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DOI: https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2022.53.05.32
How to Cite:
Dudareva, M.A., & Mukasheva, M.T. (2022). National existence in the cycle of R. Otarbayev’s stories "Gosters from
China". Amazonia Investiga, 11(53), 332-335. https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2022.53.05.32
National existence in the cycle of R. Otarbayev’s stories
"Gosters from China"
НАЦИОНАЛЬНОЕ БЫТИЕ В ЦИКЛЕ РАССКАЗОВ
«ГОСТИНЦЫ ИЗ КИТАЯ» Р. ОТАРБАЕВА
Received: April 15, 2022 Accepted: May 16, 2022
Written by:
Marianna A. Dudareva134
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4950-2322
SPIN: 5362-0507
Manshuk T. Mukasheva135
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9085-8670
Abstract
The object of the article is traditional and artistic
Kazakh culture. The subject is the manifestation
of the national tradition in the story "White
Heavenly Butterflies" from the cycle "Hotels
from China" by the modern Kazakh writer
Rakhimzhan Otarbaev. The material for the
article is the creative heritage of the writer.
Much attention is paid to the folklore and Sufi
traditions in the work, which are expressed both
explicitly and implicitly. The research
methodology is reduced to a holistic
ontohermeneutical analysis aimed at highlighting
the folklore, ethnographic paradigm of this story.
Much attention is paid to the musical code in the
story, since for the Kazakh culture music is the
primary element from which the universe, the
world tree, is born. The results of the study are
to identify the cultural potential of the story of a
modern Kazakh writer for further study of the
national image of the world of Kazakhstan. The
results of the work can also be used in teaching
courses on the culture and literature of the
peoples of Russia and the CIS countries, cultural
studies, and philosophy.
Keywords: Kazakh culture and literature,
folklore, Sufi tradition, symbol, national image
of the world, R. Otarbaev.
134
Doctor of Culturology, Candidate of Philology, docent, Russian Language Department No. 2, Institute of the Russian language,
RUDN University, Russian Federation.
135
Candidate of Philological, Head of the Department of Journalism, Atyrau State University named after H. Dosmukhamedov,
Kazakhstan.
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Introduction
It is always difficult to describe someone else’s
national cosmos, since a “journey” into a
different national existence is equated with
death: a researcher of culture must abstract from
his national image of the world, in the language
of G. D. Gachev, and sink beyond the waterline
of national existence, approach other being. But,
according to the scientist, this is always a “not
graceful” and apophatic thing, since the
researcher runs the risk of being dissolved in the
apeiron of this culture: “the national character of
a people, thought, culture is a very cunning and
difficult to grasp matter. You feel that it exists,
but as soon as you try to define it in words, it
often disappears…” (Gachev, 2008, p. 46).
However, due to the integrativity of cultural
studies as a science, it is precisely for a cultural
scientist that it is possible through literature,
history, culture, philosophy to form a holistic
view of someone else's national cosmos. As
I. V. Kondakov notes, culturology “...doesn’t
quite fit into the theoretical discourse” and
already includes such aspects of knowledge as
artistry, philosophy, politics and associativity
(Kondakov, 2005, p. 13), which indicates its
syncretic nature. But it is precisely this syncretic
character that makes it possible to turn to
different spheres of humanitarian knowledge,
different forms of art and penetrate deeply into
the national existence of any people.
Materials and methods
Reflections on the national image of the world of
the Russian and Kazakh peoples in their
comparative vein can also be productive in the
ontohermeneutic analysis of the artistic cosmos
of the two cultures, since both in Russia and
Kazakhstan, literature is closely connected with
the folklore tradition and mythological ideas
about the world. Of course, the nature of this
connection is different, the question always
arises about the forms of folklorism (researchers
have long raised the question of secondary and
latent forms (Smirnov, 2001; Nalepin, 2009,
pp. 280-281). But immersion in cultural poetics
obliges the researcher to take into account this
fact of on going cultural vertical transmission.
