Iasyr Shivaza
Encyclopedia
Dungan
Dungans , called by Chinese and translated in Chinese language as Hui , are an ethnic group of Persian origin. The Dungans are dispersive people, comprising the majority population of Ningxia Autonomous Region, and scatter in other parts of China...
poet, writer, editor, and scholar.
Name spelling
The writer's name was spelled Jasƅl Sƅvazƅ in the Latin-based DunganDungan language
The Dungan language is a Sinitic language spoken by the Dungan of Central Asia, an ethnic group related to the Hui people of China.-History:...
alphabet that was in use in 1932-53, and Ясыр Шывазы in the modern Cyrillic Dungan alphabet. According to Rimsky-Korsakoff (1991), his family name, Shivazy (Шывазы), has the meaning 'the tenth child'; the expression could be written in Chinese as 十娃子 (Shiwazi). This kind of three-syllable family name is common among the Dungan
Dungan
Dungans , called by Chinese and translated in Chinese language as Hui , are an ethnic group of Persian origin. The Dungans are dispersive people, comprising the majority population of Ningxia Autonomous Region, and scatter in other parts of China...
people of the former Soviet Union.
Life
Iasyr Shivaza was born on May 18, 1906 in the village of SokulukSokuluk
Sokuluk is a large village with a de jure population of 11,968 in the Chuy Province of Kyrgyzstan.Sokuluk is the administrative center of Sokuluk District, and is located about 5 km away from the town of Shopokov, the main economic center of the area.-History:According to historians, Sokuluk...
some 30 km west of Bishkek
Bishkek
Bishkek , formerly Pishpek and Frunze, is the capital and the largest city of Kyrgyzstan.Bishkek is also the administrative centre of Chuy Province which surrounds the city, even though the city itself is not part of the province but rather a province-level unit of Kyrgyzstan.The name is thought to...
, in what today is the Chuy Province
Chuy Province
Chuy Province or Chui Province is the northernmost province of the Kyrgyz Republic. It is bounded on the north by Kazakhstan, and clockwise, Issyk Kul Province, Naryn Province, Jalal-Abad Province and Talas Province...
of Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan , officially the Kyrgyz Republic is one of the world's six independent Turkic states . Located in Central Asia, landlocked and mountainous, Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east...
. His parents and grandparents were born in China's Shaanxi
Shaanxi
' is a province in the central part of Mainland China, and it includes portions of the Loess Plateau on the middle reaches of the Yellow River in addition to the Qinling Mountains across the southern part of this province...
province, and came to Kyrgyzstan (at the time, part of Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
) from the Ili region in the early 1880s, after the defeat of the Dungan Rebellion and the return of the Yining (Kulja) area to China
Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1881)
The Treaty of Saint Petersburg , also known as Treaty of Ili, was the treaty between the Russian Empire and the Chinese Empire, signed in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on 12 February 1881...
.
In 1916, when he was 10 years old, he was sent to study at the village's Koranic school
Madrasah
Madrasah is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, whether secular or religious...
, and, as he mentioned later, it was only by luck that he has not become a mullah
Mullah
Mullah is generally used to refer to a Muslim man, educated in Islamic theology and sacred law. The title, given to some Islamic clergy, is derived from the Arabic word مَوْلَى mawlā , meaning "vicar", "master" and "guardian"...
, like the other three students who reached the graduation.
After the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
of 1917, Shivaza's father, Dzhudzhuza Shivaza participated in establishing Soviet power in the region, joining the Communist Party in 1919, and later becoming the chairman of the village Soviet
Selsoviet
Selsoviet is a shortened name for a rural council. The full names for the term are, in , , . Selsoviets were the lowest level of administrative division in rural areas in the Soviet Union...
.
Seventeen-year old Iasir Shivaza was chosen, by drawing lots (there were no volunteers), to go study at the Tatar Institute for Education of the Minority Group in Tashkent.
During the six years (1924–30) that he spent there, Shivaza, together with other Dungan students (Yu. Yanshansin, Kh. Makeev, etc.) started working on designing a suitable alphabet for the Dungan language, and writing poetry in Dungan.
After graduation, he spent two month in the fall of 1930 teaching at a Dungan school in Frunze (now Bishkek)
Bishkek
Bishkek , formerly Pishpek and Frunze, is the capital and the largest city of Kyrgyzstan.Bishkek is also the administrative centre of Chuy Province which surrounds the city, even though the city itself is not part of the province but rather a province-level unit of Kyrgyzstan.The name is thought to...
, participating in the creation of the first Dungan spelling books and readers. He was then transferred to an editing job at Kirgizgosizdat (Kyrgyzstan State Publishing House), where he worked until 1938, and then again in 1954-57. He continued both to work on textbooks for his people and to write poetry. At least three of his textbooks were published in 1933, and at 1934 he was admitted to the prestigious Union of Soviet Writers. He started translating Russian classics into the Dungan language as well, his translation of several Pushkin's poems being published in Frunze in 1937.
He worked for the Union of Kyrgyz Writers in 1938-1941, and then again in 1946-54. When the Nazi Germany invaded the USSR, he started to do war work, in Moscow and sometimes on the front lines, primarily writing and translating materials for the Kyrgyz-language
Kyrgyz language
Kyrgyz or Kirgiz, also Kirghiz, Kyrghiz, Qyrghiz is a Turkic language and, together with Russian, an official language of Kyrgyzstan...
news-sheets published for the 100,000 or so Kyrgyz soldiers in the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
.
