Publikacijos SOME REMARKS on the TURKIC MYTH in RUSSIAN FICTION

ISSN 0258-0802. LITERATŪRA 2014 56 (3)

Publikacijos

SOME REMARKS ON THE TURKIC MYTH IN RUSSIAN FICTION

Fatima Eloeva Vilniaus universiteto Klasikinės filologijos katedros profesorė

О Русь моя, жена моя! До боли нам ясен долгий путь Наш путь стрелой татарской воли пронзил нам грудь.

Oh, Russia, my wife! To the point of pain The long road is clear to us Our way, like ancient will’s Tatar arrow pierced our breast. (Alexander Blok, In the field of Kulikovo)

The title of this paper allows for several in- is no us without the idea of otherness, no terpretations. I originally intended to speak union without division. So, somewhat de- exclusively about the way in which Turkic pressingly, it turns out that the concept speech is rendered in Russian fiction, aim- of otherness is essential for any culture – ing to provide a purely linguistic analysis. without it the process of self-identification Looking at the material, however, it was is impossible. On the other hand, during immediately clear that there is such an certain periods of time and for various intimate relation between linguistic ex- reasons, self-identification matters less; in pression and issues of self-identification, such cases we are dealing with syntagmatic otherness, nationalism and cosmopolitism rather than paradigmatic relationships, that it would be impossible – and, more with a combination rather than an opposi- importantly, pointless – to remain within a tion – and we realize that the concept of the purely linguistic framework. Other continues to be extremely important, Ever since Ferdinand de Saussure first tending not to be rejected but inevitably in- stated that there is nothing in language ex- tegrated into the concept of Self. The lat- cept oppositions and similarities, we have ter, more or less, seems to be the case with tried to explain our perception of the world Russia and the Turkic element. from this perspective, and the structural ap- One of the main symbols of the Rus- proach has proved to be very fruitful. There sian state is the famous “Monomakh’s

57 shapka” – the crown of the Russian tsars, Russian culture – firstly German in the era traditionally assumed to be the crown of of Peter the Great and then French (in Rus- the Byzantine emperors brought from sian aristocratic society of the 19th cen- Constantinople to Russia. In actual fact, tury a kind of bilingualism existed) – can it was an oriental cap – golden and dec- be characterized as paradigmatic. In these orated with filigree work and sable fur – latter two cases we have an opposition; we and came from Middle Asia, presumably are talking about the perception of the role as a gift from Khan Uzbek to the Russian of these elements on the synchronic level, prince Ivan Kalita (Uspenskij, 2002: 97) in the present time. in the 14th century. This oriental cap be- It is traditionally claimed that most bor- came the crown of the Russian tsars and rowings occur on the lexical level. Words later was reinterpreted, strangely enough, are borrowed easily from other languages, as the crown of the Byzantine emperors. whereas morphological borrowings are ex- Both Byzantine emperors and Tatar khans tremely rare, indeed almost impossible. were called “tsars” in Russia. The idea of However, it is worth mentioning that a “tsar power” was sacred in Ancient Rus- number of Russian words which are now sia, and so for the Orthodox church the tsar interpreted as belonging to the autochtho- was the Byzantine emperor, whereas for a nous archaic lexicon and sound Slavonic – great prince who owed his power to the Ta- such as zodchij “architect”, lovchij “hunt- tar khan in the epoch of the Golden Horde, er” – consist of a Russian stem with the the “tsar” was the Tatar khan. suffix /chi/, derived from the Turkic {ČI}, The magical transformation under- a very productive suffix expressing agen- gone by the Asiatic golden cap, whereby cy. This linguistic example sheds light on it turned into the ancient crown of the By cultural attitude, since no ordinary speaker zantine emperors, is highly revealing se- would ever perceive this suffix as a bor- miotically and shows how the perception rowing nor even be aware of the Turkic of the tsar’s power underwent change in origins of the suffix /chi/. It is also worth Ancient Russia. noting that all the words which contain Discussing the problem of language the borrowed Turkic suffix of agency have contact, Paul Kretschmer once claimed Slavonic stems. that when a borrowing has occurred a In the same way, a phenomenon which long time ago, it stops being classified as we may call “Turkic intonation” consti- a borrowing and can be interpreted as an tutes part of our polyglossia, and in Rus- autochthonous lexeme in the language. A sian literature in most cases it can be in- similar conclusion can be drawn with re- terpreted as an interplay between different spect to cultural contact, since it is evident voices, not Bakhtin’s dialogue but some that the relationship between Russian cul- kind of polyphony. Naturally, this phe- ture and the Tatar-Mongol element is (as nomenon could be interpreted in terms mentioned above) mostly syntagmatic, a of Orientalism, a theory which, as is well case of combination and not opposition, known, is based upon an ontological and whereas the interconnection with other epistemological distinction between the cultures which have greatly influenced Orient and the West. The Orient is adjacent

