Without Books, There Is No Literature

24.06.06

LITTERA BALTICA. A place in time, Turku, June 11, 2006

Dear Audience,

I am going to introduce you briefly into the story of Mari literature and try to involve you into the context of it. Literary works in Mari language began to appear in the 18th century. The first works were experiments of writing church hymns. At that time, the Mari people were part of the Russian Empire, the name we use nowadays is Russian Federation. Our Mari lands were colonized in the 16th century and Russian Empire has never been interested in promoting or supporting in any way the culture of the peoples it has colonized. This is well reflected in the history and development of our literature as well.

Mari people belong to two religions: some of them practice the Orthodox faith, others while following the canons of the Orthodox Church, also go to worship Pagan deities in the holy groves. Religion plays a great role in forming the identity of Mari people. One of our poets said: “I am entering into the forest as into a church”. In the 19th century active efforts were made to convert the Mari people to the Orthodox religion. With this aim in view, the Russian church had to publish books in the Mari language. This contributed to the development of Mari literature . Revolutions at the beginning of the 20th century gave a great impulse to Mari literature. Like the Norwegians, we Mari have two languages: Lowland (Meadow) Mari and Highland (Hill) Mari language. Both languages are based on the Cyrillic alphabet. As for me, I speak and write in Highland Mari language. There are 620 000 of us the Mari, of whom 8-10 % are Highland Mari. Nobody can tell exactly how many we are – there has not been held any population census. 

Although I said that the beginning of Mari literacy dates back to the 1700s, literature proper was born only in 1900s and it could not develop systematically: just as it managed to begin to blossom it was caught by cold mist. This can be observed both at the beginning of the 19th century, as well as during Stalin’s regime and in 1996-2006. Of great importance in the birth of our literature was the series Mari calendars which were published in 1905-1912 in Lowland Mari language. After that, their publishing was forced to stop, and Russian police sent the editors of the calendar to exile. At Stalin’s era nearly all poets and writers were subject to repressions. Those who had remained working in the field of literature wrote works the main purpose of which was to suit the Communist Party and official policy. Such situation lasted up to the 1960s. Nevertheless, there appeared good Mari writers. Sergey Chavayn (1888-1937) is considered to be the founder of Mari literature. His most famous poem bears the title Grove , and has been translated into several languages. Also the names to be mentioned are playwright Shketan (1898-1937) and the first novelist Nikon Ignatiev. By tradition poetry occupies the main place in Mari literature, that is why we have more poets than writers of prose. Now for the first time, this tendency has began to change. Prose writers dominate among younger authors. Valentin Kolumb is the best known among Mari poets. His poetry has been translated into other languages, and in Finnish his poems appeared about three years ago. At the present moment, among those active in poetry, we should point out names like Ondrin Valka, Vitali Petukhov and Vlad Samoylov. They write a lot and their works are published in literary magazines. 

The biggest problem for Mari literature is related to publication. During the years 1996-2006 the number of books in Mari has been decreasing, for example in 2004 only three books in Mari language were published. Is this enough for a nation of 600 000? It is a cultural disaster! In every country, the government considers supporting its language, education in the native language, writing literary works, as one of its top priorities. In Mari El, they have promulgated a lot of laws concerning this matter. But we only have them on paper: those documents exist just to claim that “everything in the sphere of supporting language and literature is in good condition”. 

To my mind, the most important and the biggest problem among all others in Mari literature, is that of publication of children’s books. By the way, the last published book in Highland Mari, financed from the state budget, came out in 1998. For eight years children have not seen books in native language. Although books that appear with sponsors’ money do indeed help at times, they do not essentially change the whole situation. I think that this is the government’s task to include in its budget the program of publishing children’s books. 

Now I would like to tell briefly about my own literary work

Chronologically, I first began in the Tsikmä magazine. Significant changes in Mari literature took place at the beginning of the 1990s, our literature began to modernize, revive and freshen up. Books appeared regularly and the atmosphere was favourable, so it was not very difficult to found a new magazine – this was what our cultural life in fact demanded. The magazine was given the title Tsikmä which is the name of the town Kozmodemiansk in Highland Mari language. This word had not been used in our language since the 1930s, and now this word has come back into our language which I believe happened to a great extent due to the Tsikmä , and this name has begun to spread among people as well. The journal is being issued owing to the sponsors’ help in Finland. Tsikmä is known among cultural circles as a magazine that makes experiments and introduces its readers into foreign literature. The most part of the magazine is taken up by translations. In ten years its readers (the first issue was put out in 1995) got acquainted with Finnish, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, French and Greek writers’ works. Before the Tsikmä journal there nearly were no works translated into Highland Mari at all. I think that Tsikmä plays an important role in strengthening Mari literature. A new issue of the magazine is to be published this summer. I hope that young readers and authors will take interest in it. 

