Ardakh Nurgaz. The Urn of Civilization
I pay close attention to the voice of poetry. But this "voice" isn’t simply the sound of poetry read aloud. Instead, it is the resonance that emerges when we read poetry silently—the way it spreads through us, a presence that exists beyond sound itself. Deep within us, this inner voice shapes our unique values. It defines how we live, what we desire, what we appreciate, and what we hold sacred.
Even our beliefs and inner strength are rooted in it. In religion, for example, it can be seen in the devoted steps of the faithful as they dedicate themselves to the Creator. Values form the foundation of faith, measured by the weight of every step we take. This is also the essence of literature’s significance. As Harold Bloom once said:
"The terms "power" and "authority" have pragmatically opposed meanings in the realms of politics and what we still ought to call "imaginative literature". If we have difficulty in seeing the opposition, it may be because of the intermediate realm that calls itself "spiritual". Spiritual power and spiritual authority notoriously shade over into both politics and poetry. Thus we must distinguish the aesthetic power and authority of the Western Canon from whatever spiritual, political,or even moral consequences it may have fostered…
Aesthetic authority, like aesthetic power, is a trope or figuration for energies that are essentially solitary rather than social… that William Shakespeare wrote thirty-eight plays, twenty-four of them masterpieces, but social energy has never written a single scene…
Canons, too, not unified props of morality, Western or Eastern. If we could conceive of a universal canon, multicultural and multivalent, its one essential book would not be a scripture, whether Bible, Koran, but rather Shakespeare, who is acted and read everywhere, in every language and circumstance."
Another name for value is spirit. It is the force that sustains the human soul, coexisting with the body yet never entirely yielding to its desires. It even has the power to govern the body itself. But this strength is not instant—it is the result of a long, continuous journey.
Abai expressed this well:
"Since the birth the child's life is composed of two different drives. One of them is the need to eat, drink and sleep, without which the body of a child cannot become a haven of soul, will not grow and strengthen. The second – is the desire to know. The child strives for everything it sees and hears: stretches to the shiny subject, tries it to the touch and the taste, seeks a rapprochement with dombra or a pipe, hearing their unusual sounds. As a grown-up, he is interested in absolutely everything: hearing a dog barking or sounds of the evening village, laughing or crying people. The child becomes anxious.
«What is this? », «Why is it so? », «Why do they do this? ». Adults lose rest from all the questions of a child. A person strengthens oneself on the earth, learning the secrets of natural phenomena or making certain conclusions. This distinguishes him from the animal, shows his soul, and tells about the allocation of mind. But why, growing up, do we lose this high desire to explore the world? Why do we, exactly the same way as it was in the childhood, not forget about food and sleep, when we are interested in something unknown? Why do not we go for the ones who create science and reveal the unknown?"
At first glance, it seems as if the spirit and the body each have their own turn, their own existence, their own time. Yet from the very beginning, they are one. And they remain one. Wislawa Szymborska has a poem titled Hatred:
Hatred was not originally bad.
It represented justice at first,
But then it ran ahead, alone—
And turned to hatred.
Just like justice and hatred in the poem above, the body and the spirit are also one. Yet, at a certain point, unlike the poem’s idea, the spirit surges ahead. I’m not trying to echo Ovid’s notion of civilization passing through "golden, silver, and bronze ages." Instead, I want to highlight the ongoing struggle between body and spirit—and how literature brings this struggle into focus as a defining element of its value.
For me, Greek philosophy holds immense significance, but ancient Greek history and culture captivate me even more. I cannot separate this fascination from the influence of John Keats’ poems Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to a Nightingale. A Kazakh translation of these two poems appeared in China’s Horizon magazine (Issue No. 1, 1988), translated by the renowned scholar and translator Azimkhan Tyshan. These works were first introduced to Kazakhstan in the February 10, 2007, issue of Foreign Literatures.
Keats’ Grecian urn, with its intricate designs, the people heading toward a sacrifice or festival, the graceful, demure girl, and the echoes of an ancient cultural past—these images have remained with me ever since. When I first read these poems, I was sixteen. Before that, I had grown up with the epic tales of Central Asia and Kazakhstan—Kambar, Er Targyn, Alpamys, Kobylandy—alongside the endless stories of One Thousand and One Nights and Kazakh folktales, which were an inseparable part of my daily life. Into this life, Keats’ Grecian urn and Nightingale entered, leaving their mark. Yet, until then, I had never consciously reflected on this connection. I was unaware of its presence. And now, as it emerges from the shadows, I can sense that it is tied to a particular moment in my life. In my recent poem Nightmare, I wrote the following lines:
The urn was broken on the ground,
Where have I been hurt?
When I revisited the poem after finishing it, I found myself drawn to these two lines. In our unstable world, where war and uncertainty loom like a recurring nightmare, these lines capture a moment of deep personal anguish. They also reveal the enduring literary values that speak to humanity across time—the very same Grecian urn from the past. The poem’s speaker asks: The urn was broken on the ground—where have I been hurt? This is the voice of the soul. And perhaps, today’s humanity must ask itself the same question. Here, the connection between cultural values and the human spirit becomes evident.
Looking back, I now realize that the image of an urn has appeared in my poetry before. In my poem A Garden of Trees: Meditations on the Postmodern Wars, the opening lines read:
The soul standing on the stone path of the garden
Woken from the dream—
The sound of a long-lost,..
… footsteps that had long since faded in the field.
The ruins of a broken jar
The statue rebuilt with the palm of a hand
The mud that had broken from the depths…
A Garden of Trees: Meditations on the Postmodern Wars was written in 2003, during yet another devastating war, much like today.
Poetry is not something one deliberately sits down to write—it arises from a sudden tremor of the soul. It is the unconscious distillation of the values we cherish, revere, and believe in, transforming into images within the poetic space.
Translated by Bayan Ardakh
Ардақ Нұрғазы. Өркениеттің қыш күбісі
https://adebiportal.kz/kz/news/view/ardaq-nurgazy-orkeniettin-qys-kubisi__10000055
A night at the theatre - Ardakh Nurgaz
https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/edition/vol-28-no-16
https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/uploads/file/pdf/new/180812.pdf
Ardakh Nurgaz. Foreword to The Street with Stone Steps: A Poetry Collection
https://www.thebilge.kz/e/action/ShowInfo.php?classid=33&id=4098
Түннен суырып алған түсім…
Ardakh Nurgaz. Dark
https://www.thebilge.kz/e/action/ShowInfo.php?classid=33&id=3891
Ardakh Nurgaz. Oil Paintings
https://www.thebilge.kz/e/action/ShowInfo.php?classid=33&id=3947