58 to Europe; it has helped to define Europe hostile and became intricately connected as a contrasting place in terms of image, and intermingled with the idea of Russian personality and experience. It seems that identity. in certain cases – and Russia is far from In certain periods and for certain poets being the only one – Turkic oriental fea- and writers, the Tatar–Russian opposition tures became inherent in Russian culture (we have to remember here that both terms and mentality. The well-known Russian are to a large extent conventional) became proverb “scratch any Russian just a little a very important means of expressing the and you will discover a Tatar underneath” idea of motherland and their own identity. certainly possesses many connotations. It seems that there is actually no other way In the present paper, I shall give a brief to express the idea of motherland, of be- and fragmentary sketch of how the ways of longing somewhere than to resort to this interpreting the Turkic elements developed opposition. in the Russian tradition. Within this frame- We shall concentrate on the Silver work, several issues need to be considered: Age – arguably the most important and 1. The way in which the Turkic Ta- meaning feature of Russian poetry. On the tar-Mongol dominion contributed threshold of the Russian Revolution, great to the formation of the idea of the Russian poets, who always played the role Motherland in Russian mentality. of prophets in Russia, were trying to solve 2. The way the Turkophone characters the mystery of Russia, the Russian soul, in Russian fiction are described. the future of Russia. 3. The interpretation of Turkic ele- In the poem “На поле Куликовом” / ments by the Russian romantic epis- “On the field of Kulikovo”, traditionally temic tradition. learnt by school children as an example of 4. Orientalism in the mirror of Russian patriotic verse, Alexander Blok, one of the fiction. greatest Russian poets, wrote: From the moment the Russian epic Oh, Russia, my wife! To the point of tradition was formed (here we are talking pain about the famous Russian bylines – poems The long road is clear to us about heroes), the images (and the ety- Our way, like ancient will’s Tatar mologies of the names) of all the enemies arrow of the heroes – the Kalin tsar, Nightingale pierced our breast. the Brigand (who kills his victims by whis- tling unbearably loudly) and the never- For the quotation I chose the transla- dying Koshej – all possess features which tion of Donald Rayfield (a brilliant British go back to Turkic tradition. At this early Slavist) who decided to translate the word stage of Russian literary tradition, it is still воля /volia/ as “will” (the arrow of Tatar mostly a matter of the Tatar–Russian, evil– will). Here, we are immediately drawn into good, darkness – light oppositions. How- problems having to do with the difficul- ever, in later periods, as mentioned above, ties of translation and the cultural differ- the influence of the Tatar-Mongol culture ences reflected in different languages. As ceased to be an expression of something was once elegantly demonstrated by Anna