Being the editor of Tsikmä and preparing the material for it, I have had to do nearly all the work by myself, beginning with writing articles and finishing with the layout. It is a very interesting and encouraging work, especially the process of translating foreign authors’ works. For the most part, works of Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian authors have been translated, including Pentti Saarikoski, Rosa Liksom, Veijo Meri, Marja-Liisa Mikkola, Jaan Kaplinski, Viivi Luik, Paul-Erik Rummo, Endre Ady and others. 

I consider one of the main accomplishments to be the translation of Mika Waltari’s novel Sinuhe. While giving interviews and meeting with readers, they usually ask me “Why did you translate such a thick novel into the Mari language? What made you do it? What is the motivation?” I suppose that among you there are people who have read this novel. It has been translated into 40 languages. 

First of all I would like to say that Sinuhe is the most broadly known novel in Finnish literature. People read it and love it. Not long ago in Helsinki at Esplanadi Boulevard I had the occasion to the following scene. The weather was good and usually in such a day citizens and tourists like to go for a walk. I was also walking there, and suddenly a pretty girl in fashionable clothing caught my eyes, and she was holding Sinuhe in her hands. How wonderful, I thought. In Helsinki even fashionable women read Sinuhe.

And now, what made me set this work into my native language? The novel is very complex, and a lot of social classes are presented there: from the very poor up to the Pharaoh. The interesting thing is that all of them are “thinking”. They are thinking and reflecting over their life, why they have been given their life, over one’s role in life, why one comes into being and so on. People in Sinuhe are living within their social layer, the family, and the class you were born into will remain forever with you: norms of behavior, life stile, culture of wearing dresses and of having meals. Meanwhile there are always people who are ready to break down these obstacles and codes. They do it by their eagerness to study. A man who has received education and knows foreign languages will find himself in a higher layer than that of his parents. Taking for example Sinuhe himself: reaching Pharaoh’s court, he became his closest doctor. Pharaoh’s life and death depend on him. 

Social questions are thoroughly described in Sinuhe. We can see the ties between politics and religion, politics and culture, religion and culture. A lot of subjects are put forward in the novel, but it seems to me that the most important is the subject of antimilitarism. One of the reasons to think so is that the novel was written in 1940s, the events World War II making a deep impact on the author. 

The question of morality is being mentioned a lot of times: the underlying line of the novel is respect for men, their personality, their individuality. Every person has a right to be individual. He can be proud of his culture, his language, and of himself. No-one should oppress anybody, and should not consider other peoples’ culture and language better and higher than that of himself. I think that this kind of moral emphasis was high on the agenda in in the Europe of 1940s. It was the time of the foundation of the U. N., the charters of which included all of these morality issues.

Why am I talking about this now? Maybe those who live in Europe, particularly in the European Union can take these thoughts as surprisingly redundant but in contemporary Russia and Mari El these are urgent questions. The position of Mari culture and Mari literature may be an indicator of the situation in the society as a whole. 

As for Finnish literature, we should bring out Alexis Kivi’s novel The Seven Brothers. This work played a very important role in Finnish literature, in fact being the first novel. Seven Kinsmen: seven men who reflect the character of the nation and why only of the Finnish nation? There are such kinsmen in every nation. My character is similar to Eero’s. Maybe we are alike. 

I have been interested in Estonian literature since long ago. That is why my first work in translation was connected to with these belles lettres. One of my favorite novels in Estonian literature is Viivi Luik’s The Seventh Spring of Peace. I have translated it into Highland Mari. The novel, written in 1984, raised a big resonance in the Soviet Estonia of that period, there were big discussions over it. Those who supported their nation glorified the novel, and of course there were people who disparaged the novel. Translators should know about those situations. They show the value of such works in the original language. It may also happen that in translation into another language these works start to play another role. By the way, in Mari literature Viivi Luik’s novel is the first big work at all, translated from a foreign language. 

Anton Hansen Tammsaare is an author whom after reading once we want to read again and again. There is a kind of energy in his texts which draws the reader to itself. Last year Tammsaare’s book The King and the Nightingale was published in Mari. It included miniatures, The Old and the Young, and two dramas, Judith and The King is Cold.

