Letter to Abai

Letter to Abai

Abai(Qunanbaiuly) was a Kazakh poet, composer and philosopher. He was also a cultural reformer toward European and Russian cultures on the basis of enlightened Islam. His name is sometimes russified to “Abai Kunanbayev”. The leaders of the Alash Orda movement saw him as their inspiration and spiritual predecessor. He left us a great legacy, therefore, it depends on us whether we could proceed to bright future with such fortune or not.

I think that Abai isthe  most remarkable person of his century and whole Kazakh literature. There is no man in Kazakhstan, who doesn’t know his name. After several months, there will be Abai’s one hundred seventy fifth birthday, which will be, without any doubt, as important as any other holiday could ever be. This essay is also written in honor of this event. Abai definitely deserves such attitude, because he was the one and only, who did a splendid job enlightening our nation, and he even sacrificed his own life when he realized that the world wasn’t ready to understand his wisdom. However, all of his efforts wasn’t in vain: they had significant effect on people of the future and on any human being, who might be interested in his thoughts. Abai is like a pillar of our culture, and there is a few reasons to think so. First of all, he wrote many poems that helped Kazakhs to increase the level of safe-awareness and to become more intelligent. Secondly, his actions also were very useful to people to come, because he was a true patriot and wanted to make his peoples’ lives easier and to make our nation flourish. That’s why we can say that Abai is main person of his time.

Abai’s general contribution to our culture and folklore lies in his poetry, which expresses great nationalism and teaches us life’s simple yet inevitable rules. Before him, most Kazakh poetry was oral, echoing the nomadic habits of the people of the steppes. During Abai’s lifetime, nevertheless, a number of important socio-political and socio-economic changes occured.

Abai Qunanbaiuly was a progressive person, who had an immeasurable influence on Kazakh nation, and we shoud be grateful to him for all of his deeds.

                                                                                                              Agmanov Rahmetolla