59 Verzbitskaja, the Russian /volia/ cannot mous shawl. This statue of Akhmatova be translated into any other language; the was designed by her friend, the sculptor word has many connotations in Russian Elena Danko, a fact which we mention be- and combines two ideas – “Freedom” and cause it was very important for the poetess “Will”. It also has some connection with not only to be a Russian muse, but also to the idea of “Open Space”. Pushkin wrote look and sound like one. While her poetry in one of his famous poems: “There is no has a masculine intonation, she deliber- happiness in this word but tranquility and ately played a feminine role all her life. In freedom”, where we have translated volia order to fulfil that role in the tragic times in as freedom. So, a Russian reading Blok’s which she was destined to live, and write, text will not be able to ignore the other she needed not only a tremendous talent connotations of the word volia, and the but also incredible courage. Throughout passage /streloj tatarskoj voli/ might well her life Akhmatova contemplated and be translated as “the arrow of the Tatar’s moulded both her poetic production and freedom”. The latter is highly suggestive her own image – from the very beginning of Russian mentality and the Russian per- it was very important for the poetess to be- ception of motherland: the very idea of come, and to remain, a Russian muse, and national identity cannot be separated from so her decision to change her name from the Tatar presence – our way as the ancient the common Ukrainian Gorenko to the no- arrow of the Tatar’s will, or the Tatar’s ble and refined Tatar Akhmatova is quite freedom piercing our way. important semiotically. Her poetry often It is no coincidence that one of the plays with the idea of her Tatar connection, most famous and charismatic Russian po- and here there is certainly some sort of ets – and the real muse of Russia – Anna mythologisation and stylization going on. Akhmatova changed her name from Anna Gorenko (of Ukrainian origin) to Akhma- Мне от бабушки татарки tova, a Tatar name adopted from her Были редкостью подарки maternal great grandmother. It is worth И зачем я крещена mentioning that Akhmatova’s family may Горько гневалась она. not actually have been actually Tatar: the family legend had it that in the epoch of А пред смертью подобрела the Golden Horde the Akhmatov family И впервые пожалела followed the example of many other noble И вздохнула «Ах, года! families and chose to adopt a Tatar name Вот и внучка молода». because such a name was connected with the idea of prestige and power. И простивши нрав мой вздорный, Anna Akhmatova was arguably one of Завещала перстень черный the most beautiful women in the context Так сказала: «Он по ней, of Russian culture, a potent symbol of the С ним ей будет веселей». Silver Age; in antique shops in Russia one can still buy a charming porcelain statue From my Tatar granny showing her standing, wrapped in her fa- I seldom got gifts

60 She could not stand that was certainly the Holy Fool. He wrote They baptized me. “Preserve my speech ” while desperately trying to survive exile in Voronezh where But before her death had been sent for having written an incre She became more benevolent dibly bold anti-Stalinist poem. It was obvi- And sighed – How the years pass ous to him that exile would be considered Look – my granddaughter is already a far too mild a punishment and that another, young girl. much more fitting penalty – death – was to follow. He was perfectly aware of this, and She pardoned my bad temper yet “the adrenalin of fear spurred him on” And gave me a ring with a black stone (Rayfield, 1993: 25). By contrast, poems She said: it suits her written by his contemporaries in praise of She will wear it and be merry. Stalin were usually of poor quality. Mandelshtam starts his poem intending to praise the tyrant but is unable to control Akhmatova’s close friend Osip Man- himself and his tragic and reckless muse. delshtam had no Tatar roots or memories As we shall see below, the truth was that whatsoever; he belonged to the generation he could neither praise the tyrant nor write of Jewish poets in Russian literary tradi- bad poetry: tion who abandoned Yiddish and German for Russian. During the First World War he Сохрани мою речь за привкус wrote the wonderful poem “To the German несчастья и дыма language” in which he pays homage to За смолу кругового терпенья, за German culture. Mandelshtam’s poetry be- совестный деготь труда longs within the vast framework of Euro- Как вода в новгородских колодцах pean culture, and he is certainly one of the должна быть горька и сладима most cosmopolitan Russian poets. Here, I Чтобы в ней к Рождеству shall examine his famous poem “Сохрани отразилась пятью плавниками мою речь” / “Preserve my speech”. The звезда. poem was written in the tragic time of Stalin’s purges during which many poets И за это мой друг и отец и tried to praise Stalin in order to survive помощник мой грубый the holocaust, a fact which can be inter- Я непризнанный брат, отщепенец в preted within the more general framework народной семье of the relationship between tyrant and Обещаю построить такие poet. In his article “Stalin, Beria and the дремучие срубы Poets” Donald Rayfield remarks: “A myth Чтобы в них татарва опускала of Russian literature is the iurodivy, the князей на бадье. Holy Fool, who questions tsars with impu- nity. That right, practiced long after Ivan Preserve my speech for its aftertaste of the Terrible, becomes surrogate dialogue” unhappiness and smoke (Rayfield, 1993: 23). In the context of the For the pitch of collective patience, for Russian Silver Age, Osip Mandelshtam the conscious tar of labor

