his early poems: “if you rummaged in the ash, you might find at least a glowing amber.”
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