Turning to the creative heritage of the modern
Kazakh writer Rakhimzhan Otarbaev, known in
Russia for the translations of his works published
in thick literary magazines [Youth, 2016,
Roman-gazeta, 2017 (Otarbaev, 2019b), we must
apply the method of ontohermeneutic analysis
aimed at identifying national "a priori" in his
work, since Otarbaev belongs to the type of
writers who are closely spiritually connected
with the history and even historiosophy of their
people. In Russia, the writer became widely
known precisely due to the publication of his
story "The Lament of Genghis Khan" in the
magazine "Youth": "In this work, the writer turns
to his story, reflects on hoary antiquity, showing
the problems of modernity through a large
historical plan” (Dudareva, 2019, p.4). But this
article is devoted to another famous cycle of the
writer - "Gifts from China", translated into
several languages of the world, and the central
work from it - the story "White Heavenly
Butterflies".
Results
The plot of the story is extremely understandable
and simple, from an everyday point of view: two
lovers, Dauren, a trousers merchant at the bazaar,
and Alima, who sells cheap water at the same
bazaar, cannot be together, since everyone lives
a hard poor life and each chooses acceptable
conditions of existence. The young man betrays
his beloved and marries, under pressure from his
elders, the daughter of the owner of the bazaar,
which turns into a tragedy for everyone, namely
the death of Alima. This story, on the one hand,
is about the difficult life and customs of the
Kazakh people, on the other hand, it is about the
moral choice of a person, about the spiritual side
of life, which people forget about in the hustle
and bustle of days. But there is something eternal
that calls a person, apophaticly manifests itself in
the real life and reminds of itself through some
details and symbols. We understand
apophaticism here, following the thanatologist
philosopher K. G. Isupov, as a property of being,
as something incomprehensible, sacred, which
prepares a person already in the bottom world for
a meeting with the Other: “the extra-mundane
meaning of the sacred Meeting “accumulates” in
the bottom space sanctified being” (Isupov,
2010, pp. 558-559). In such an ontological
context, the work turns out to be a semantically
charged image-symbol of white butterflies -
these are the souls of the ancestors, to which the
girl Alima joins, and as a result of the tragedy,
the main character Dauren. Butterfly as an
intermediary between the world of the living and
the dead, it is difficult to catch, but it is a symbol
of the beauty of the world, inaccessibility and
invisibility, the butterfly appears at the turning
point in Dauren's life: a vision that came from
another world. My eyes tingled, as if they were
covered with apple flowers” (Otarbaev, 2019a,
p. 740). The path of a hero is the path of a
suffering, growing soul, the path of a butterfly.
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What is the genealogy of this image in Otarbaev's
story? Studying the early Kazakh folklore, we
find the kuy of the same name "Kөbelek", from
which the dance subsequently grew, it was staged
in 1959, and it entered the repertoire of the
Kazakh State Philharmonic named after
Zhambyla (Kaliyeva, 2017, p. 28). But, perhaps,
Rakhimzhan Otarbaev, who knew folklore well,
being a professional philologist, transferred this
state of folk dance to the metaphor “the path of a
butterfly”, “circling / fluttering of a butterfly”.
Butterflies appear in Dauren’s dream at the very
beginning of the story: “Again chasing white
butterflies, exhausted, withering his throat, he
woke up” (Otarbaev, 2019a, p. 730). And this
image is connected leitmotifically with the
symbol of water, which the main character
constantly lacks: “... Disappearing-appearing,
arising-disappearing, he walked for a long time.
Towards the market. And so every day. Thirst,
unquenchable thirst haunts...” (Otarbaev, 2019a,
p. 736). In addition, the reference, which
precedes the story, to Firdowsi's thought about
the labor of an ant, his patience, which brings a
sweet life, is interesting and not accidental, to
which Saadi, another Sufi classic, also drew
poetic attention:
How sweetly the impeccable Ferdowsi
conveyed,
May his pure resting place be blessed,
Don't disturb the ant dragging the seed
Because he has a life and a sweet life. (Otarbaev,
2019a, p. 730)
The ontological state of the hero is hidden in the
semantics of the name Dauren, it is also
ambivalent: the young man, on the one hand,
constantly thinks about the future, looking for a
better life, selling trousers at the market, taking
care of his piglet and how he would not be
deprived of his income: “Dauren, whom we are
talking about, was selling trousers in a huge
bazaar in a big city. A huge bazaar, but on a small
patch, where the basin of a skinny tomato trader
could barely fit. He laid out in piles, causing
ripples in his eyes, white, blue, black pants ...”