61 The water of the black wells has to be points, the symbol of the Bolshevik revo- bitter and sweetish lution; the star’s five fins are reflected in So that by Christmas the star’s five fins the water, and the fins in turn bring to mind will be reflected in it. a fish, a Christian symbol for Jesus. Such a flow of associations is very And for that, you, our father, friend characteristic of Mandelshtam. In the sec- and rude assistant ond verse he appeals to his father, friend I – the rejected brother in the people’s and rude assistant, promising him to build family such huge wooden wells that the Tatars I promise you to build such huge will be able to drown Russian princes in wooden wells them. Given that he promises this to his That the Tatars could drown the interlocutor, one may ask whose side he is princes in them. on and why he should have to rehabilitate himself – on the one hand, calling himself Interestingly enough, this poem – a rejected brother in the people’s family, which is not particularly transparent for while on the other he is promising to the the reader and contains many hidden father of the nation to build wells in which meanings and allusions – is sometimes the Tatars will be able to drown princes. learnt by schoolchildren. Like Blok’s “On It is evident from this stanza that he iden- the field of Kulikovo”, it is regarded as a tifies himself and Stalin with the Tatars. patriotic poem, because while being forced Whether or not he meant this from the to express his devotion to Stalin, Osip very beginning, we shall never know; we Mandelshtam actually speaks about his may view it in terms of submission to the love for his mother tongue. And from the dictates of language. There is one other in- very beginning, he expresses this love in teresting detail: in the first stanza the star his own unique way – the poem is written is “drowned” in the dark wooden wells, as a prayer. The question is who is the poet whereas in the second, we have the image appealing to: God or the tyrant? Presum- of the Tatars drowning the Russian princes ably to both. In his prayer, the poet asks in these same wells. that his speech be preserved for its “af- This theme could be continued. How- tertaste of unhappiness and smoke”. The ever, the aim of this paper was to demon- first lines and the way the poem continues, strate the complexity of the interpretation with images of black wells and the pitch of the Tatar-Mongol component in the pro- of patience, takes us back to the dark days phetic voices of the great Russian poets. of the attacks by the Golden Horde or the Another subject, of some anthropologi- destruction of Novgorod by Ivan the Terri- cal interest and worth discussing in this ble (the link “Ivan the Terrible-Stalin” was context, is the mythologizing approach to the most popular historic metaphor of that the earliest stages of the relationship be- period, and Stalin himself was very fond tween the Russians and Turks, in which of the allusion). The Christmas star under- myth serves as an instrument of scientific goes several metamorphoses – first it is the analysis. Of course, the latter statement Christmas star, then the star with the five appears to be oxymoronic, since myth

