‘Contemporary Literature of Russia’s Peoples. Poetry’: Kalmyk and Tuvan Poetic Compositions Included in the Anthology

Abstract

The article discusses the dialogue of ethnocultures within the anthology titled ‘Contemporary Literature of Russia’s Peoples. Poetry’. The case study of contemporary Russia’s literary processes through works of Kalmyk and Tuvan poetry makes it possible — to a certain degree — to identify its present-day state, examines the existing literary contacts and interrelations, including by means of Russian-language literary translations of compositions by national poets, reveals the translation problem faced by national literatures of our country. Goals. The article presents poetic collections of Kalmyk and Tuvan poets, reveals ethnic worldviews of the Turko-Mongolic peoples through the use of Russian translations. The novelty of the work lies in the fact that this is the first study of Kalmyk and Tuvan poetic lyrics in the format of a modern anthology of literature of Russia’s peoples as a presentation of ethnic poetry for a wide range of Russian-speaking readers. Materials and Methods. The comparative method delineates specific features of Kalmyk and Tuvan poetic works, identifies mental and individual vectors of authors. In terms of gender, the anthology contains works by Kalmyk men poets only. Kalmyk poetry is represented by 5 authors, Tuvan poetry — by 3 authors. The distinctive line is the age. The selected works include none by representatives of senior or junior generations which evidently attests to the fact, on the one hand, there is a problem of generational change and, on the other hand, the compilers faced quite a challenge when it actually came to select authors to be introduced in such anthologies. In genre perspective, both the sections seem to have little to do with the traditional poetic structures and patterns; so, there are some borrowed genres of ballad and poetic legend without any mention of post-modernist experiments. Still, the thematic landscape is traditional enough: motherland, genealogies, national history, nature of ancestral lands, love, and family. The Tuvan poems by E. Mizhit are published in the author’s translations (a bilingual poet), works by the other poets — in V. Kulle’s translations. Results. The study of modern Kalmyk and Tuvan poetry in this book in a comparative aspect reveals similarities and differences in cultures of the Turko-Mongolic peoples, artistic pictures of the world inherent to related ethnic groups.

Keywords

• anthology
• contemporary literature of russia’s peoples
• literary process
• kalmyk and tuvan poetry
• translation