(Otarbaev, 2019a, p. 731). On the other hand, he
is in a state of eternity, merges with it, tormented
by an unquenchable thirst (of love), when he
meets the beautiful Alima, who supplies water:
“Even souls were traded here, and he would
never have entered this quagmire of his own free
will ... But here was Alima. The same girl selling
water at the entrance to the bazaar, between
whose eyebrows exactly in the middle there is a
mole the size of a millet grain. Yes, yes, she!
Every time I sold trousers, I drank her water
several glasses in a row” (Otarbaev, 2019a,
p. 732). The situation is archetypal in nature - the
water is tasty (for a young man, a potential
groom), it quenches thirst when the hero is in
love, loves this world and is satisfied with little,
although for others it is yellow and unusable (this
is how Syrgaly, the daughter of the owner of the
bazaar, characterizes her).
Water in Kazakh folklore is associated with life
and death, it can bestow immortality. Let us
recall the Kazakh fairy tale about Iskander and
the water of immortality, which the hero could
not drink, because, although he conquered the
whole world, he didn’t overcome human vices
(Kostyukhin, 1972, p. 157). But this Kazakh tale
is free from moralizing, “reproaches to Iskander
for greed and insatiability” (Kostyukhin, 1972,
p. 157), the reader himself draws a conclusion.
So Rakhimzhan Otarbaev doesn’t condemn the
hero, but subtly leads the reader to comprehend
the moral choice of Dauren, on the one hand,
betraying his beloved Alima, who was expecting
a child from him, on the other hand, marrying the
rich daughter of the owner of the bazaar for the
material prosperity of his family, old mother.
The symbolism of water is closely connected
with the sound musical code in the story - Alima
laughs loudly when Dauren comes to her for
water. The girl's laughter is likened to a ringing
that awakens love in the hero's soul: “There was
a ringing laugh. Not just laughter, but the sound
of broken glassware that filled the air. Since
then, he began to look not for water, but for this
ringing, pleasing to his ear. Ringing! – and now,
invisible to the eye, it splashed in the air”
(Otarbaev, 2019a, p. 732). In Sufi religious
beliefs, which greatly influenced Kazakh culture,
much attention is paid to sound, music: “music
becomes” suitable for souls” and is able to
influence them by virtue of its correspondence to
what is already in the soul” (Fedorova, 2014,
p. 68). Dauren's soul was already in anticipation
of love, the hero was constantly thirsty, which
sounds like a leitmotif in every part of the story.
After meeting with Alima, Dauren hears this
wonderful ringing that makes him live, but after
his betrayal, the hero ceases to be attached to the
music of the spheres and therefore his being
tends to death: “I smiled, but the glassware did
not break. She surrounded herself with an
invisible sadness” (Otarbaev, 2019a, p. 737).
Sufi philosopher Hazrat Inayat Khan notes: “He
who knows the secret of sound knows the secret
of the whole universe. The sound of the abstract
always continues inside, around and around a
person. As a rule, a person does not hear him
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because his consciousness is completely focused
on material existence” (Khan, 1997, p. 342).
“The artistic thinking of the people is intertwined
with its ethical ideas, clothing the ethical views
of people in specific sensual images merged with
such ideals as honor, valor, nobility, kindness”
(Kulbekova, 2008, p. 255), notes the researcher
of the culture of the Kazakh folk dance. So, in the
story with the symbolic title "White Heavenly
Butterflies" life and being are intertwined, where
the latter is manifested through symbols, secret
signs sent by Allah to the hero on the path of his
tariqa. The task of Rakhimzhan Otarbaev as an
artist is to lead the reader to a moral choice, and
not to condemnation. The path/dance of the white
butterfly is the path of the human soul in the
realm of two worlds.
Conclusion
Immersion in the national space of Kazakhstan
through literature, namely the works of the
modern writer Rakhimzhan Otarbaev, is
productive in terms of cultural comparison of
different national images of the world, in our
case, Russian and Kazakh life. The prose of the
modern writer is deeply symbolic, inspired by the
national folklore tradition, filled with Sufi
symbolism, which creates an ontological plan in
the story "White Heavenly Butterflies". Exits to
the symbolic space are carried out with the help
of the image-symbol of white butterflies, the
motif of water and unquenched thirst, the sound
(glassy laughter of a girl) associated with the
music of the national cosmos.
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