62 is supposed to be strictly separated from position in the academic world was am- scientific research and interpretation. The bivalent. Official historiography has never evolution of human thought and the inter- accepted him, accusing him of producing pretation of the world would appear to be theories which are not based on reliable in constant opposition, and yet this opposi- arguments. It is not my aim here to estab- tion is valid only on a theoretical level; in lish the scientific value of Lev Gumilev’s practice, the two can often be combined. theories; however, I believe that this work This is true in the case of the famous Rus- provides support for this paper’s main the- sian scholar Lev Gumilev – the son of sis that Turkic elements are very important Anna Akhmatova and Nikolay Gumilev, in Russian self-identification and for the an outstanding Russian poet. Nikolay Gu- corresponding, rather positive, approach milev produced a very interesting inter- to Turkic influences on the cultural level. pretation of the theme of Orientalism in In his books Ancient Russia and the Russian poetry and was subsequently per- Great Steppe and Turks (1989), Lev Gumi- secuted by Lenin’s government in the first lev discusses the role of Tatar and Mongol wave of the red terror, accused of having elements in the formation of the Moscow participated in a plot against the Bolshe- State and the rebirth of Russian ethnic- vik Government. Lev Gumilev in his turn ity after the period of Mongol domination was arrested twice and spent sixteen years in the 13th to 15th centuries. In his book in prisons and concentration camps. As From Rus to Russia (1992), he analyses he once bitterly remarked, he spent eight the choice made by the Russian national years behind bars for his mother and eight hero and saint, the prince of Novgorod for his father. Alexander Nevsky: finding himself in an An extremely talented scholar, his extremely difficult situation when the in- first scientific interests were history and dependence of the Republic of Novgorod oriental studies. His years of imprison- was under threat, he preferred a union with ment had a significant influence upon his the Tatar khan Batyi (Tatars as non-Chris- scientific style which became extremely tians were quite indifferent to Christian expressive and often resembled a detec- religious matters) to the two alternatives, tive story or historical novel. He also left namely subordination to Rome or collabo- very interesting texts which illustrate the ration with Swedish and Teutonic knights sad enrichment of his language due to the (who were also Catholics). According to many years he spent in prison amongst Gumilev, Alexander Nevsky saved Russia criminals, for example, “The History of by pursuing this policy, since otherwise it the Netherlands”, a strict historical work would inevitably have become assimilated written in the criminal jargon. Some of his into Catholic culture. books (for example, From Rus to Russia) For many years Lev Gumilev lectured were deliberately published without a bib- at the Geography Faculty of the Leningrad liography – this also can be interpreted as University. Hundreds of people came to his a reflection on the years of imprisonment, lectures, for he was extremely charismatic when books were not available to him. For and popular, and his style of narration was many reasons (partly political), Gumilev’s lively and informal. Sometimes it seemed

