Embracing the skies of Kirghiz
For Chingiz Aitmatov, standard-bearer of perestroika
A lone runner crosses the broad plain
amidst the falling snow.
The sun has yet to rise;
the frozen, pre-dawn air
torments his flesh like a blade.
Running, silently running…
He runs toward a new tomorrow.
A herald of culture,
he holds high the torch of perestroika.
Thick eyebrows bespeak
an indomitable will.
The unimpeded clarity of his gaze
sends forth bright beams of intellect.
The furnace of his robust breast
glows with a sensitive warmth;
the flames of a passionate concern
for all humankind
flare high.
Wherever he goes
he forges the path of new thinking—
the hopeful sun lifts into the sky,
the frozen earth of the masses
awakens from the long deep sleep of winter,
and gardens of new life open and bloom.
His name, Chingiz Aitmatov—
renowned editor of
Inostrannaya Literatura,
arising to carry the burden of
popular trust and hopes
in the Soviet Union,
standard-bearer of perestroika,
great pioneer cultivating
the untouched expanses of the spirit!
A golden autumn afternoon in 1988,
quite unforeseen,
our meeting at the Seikyo Shimbun building
in Shinanomachi, Tokyo.
What tugging of the strands of fate
brought about our encounter?
This man of action and of letters and myself
—born in the same year
contemporaries to the same era—
conversed with utter frankness.
Directing our thoughts toward
humanity’s future,
we spoke of culture, literature,
of a philosophy of peace.
You said: we are friends who share
the same ideals, the same convictions.
I said: a man of courage will die
for the sake of one who truly knows him.
The rhythm and pulse
of our passions
resounded powerfully, violently
like a thunderclap
in the sounding-board of our hearts.
Soul and soul merged white-hot,
leapt to the distant horizon
where a new century
beckons beyond the torments
of human history.
No person, no power imaginable
can now shutter the light our souls emit.
For this is the destined meeting and fusion
of conscience, philosophy, conviction and faith
that, like a mighty river,
moves ceaselessly forward
pressing on in grappled contest
with the great earth
of the realities of humanity and society.
And there we promised
—that it might benefit future generations—
to continue, to record in print, our dialogue.
On that day, two poplars of belief
were planted on the hillock
of our friendship.
In some future day these saplings
will stretch up into the Earth’s open skies,
fill with rays of comfort and repose,
grow thick with the green leaves
of humanism and culture.
They will be a landmark for those crossing
the desert waste of a desolate civilization.
They will heal in their shade
the traveler’s fatigue.
We have lived through
an age of crazed and raging storms.
You were born
in Kirghiz, a land of blue skies
and waving green grasses,
in 1928, as a gray dawn
foretold the coming winter
of Stalinism.
Childhood days in Moscow,
nurtured by the love of your parents,
your knowledge-seeking father,
who studied at a teachers college,
the strength and tenderness of your mother.
But already the demonic hand of the Purge,
the consuming tempest of Stalinism,
was closing fast on this peaceful family.
Your father, sensing danger
fearing for his family’s safety,
secretly put his wife and children
on the train at Ryazan Station.
You were eight, unable to grasp
the parting words your parents exchanged.
Yet you must have sensed
an unbearable tension;
your young heart was gripped
by dread foreboding.
The train pulled forward
cleaving a family bound by love.
Your father started running after
the ever-faster moving train,
waving desperately,
calling out with all his being…
An eternal leave-taking
painted on life’s canvas
with scarlet tears.
Your father’s death
followed soon after—
a man who deeply loved the people
liquidated as their enemy.
He died solely for being one of the intelligentsia,
earnestly seeking to discern truth.
You remained, haunted by the question,
what had robbed your father of life?
Lonely years in remote Kirghiz—
in a house without a proper roof
you grew, drawing nourishment
from the kindness and support
of the poor and simple people,
surrounded by the stern beauty of nature.
Then war began.
All the men were uprooted
and sent to the battlefield.
And you, just out of grammar school,
became a secretary
and spent your days working at
the village office.
Everywhere were shortages,
all went hungry,
in every home was illness
and mourning for the dead.
Yet you were charged with the cruel
and wrenching task
of collecting taxes from those
who hadn’t even enough to eat.
The war ended,
and like shoots emerging
from a winter-withered field,
you took your first steps toward a new life.
At agricultural college,
you studied animal husbandry,
while continuing your literary endeavors,
with the single-minded devotion of youth.
Finding sustenance in your trials,
rising above personal tragedy
transcending private enmity
you focused your vision
—penetrating, self-honed—
on the universal springs of humanity.
Your philosophy has been forged
in tireless seeking and suffering
in pursuit of the ultimate theme—
humanity and the human being.
Even as you worked
in the field you had studied
your passion for creative expression
surfaced and burst forth like magma.
Setting your heart on a life of letters,
you left for studies
at a literary institute in Moscow…
At times, in ways,
the pattern and picture of your life
reminds me of my own,
distant, separated by vast stretches
of land and sea.