The after-war period was a productive one in Shivaza's writing career. He also participated in the committees designing the new, Cyrillic-based Dungan alphabet, which was eventually introduced in 1953. In the 1950s he was finally able to meet Chinese writers from China, who would visit the Soviet Union at the time, and he made a trip to China himself in 1957 with a Soviet Dungan delegation.
As the Soviet Dungan newspaper resumed publication in 1957, Shivaza was appointed its editor-in-chief, holding that post until his retirement in 1965. The newspaper appeared for a while as "Сўлян хуэйзў бо" (i.e. 苏联回族报, Sulian huizu bao, 'Soviet Huizu Paper'), and was renamed "Шыйўэди чи" (i.e. 十月的旗, Shiyuede qi, 'The October
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
Banner').
Iasir Shivaza died on June 18, 1988.
Original works
Shivaza's literary production was ample and versatile. Along with politically loaded poems and stories, expected from any author who was to survive in Stalin's era, he wrote love poetry, poems out the past and present of his people and his land, about China, children's literature. Some of his poetry addressed to China, the land of his ancestors, welcoming the Communist revolution that was happening, or had just happened there.Soviet Dungans being largely separated from China's written culture, the language of Shivaza's poetry and prose - and the Dungan literary language in general - is closer to the colloquial, sometimes dialectal Chinese than to the traditional written Chinese.
He was, however, familiar with some of the modern Chinese literature, such as works of Lu Xun
Lu Xun
Lu Xun or Lu Hsün , was the pen name of Zhou Shuren , one of the major Chinese writers of the 20th century. Considered by many to be the leading figure of modern Chinese literature, he wrote in baihua as well as classical Chinese...
, but, since he never had opportunity to learn Chinese characters, he read them in Russian translation.
Poem sample: "White Butterfly"
Following is Shivaza's short poem, "White Butterfly", originally published in 1974, along with its morpheme-by-morpheme "transcription" into the Chinese characters and the English translation by Rimsky-Korsakoff (1991), p. 188-189.The poet writes of a butterfly, who is happy in the here-and-now of the spring, but who is not going to see the fall with its golden leaves. He appears to make a botanical error, however, mentioning a variety of chrysanthemum
Chrysanthemum
Chrysanthemums, often called mums or chrysanths, are of the genus constituting approximately 30 species of perennial flowering plants in the family Asteraceae which is native to Asia and northeastern Europe.-Etymology:...
among spring flowers, even though in reality they bloom in the fall.
Translations
Having participated in the creation of the Dungan alphabet and bringing literacy to the Dungan people, Shivaza also did a large amount of work in making literary works from other languages available in Dungan. He rendered a number of classical and modern works of Russian poetry into the Dungan language. He has translated a number of works by Pushkin, Lermontov, NekrasovNekrasov
Nekrasov, also Nekrassov , or Nekrasova , is a Russian last name and may refer to:-People:*Aleksandr Nekrasov , Russian mathematician and academician...
, Mayakovsky
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was a Russian and Soviet poet and playwright, among the foremost representatives of early-20th century Russian Futurism.- Early life :...
. He translated song lyrics by Lebedev-Kumach and prose works by Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
, Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
, and Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...
.
He also translated into Dungan some poems of the Ukrainian classic Shevchenko
Taras Shevchenko
Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko -Life:Born into a serf family of Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko in the village of Moryntsi, of Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire Shevchenko was orphaned at the age of eleven...
, of the Kyrgyz poets Sashylganov and Tokombaev, and even of the Belarusian Yanka Kupala
Yanka Kupala
Yanka Kupala — was the pen name of Ivan Daminikavich Lutsevich , a Belarusian poet and writer. Kupala is considered one of the greatest Belarusian-language writers of the 20th century.-Early life:...
.
Being fluent in Kyrgyz, Shivaza also translated some of his works into Kyrgyz.
Translation sample
Following are the first two stanzas of Shivaza's translation of Pushkin's The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman BaldaThe Tale of the Priest and of his Workman Balda
The Tale of the Priest and of his Workman Balda is a fairy tale in verse by Alexander Pushkin. Pushkin wrote the tale on September 13, 1830 while staying at Boldino. It is based on a Russian folk tale which Pushkin collected in Mikhailovskoe early on...
, its morpheme-by-morpheme "transcription" into the Chinese characters, and an English translation.:
Main source
- Svetlana Rimsky-Korsakoff Dyer, "Iasyr Shivaza: The Life and Works of a Soviet Dungan Poet". Verlag Peter Lang GmbH, 1991. ISBN 3-631-43963-6. (Contains a detailed bibliography and ample samples of Shivaza works', some in the original Cyrillic Dungan, although most in a specialized transcription, with English and sometimes standard Chinese translations).
Other literature
- Сушанло Мухамед, Имазов Мухаме. "Совет хуэйзў вынщүә". Фрунзе, "Мектеп" чубаншә, 1988. (Mukhamed Sushanlo, Mukhame Imazov. "Dungan Soviet Literature: textbook for 9th and 10th grade". FrunzeBishkekBishkek , formerly Pishpek and Frunze, is the capital and the largest city of Kyrgyzstan.Bishkek is also the administrative centre of Chuy Province which surrounds the city, even though the city itself is not part of the province but rather a province-level unit of Kyrgyzstan.The name is thought to...
, 1988). ISBN 5-658-00068-8.