Guest of the ilb 2003
The lyric poet Gennady Aygi was born in 1934 as Gennadi
Nikolayevich Lisin in Shaimursino in what today is the Chuvash
Republic. He belonged to the Chuvash ethnic minority, an ethnic group
distantly related to the Huns. His assumed Chuvash name means »he over
there«, »the same one«. His first poems in the 50's were published in
the Chuvash language. The volume of poetry with which Gennadi Aygi
wanted to conclude his studies in 1957, at the famous Gorky Literature
Institute in Moscow, was declined. Inspired by his friend, the Russian
poet Boris Pasternak, Gennady Aygi wrote exclusively in Russian since
1960 - in an attempt to use language to overcome his outsider position.
In 1964 he was nevertheless banned from publication; this lasted for
about 25 years. Despite this isolation Gennady Aygi, who Roman Jakobson
referred to as the greatest living Russian poet, soon made a name for
himself in Germany and France. In Germany, the 1971 volume »Beginn der
Lichtung« (t: Beginning of the Clearing) secured his position as an
acclaimed poet. He translated Dante and Lorca, Mayakovsky and Walt
Whitman into his native language and he is editor of an anthology of
Chuvash poetry. His poems have been published in 23 countries,
translated into 44 languages and received numerous prizes including:
the lyric poetry prize of the Académie Française (1972), the
Petrarca-Prize (1993), and the Boris Pasternak Prize (2000). Aygi's
poetry draws upon the Chuvash folk tradition and is rooted in deep
orthodox faith. A multitude of literary influences can also be
discerned in his work. These include French symbolists like Baudelaire
and Rimbaud, and the Russian futurists around Mayakovsky.
Characteristic of Aygi's composition principle is the extreme reduction
and intensification of language, which has been made possible by
breaking open classical poetical forms: Aygi was not interested in
describing the world, but in »abstractly making phenomena in the world
absolute by means of the poet«. He added: »My works are not symbols,
metaphors or allegories. My work is about being woken up by a piercing
light, where a human pike - the word - intentionally becomes unclear,
where the human being is reconciled with nature and the universe.«
Gennadi Aygi died in Moscow in 2006.
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