For I grew up in an impoverished family
who subsisted by harvesting seaweed.
My father was confined to bed by illness
and as a child I often
helped with the family business.
Setting out from the shores of
Tokyo Bay before dawn,
blowing warm breath onto frozen fingers
from which the blood had fled.
One after the other,
my four elder brothers were taken to the front.
We evacuated, only to be burnt out
again in air raids.
Employed at a munitions factory
my lungs ailing, I often coughed up blood.
Then my eldest brother was killed in battle.
The sight is always with me—
my mother, her back heaving
in grief at the loss
of her treasured child.
What is war? The nation? The human being?
Seeking the answers in books,
I read as one famished,
studied literature and philosophy,
searched for a constant
in this inconstant world.
My youth was spent among scorched ruins
committing to verse the cries of my heart.
Then I encountered Josei Toda—
my life’s mentor.
Entering the way of practice and faith
I rose into the skies of new life.
Ah! With your pen you cultivate
the vast bleak stretches of the human heart.
You take the vivid portrait of all living things,
breathe life into voiceless nature.
From the depths of people’s hearts
you bring forth limpid outpourings
to cleanse and rarefy our souls.
In your writings, we find
courage, tears and love.
We find nature and seasons,
the fragrant smell of the earth.
We find people and daily life,
humanity’s song, philosophy,
a seeking for truth.
We find an elevated spiritual beauty.
The French author Louis Aragon
praised your work Dzhamilya
saying that it was the most beautiful
of modern love stories.
The words are the author;
it is the beauty of your noble heart
that gives birth to the jewels
of your creation.
In your works I see
your as yet unseen homeland,
Kirghiz, your native place—
where the wind stirs the green waves
of the steppes;
where mountain streams spray silver
as they fall weaving between boulders.
And above, the perfect blueness of the sky
free from all tentative clouds,
while the sun casts down
a gentle smile.
Unperturbed by frigid gusts
the sky’s uncompromising purity…
limitless depths fraught
with the brilliant light
of hope and courage.
Pressing down softly upon mountains
it wraps the Earth;
reaching up
it embraces the cosmos.
As the sun sets
a picture of gilded poetry unfolds.
When night comes
the heavens fill
with the diamond shimmering
of stars.
Ah! The blue skies of Kirghiz!
They are always in your heart
broad, unbridled.
Neither thick and heavy clouds
nor fierce blizzards can obscure
the blue skies that spread above
this soaring upright giant.
You who embrace the sky’s expanse!
Although we have journeyed differently
our paths have joined
in a new Silk Road of the spirit.
As the poet Tyutchev wrote:
Russia’s not fathomed by the mind,
Nor by some common standard known:
She is unique in all mankind;
Her fate, revealed through faith alone.
I place my faith in the common people
in all their splendor.
This lone path forged in their midst
is long and filled with obstacles.
But innumerable highways of peace
will surely spread from this single way.
Let us advance with courage.
Ah! Countless divisions
—of nation, race and ideology—
fissure the earth of humanity,
sundering all in opposition and hostility.
Sullen clouds of dark ambition block the sky,
and the sparkling springs of life run dry.
Our blue-green Earth loses its luster,
drifts aimless toward disaster.
Together with the wise and courageous
leader of a reborn Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev
—as a pioneer of the new thinking—
Atlas-like you stand, offering your shoulders
to our beloved human oasis.
Searching to bring harmony to
the diversity of your vast country,
awakening the energies of the common people,
you traverse the world on wings of words.
I also arise—
hoisting the banner
of a philosophy of peace and humanity.
A philosophy that commands me thus:
If you have shivered in the cold
wrap a scarf around the shoulder of a friend.
If you have been beaten by frozen rains
advance offering shelter to all.
For such is only possible
to one who has known suffering.
For such is your mission.
We have traversed the
imbecile horror,
the miserable tempests of war.
As contemporaries,
it is our task and duty
to announce the arrival
of an enduring season of peace.
So let us share thoughts,
let us sink our picks into the soil
digging for the moist sources
of ideas for all humankind.
Time will not wait.
The sun already slants to the west—
moment by moment the nightfall
of our century approaches.
Let us set out!
Transcending the chaos
as we voyage to the distant reaches
of the inner life,
to the glimmering
gardens of life!
April 2, 1989
Written for Chingiz Aitmatov (1928–2008), Kirghiz writer, former member of the Soviet Presidential Council and Soviet ambassador to Luxembourg. The author and Mr. Aitmatov published a two-volume dialogue, Oinaru tamashii no uta (Ode to the Grand Spirit), in 1991 and 1992.
Inostrannaya Literatura (Foreign Literature): a Russian monthly literary magazine which has been published in Moscow since 1955 introducing foreign literature in Russian translation.
Louis Aragon (1897–1982): French poet, novelist and editor.
Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev (1803–73): Russian poet in the Romantic tradition.
“Russia’s not fathomed”: Tyutchev, “Russia” in Poems of Night and Day, p. 88.