Concerts Opera Dance Theater Gigs Exhibits

	Itar-Tass Niyazov's rousing patriotic poems have fans among Russia's literary elite.

Poet by Decree

Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov's reputation as a leader may be somewhat wanting, but as a poet, he's doing just fine.

By Anna Malpas
Published: December 17, 2004

From erecting a statue of his favorite horse to renaming the months of the year after himself and his mother, Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov has long been a gift to dictator-watchers, if not to human rights activists. More recently, Niyazov has turned to poetry -- his first collection, "May My People Prosper," came out in 2002 -- and now a group of well-known Russian poets hopes to translate his work.

Last Monday, a letter to that effect, signed by respected poet Yevgeny Rein, poet and translator Mikhail Sinelnikov, and Igor Shklyarevsky, a prominent figure in Russian writers' organizations, appeared in newspapers across Turkmenistan. "Today literature is losing its former force. In such a time, the publication of a book of your poems in Russian will raise the significance of poetry," RIA-Novosti quoted the letter as saying.

Speaking last Tuesday, Sinelnikov insisted that the proposal was sincereand based on an appreciation of Niyazov's poetry. A translator of poetry from the Kyrgyz, Tajik and Georgian languages, Sinelnikov said that he understands a little Turkmen and has read some of Niyazov's poems.

"There's no doubt that he's a real poet," he said. "He's a real master of poetry. [He has written] some very heartfelt poems about his mother, whom he lost early, about the fate of the country, about history. First of all, they are very emotional poems, and secondly, they are masterfully written."

In addition to translating Niyazov's work, the same writers appealed in a second letter for help in publishing a book of translations of classical Turkmen poetry. That letter was also signed by Sergei Chuprinin, the editor of the literary journal Znamya.

"In Russia, there is a major school of poetic translation. And many important Russian poets translated poetry from Farsi and other Oriental languages," Chuprinin said last Tuesday. "In the last 10 to 15 years none of that has been republished. I think that's not right."

However, Chuprinin disassociated himself from the plan to publish Niyazov's poetry. "I'm not thinking about that. I think it's probably possible, but it's a separate project."

So far, some Russian translations of Niyazov's compositions are available on the president's unofficial web site, at niyazov.sitecity.ru. Rife with patriotic themes and monumental metaphors for the Turkmen people, the poems come across as morale boosters.

"May my Turkmen people prosper, / May they live happily from century to century! / May the flag fly like a green bird into the mists of time, / May every step of the people be sunny," reads a verse from his poem, "May My Turkmen People Prosper."

According to Anna Kovusov, an 84-year-old People's Poet of Turkmenistan, the president's poems are "good." Kovusov said Wednesday that he had read five or six poems from Niyazov's spiritual guidebook, "Ruhnama," or "The Book of the Soul," and heard some poems on Turkmen radio.

"There are a lot of political poems, about the past of Turkmenistan, about the future of Turkmenistan, those sorts of themes, but I don't think there's much lyricism." Kovusov said that he had been contacted by Sinelnikov around a month ago, and was ready to do a line-by-line translation of the president's works.

The Russian translations of Niyazov's poems done to date are "not totally satisfactory," Sinelnikov said. Nevertheless, Turkmen poetry has been translated very well by Russians, he said, citing the work of Arseny Tarkovsky, the father of filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. Sinelnikov said that he expected that "things would get moving" after the letters were published in the Turkmen media, and that the book of Niyazov's poetry would come out next year.

But last Thursday, Khudaiberdy Orazov, leader of the exiled Watan opposition movement, called the Russian poets' proposal "shameful." The president is a "very limited person" who "of course cannot write poetry," he said.

Sinelnikov pointed out that Niyazov is far from the only leader to pen verse. "In Russia, by the way, Ivan the Terrible wrote poems, as did Catherine the Great, Empress Elizabeth, and maybe even Peter the Great." Among current political figures, though, Sinelnikov could only name the former State Duma deputy Anatoly Lukyanov, calling his work "dilettantism, pure and simple."

"When a government leader writes poems, it has a good effect on his soul, and makes him softer," he said.

Perhaps the most prolific of Russia's recent leaders was Leonid Brezhnev, whose works were published in massive print runs, although they were widely assumed to be ghost-written. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein's first novel, "Zabiba and the King," was published in Russian by Amphora in 2003.

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