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What Faith the God-Contemporary? Chingiz Aitmatov's Plakha
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
Extract
Chingiz Aitmatov has long been a powerful figure in Soviet literature, but few critics in the west or the Soviet Union have treated him as a serious writer. Many of the reasons why Aitmatov's reputation is not commensurate with his achievement are clear enough; the few westerners who have bothered with Aitmatov tend to agree that he offers "a somewhat new mix from the old patterns of Soviet literature with an admixture of Central Asian lore, but the game he is playing is as old as socialist realism itself.
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References
1. Katerina Clark, “The Mutability of the Canon,” Slavic Review 43 (Winter 1984): 587.
2. “Plenum SP SSSR,” Literaturnaia gazeta, 2 July 1986, 6.
3. I. Kryvelev, “Koketnichaia s bozhen'koi,” Komsomol' skaia pravda, 30 July 1986.
4. G. Gachev, “Paradoksy romana,” Literaturnaia gazeta, 15 October 1986, 4.
5. L. Mkrtchian, “Kruglyi stol,” Voprosy literatury, no. 3 (1987): 82.
6. This description is Aitmatov's of Edigei Zhangel'din, the hero of the novel I dol'she veka dlitsia den'. See Chingiz Aitmatov, Plakhal I dol'she veka dlitisa den’ (Riga: Liesma, 1986), 306.
7. The close similarity of this ending to the ending of the 1985 Kirghiz film Descendants of the Snow Leopard, which was based on the Mannas legend, suggests that this theme—man countering nature only to kill his own offspring—is recurrent in Kirghiz thought.
8. D. Urnov, “Kruglyi stol,” Voprosy literatury, no. 3 (1987): 27.
9. Literaturnaia gazeta, 13 August 1986, 4 [interview with Aitmatov].
10. E. Surkov, “Tragediia v Moiunkumakh,” Pravda, 22 December 1986, 3.
11. V. Gusev, “Mysli vslukh,” Literaturnaia Rossia, 14 August 1987, 5.
12. Aitmatov, Plakhal I dol'she veka dlitsia den', 116. Future quotations from the text are made from this edition; page numbers are given in parentheses in the text.
13. Komsomol'skaia pravda, 10 December 1986, 2.
14. Kryvelev, “Koketnichaia s bozhen'koi. “
15. Irena Jeziorska, “Religious Themes in the Novels of Chingiz Aitmatov,” paper presented at the Second European Seminar on Central Asian Studies, London, 7–10 April 1987.
16. Kryvelev, “Koketnichaia s bozhen'koi.“
17. S. Lominadze, “Krugly i stol,” Voprosy literatury, no. 3 (1987): 35.
18. Ibid., 33.
19. N. Anastas'ev, “Krugly i stol,” Voprosy literatury, no. 3 (1987): 16.
20. I have no published evidence for this contention, but invariably Russian acquaintances who have read Aitmatov's novel cite this scene as proof of the book's weakness.
21. The Islamic nature of the burial scene that ends the novel has been widely remarked upon, but a better indicator of Aitmatov's knowledge of Islam is the name he gives to Abutalip Kutybaev, the war hero and school teacher who is falsely arrested and then dies in interrogation. The quality of Kutybaev that Aitmatov shows as most wasted in this tragedy is Abutalip's gift for being a father. His name itself makes this gift clear. Abu Talib, the uncle of Mohammed, is revered in Islam as the model of fatherhood, for he not only sired Ali (the first imam and Mohammed's successor), but he also took Mohammed in when his father and grandfather had both died and, thus, became the person who actually raised the Prophet. Moreover, in Arabic the name means father-student.
22. Reference is made to Tengri, a sky god (p. 257), Shamal, a wind god (p. 258), and Baubedin, apparently a livestock god (p. 222).
23. A. J. Arberry, trans., The Koran Interpreted (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 123.
24. A. J. Arberry, Aspects of Islamic Civilization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), 303.
25. Charles J. Adams, “Islamic Faith,” in Introduction to Islamic Civilization, ed., R. M. Savory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 37.
26. Ibid., 41. Not only is the euphony of shaiytan and Grishan suggestive, but so too is the coincidence of Adams's observation: “The devils are very numerous, are ugly in appearance with hooved feet… their weapons against men include in particular disease, and they are able to appear in human form at will without betraying their nature or their evil intent.” Compare Aitmatov's description of Grishan who, in addition to being lame, “recalled some cornered feral animal that wants to attack and bite but can't get up the courage to do so and instead takes a threatening pose. Maybe that impression was aided by the broken upper incisor that showed when Grishan talked” (p. 112).
27. Yvonne Haddad, ed., Contemporary Islam and the Challenge of History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982), 136.
28. Imad al-Din Khalil, “The Qur'anic Interpretation of History,” in ibid., 189.
29. F. Medvedev, “Tsena prozreniia,” Ogonek, no. 28 (July 1987): 8.
30. Urnov, “Kruglyi stol,” 23.
31. Ibid., 22.
32. Malise Ruthven, Islam in the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 125.
33. Plakha has now been published in the United States under the title The Place of the Skull (Grove Press).
34. Medvedev, “Tsena prozreniia,” 5.
35. Aitmatov confirms in Ogonek, no. 28 (1987): 5, that his father was “repressed” in 1937. Although the extent of his “repression” is not specified, that it took place in the first year of the Terror suggests that the penalty was severe.