Was born in Baku in 1960. He lives in Krasnoyarsk. A member of the Union of Writers of Russia and other writers ‘organizations of Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan, a member of the Russian Geographical Society, a member of the Eurasian Peoples’ Assembly, a member of the PEN International Writing Club.
The author of 60 books of poetry and prose. Laureate of the State Literary Prize of the Governor of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous district, laureate of the National Prize “Silver Feather of Russia”, “For the Good of the World”, “North is a Country Without Borders”, silver medal of the IV All-Russian Literary Festival of Festivals. Silver medal of the IV Eurasia Literary Festival of Festivals.
EXCEPT YOU…
I tore all your photos.
But it did not help. I remembered you.
I went very far and never came back.
But it did not help I remembered you.
I met with others and was loved.
But it did not help. I remembered you.
I got drunk – like dead, like a shoemaker, like a tramp, like the last creature.
But it did not help. I remembered you.
I got married, had children, became home-grown.
But it did not help. I remembered you.
I’m getting old. Everything is eroding from memory.
Everything. Except you.
Translated by Sir Brian Tomlinson
PRAYER ABOUT YOU
I beg You, My Lord, give the Man, who is reading these entries, all that s/he begs You for! Give it to him/her full measure, as only You can give this way! And let him/her be happy in all his/her days, and if not possible, at least to some extent. Oh Lord, give him/her good health and love of family and friends, understanding, and sympathy… Make his\her inner man to shine perennially with love to all existence. Shield him/her from swear-words, bitterness and grudging, wars and deaths, misery and mental anguish. If all this is destiny, do not leave him/her, give consolation. Save all that is precious to him/her on earth. Even if it is late to beg for it, do not deprive him/her of memory … I am not aware if the worshipper reading this prayer is believer in You. But even if s/he is not: help him/her! Let him/her not feel alone but be needed and loved… Oh My Lord, the most Merciful and Compassionate! Fulfill my wish! Fulfill it in a way that, before I close my eyes, I could say: “Bless You, my Lord! You hear my prayers”!
Translated by Isa Akhadov
BROTHERHOOD AND IMMORTALITY OF POETS”
I have something to sing about before God, I have something to justify my life before Him”, – wrote the poet Vladimir Vysotsky a few days before his death. These words are fair to every real poet . The language of poetry is united, for it is the language of images and feelings. And if there is any non-poor meaning in our earthly existence, it is in poetry, music and painting, in the creative perception of reality, rather than in the quantity, for example, produced and eaten sausage or drunk bottles of milk. Man is the source of spiritual existence and in this sense is the cause of the star sky. Poets feel it first of people.
It’s not easy for every persons to understand. A perfectly erudite, deeply talented and respected person around the world, whose name I cherish very much, objecting to me, said roughly this: “What do poets of different countries have in common? Nothing! They write in different languages. It is music that has one language of sounds, painting – one language of paints: they are clear without translations. Are poets able to learn all the languages of the world in which their poems are written?! Not. So they will never understand each other and talk to them about nothing, because it is impossible. “But I believe that people who speak and write poems in different languages are able to understand the common language of poetry, the language of artistic images – The most common language of all mankind, more ancient than the language of writing and oral speech, for man began to have the right to be called man from the moment when he first felt the beauty of the world regardless of any personal bodily material benefit and felt the great joy of life. It was at such a moment that the first poetic, not elementary (eat, sleep, reproduce) perception of the world was born! Till birth of the written language ! And even before the birth of the oral speech!I cherish all poets, whatever languages they speak. For poetry is not only words, but also pauses between them. A poet is an attitude to life and nature.
The poet is easily vulnerable and sincerity. And for these qualities, verbal speech is, if important, still not the only thing that distinguishes poetry from everything else. One time I thought this thought: I write poems in Russian because I know it better than other languages. But if I didn ‘t know the Russian language at all, I would still become a poet – in any other language that I would own better than the others. I think that, the same other poets can be said about themselves : if they are poets, first they are people, then – poets, and already after – Russians, English, French, Chinese, Arabs and so on.This is what one of the world ‘s most authoritative poets, Professor Richard Berengarten of Cambridge University, answered my reasoning: “Dear Eldar! I agree with you 100% about the universality of poetry. I have written exactly the same idea about writing in English. Warm greetings, Richard”.So it ‘s not that important what language the poet writes in and whether he writes at all or just reads by heart like a once great blind Greek named Homer. A poet is a way of life. Way of thinking. It is naked sincerity. Whatever language the poets speak, their souls speak the same language.There is an obvious benefit to each poet from meetings with his foreign-speaking colleagues. It is that, having met and met, poets begin to translate each other ‘s poems into their native languages. But are the speakers of different languages poets of the world able to understand the feelings, meanings of speech and peculiarities of the poetry perception of a colleague who speaks a different language? Capable, and how!
In this I am eloquently convinced by the words from the letter of the beautiful Italian poet Paolo Ruffilly, who wrote about my lines remarkable in accuracy and image sincere words: “His poetry is difficult to translate into another language, for it uses a meaningful polyphony of word meanings, penetrating the mind with ghost waves of visualizations.” Not every Russian-speaking poet would be able to so subtly grasp the very essence of this “difficulty of translation”! And Paolo could. Not because he ‘s Italian, but because he ‘s a man in the first place, a poet in the second, and then everything else.
“Poetry is the white flag of the world, it is the only thing that unites all mankind, the army of poetry is feelings that break out of the limits of the human heart,” – wrote me once the famous poet from Costa Rica Clara Sanchez. And she is right. A lot of languages are spoken by people. Each of them is beautiful and worthy to learn it. But there is one language that is close and understandable to everyone without learning. It is the poetic language . It is owned by nature, it is spoken by the universe, it is spoken by our feelings.
And as long as there is at least one living soul in the world – it is immortal.One day my good friend, the Uruguayan poet Eduardo Espina wrote to me, “Dear Eldar, we are eternal, never forget it.” From the point of view of utilitarian logic, what he wrote to me is impossible… But from the point of view of poetry – it is an absolute truth!
ELDAR AKHADOV