One more subject I want to touch upon is feminism. I suppose that feminism is still a taboo in Post-Soviet countries. People know that it exists but they speak little about it. It is somewhere far away and not quite with us. In Scandinavian countries feminism is being topical for more than a hundred years. This issue takes a lot of space in Ibsen’s and August Strindberg’s works. Minna Canth developed the subjects of feminism and philosophy in Finnish literature. It is astonishing that the works of this author began to experience a renaissance; nowadays people again take interest in it. It is well-known not only in Finnish cultural life, but also in Parisian cultural circles. This year Minna Canth’s book will be published in Mari language as well. 

As I mentioned before, in recent years writing and publishing children’s books is in a catastrophic situation in Mari El. The authors even try to publish their books on their own money, and I am not an exception either in this respect – I translate by myself, I find grants for translation by myself and I also look for sponsors to publish the books. It is nice that we have been able find them so far. 

In Europe there are a lot of good writers of books for children at this time, that is why it is not easy to choose an interesting one out of them, but nevertheless, I decided in favor of Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson. Among the works of Astrid I have translated the three Emil books (Emil i Löneberga). Before I began to translate them I thought that Emil is exactly that kind of boy who can win the sympathy of Highland Mari children, and it seems to me that, indeed, I was not mistaken. I heard that this Emil now lives in the Hill Mari region too, he speaks the Hill Mari language, schoolboys and schoolgirls write compositions about him and even draw Emil pictures at the art lessons. In such a way a Swedish boy turned to a Hill Mari. Isn’t this exactly the task of culture and literature? A character who was born in one culture surmounted obstacles and began to live in another culture. This year Hill Mari children will see a new book of Astrid – “Peppy the Long Stocking” (Pippi Långstump). If the readers like it, we will see with time. 

As for Tove Jansson’s Mumitrols, I would like to begin with one story. For the purpose of introducing the text I translated, nearly ten years ago, a short passage of it and sent it to a school for children to read. It was with the illustrations of Mumitrols. I wanted to know the reaction of the children. It was good news – children read this work with pleasure and wanted to read the whole book. But this project will be realized only this year. The first three books about the Mumitrols, Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen, Kometen kommer and Trollkarlens hatt will be published in the Highland Mary language. 

Besides our literary work and the work of enrichment of our people’s culture, we should put energy into ”daily bread” as well. Modern people have a lot of hobbies: somebody plays golf, others play tennis, buy yachts, go to hockey and football matches – all these demand time and investments. As for me, I have chosen translation into my native language as a hobby. Really, it is close to a hobby, but at the same time I feel easiness at heart – the work in the native language gives me strength, I feel that I am required by my nation. I know that I will never become rich from doing this work, but I am an optimist – the work I am doing will not be lost for nothing. I consider writing in native language for minority peoples like Hill Mari very necessary, especially at the present time of globalisation. If small languages, small cultures disappear, life too will be monotonous and dull. Nowadays in Europe much work is done in this respect: countries and governments try to support and strengthen small languages and small cultures in different ways. It is a pity that this cannot be seen to happen in the Russian Federation. Sometimes they even do quite the contrary. This is clearly indicated with the publication of Mari books, too. 

If people do not write and read in their native language, their language can disappear very quickly. In order not to let this happen for Mari language and Mari culture, we should see more books published. How can this be done? So far, cultural foundation s in Finland and Estonia have backed us a lot. Authors who are listening to me, who are present here, maybe there are some funds available in your countries? If you have them, may I ask you to help me to find them and develop contacts. This way we can help young Mari writers and translators. In doing so you will help to support our literature. Thank you! 

Along with the translation work, I have managed to publish two of my own books . The first one is a book of poems , called Greetings to the Land of Tigers, the other one, The House on the Bank of Sura is a collection of short stories. Reflections about the future of my native people take much space in both books. There are symbols and colours of my nation used: oak is an important tree symbol for Mari people which can be met with frequently. Besides that, the three colours of Mari people: black, white and dark red. Black is the symbol of earth; white, according to the tradition, is the symbol of Mari people who like white clothes; and dark red - people’s life and blood. 

I can say that my poems are in the spirit of etnofuturism. The etnofuturistic trend appeared in the 1990s among Finno-Ugric writers and painters who lived in Estonia. Now this trend is developing in different ways. As for me, I combine it with postmodernism, using the main elements of my nation as symbols. 

And now I would like to recite you my poems. 

Poems by Valeri Mikor