63 that the stories he was telling were fairy about it but it was accepted by the general tales of his own invention, while at other public with great enthusiasm and became times he gave the impression that he had extremely popular. This suggests that, actually been witness to some of the events on the level of myth, the idea of a close he was describing. This often irritated his connection between ancient Russian and more academic–and often rather dull–col- Turkic elements is inherent in the Russian leagues. On the other hand, he always had mentality. plenty of admirers from outside the aca- Turkophone heroes are encountered demic world. It should also be mentioned fairly frequently in Russian fiction – in that, although he was a definite turkophile, Konstantin Aksakov’s The Years of Child- he was always admired and valued in na- hood of Bagrov-grandson, in the Cauca- tionalistic circles. Nikita Mikhalkov called sian novels of Bestuzhev-Marlinski, in him “the last poet of history”. the prose of Tolstoy and Lermontov and Another noteworthy name in this con- in Gorky’s At the Bottom. One can easily nection is Olzhas Suleimenov, a well- continue the list. known Khazakh poet whose book Аз и я / The language we encounter in this fic- Me and az (where az is the Old Russian for tion is in fact neither Turkic nor Russian “me”) recalls the title of Gumilev’s From but evidently some sort of pidgin. Before Rus to Russia (where Rus is an Old Russian commenting on this, however, a few words ethnonym). The book analyses the famous are in order to regard the character of the poem “Слово о Полку Игореве” / “Song Turkic-speaking heroes who are usually of Igor’s Campaign” (hereinafter Slovo), portrayed as extremely naive and noble, which is thought to have been written in pure and generous, continuing the Rous- the 12th century and describes the defeat seauan idea of the return to nature, a cer- of the Russians by Tatar troops in 1185. tain kind of personality uncorrupted by ci Analyzing Slovo, Olzhas Suleimenov hy- vilization. Interestingly, in some cases it is pothesizes that Turkic-Russian bilingual- unclear whether we are really dealing with ism existed in the 12th–13th centuries. He a “Tatar” idiom or just with some generic claims that Russian has a long history of Caucasian language ; in Hero of Our Time, co-existence with Turkic languages, since for example, Lermontov refers to the Tatar from the very beginning of its history in the language even though the character Bella is 9th century AD Russia was in contact with Circassian. There are two possible explana- nomadic tribes of Khazars, Pechenegs, and tions for this: either the actual language was Tatars. Analyzing the “obscure passages not important to Lermontov – and in any and words” in Slovo, Olzhas Suleimenov case, there was a tradition of calling all Cau- finds Turkic etymologies for them. As in casian languages “Tatar” and interpreting the case of Lev Gumilev’s works, I shall them as such; or (which is also quite likely) not discuss the scientific value of Olzhas there existed a lingua franca in the Cauca- Suleimenov’s book; what is interesting sus, which was some form of Turkish. for us is the fact that its fate was some- There are supposed to have been a large what similar to that of Gumilev’s books. number of Russian-based pidgins, which The academic world was rather skeptical are often claimed to have emerged when

64 Russians came into contact with the peo- another, in spite of the different degrees ples of the Caucasus, Siberia, the Urals, of accuracy of the documented texts. Nu- and Central Asia. Most of the pidgins be- merous quotations from Russian litera- came extinct and were never documented, ture demonstrate that the pidgin tends to surviving mainly in the form of quotations be centered around a verbal stem, which in fiction and in various memoirs and trav- is usually imperative, sometimes with the el diaries. With very few exceptions, these Russian imperfective form added to it, fragments are not adequate linguistically: and occupies the last place in the phrase. while it is usually possible to identify This immediately brings to mind the clas- them as being based on Russian, they are sical Turkic sentence structure with its too short to study properly. Nevertheless, usual SOV word order. The next stage examples of Tatar-based pidgin in Russian of investigation might then be a detailed fiction seem to be quite numerous. analysis of samples from the speech of Importantly, the samples of Russian- the Turkic-speaking characters of Russian based pidgins are all very similar to one literature.

REFERENCES

Гумилев, Лев, 1992: От Руси к России. Rayfield, Donald & Hicks, Jeremy & Makarova, Moсква. Olga & Pilkington, Anna (eds.) The Garnet Book of Гумилев, Лев, 1994. Древняя Русь и Великая Russian Verse. London: Garnet Press, 2000. Степь. Moсква. Sulejmenov, Olzhas, 1975. Аз и Я: Книга Гумилев, Лев,1994. Древние тюрки. Moсква. благонамеренного читателя. Aлма-Aтa. Ivanov S. A., Simo Franklin, 2006. Holy Fools Uspenskij, Boris, 2002: „Восприятие истории in Byzantium and Beyond. Oxford: University Press. в Древней Руси и доктрина „Москва – третий Perechvalskaya, Elena, 2002. Russian-based Рим“, Етюды о русской культуре, Санкт- pidgins. Санкт-Петербург. -Петербург, 89–149. Rayfield, Donald, 1993. Stalin, Beria and the Poets. London.

Gauta 2014-06-02 Autorės adresas: Priimta publikuoti 2014-06-16 Vilniaus universiteto Klasikinės filologijos katedra Universiteto g. 5, LT-01513 Vilnius El. paštas: [email protected]