ALLEGORY IN TATAR LITERATURE AS A MANIFETATION OF ETHNIC FEATURES IN TEXT
Daniya Fatikhovna Zagidullina,
Academy of Sciences the Republic of Tatarstan,
20Bauman Str., Kazan, 420111, Russia,
zagik63@mail.ru
The entity of national literaturesis discussed in the world literary process as a whole thing, although each literature has its unique spiritual and pragmatic characteristics. Ethnic traditions of each culture represent mentality, ideology, and psychological “state”of an ethnicity. In this regard, the study of national and cultural aspects of self-identification contained in the form and content of literary works, is of great importance. One of these aspects is the system of allegoric methods generating a “second content”. Transformed in the course of Tatar literature evolution, it has become “Aesopian language”.
The presence of “hidden meaning” in the Turkic and Tatar literary texts of the Middle Ages helps to create a religious world image in literature which dates back to the only existing opposition, that of Man and God. Man’s aspiration to Allah, especially in Sufi literature, created “a second artistic content” of fictional text, which, per se, is its main content, with religious notions of the basics of life. This hidden meaning is encoded in Sufi symbols and creates a “special language”, which provides for the variability of text interpretations.
Due to the formation of secular literature at the beginning of the 20th century, this phenomenon of Tatar literature underwent certain transformations. The Sufi symbols lost their religious significance and acquired a secular meaning, giving the philosophical evaluation of life.
After 1917 this phenomenon in Tatar literature was no longer in use. However, the tradition of creating “a second artistic content”reappearsin the civil lyric of G.Qutuy. The contradiction between the author’s position and the position of the lyrical hero of his poems points to a “hidden meaning”. Beinga philologist by education, an aesthetic and intellectual Qutuy creates a lyrical hero of the 1920s,a person who is “the representative of the masses”, anihilist, who denies all the values of the past. The lyrical hero, who kills his relative, the one who raised him, the hero, who refuses previous culture and becomes a symbol of the epoch. The system of allegory, which is common for this type of culture, gives ample opportunities for the expression of different modes of literary effect. In the background content tragic pathos merges with irony, and forms an existential type of world-view.
In the 1960s, further development of “Aesopian language” phenomenon can be found in the works of G.Afzal. The poet develops a new concept of man: a cowardly, fearful, two-faced man who is presented as a product of the totalitarian regime.
Key words: Tatar literature, ethnic cultural traditions, artistic, creating“the background”, “Aesopian language”, symbol, lyrical hero.
