GRGR(16): a thing so awesome Even Dzambul could not sing it

[rj]

Jeremy Osner wrote:
> 
> Is the Kirghiz light a nuclear explosion? -- Because it sure sounds like
> one. But what I want to know is, who would be setting off nuclear
> devices in central Asia in the early days of WWII? Or am I mistaking the
> time frame of Tchitcherine's Kazakh sojourn? -- Because I wouldn't think
> the Soviets would have testable A-Bombs until after 1945...

It is Enlightenment of some description. I don't think it is the bomb,
although it could be, I guess. I once suggested that it might have
something to do with the Gnostic Light, or "Double Light", but the
resident experts at the time wouldn't have a bar of that either. Doesn't
the sun off the snow do strange things too?

> 
> The Aqyn's Song is wonderfully written. Does anyone know if
> transcriptions (and translations) of actual Kazakh folk poetry are
> available? In part I am interested to know what resources P would have
> had for researching this section; I am assuming he does not speak
> Kazakh.

I think by transcribing it the spiritual message and opportunity for
personal fulfilment of it are lost, both to Tchitchy, who does not
"reach ... his birth" when he eventually gets to where the song has
directed him, and for us in general. Its "truth" is not forthcoming to
the reader either. The point seems to be that Tchitchy is working for
Them at this point, and by writing the song down as if it were a
treasure map and then locating the Kirghiz Light from it he is intending
to take it back to the apparatchiks where it will be exploited, or
neatly labelled and filed away into a dossier. This is not possible
because it is a private, one-on-one thing with God, if you like. Once it
goes public it is corrupted and corrupt.

cf. 357.1-5
Tha ajyts, which is the coming together of a boy and a girl as man and
wife, an adolescent rite of passage in the culture endorsed and embraced
by the community as a group (and which, to Western eyes, could also be
viewed as "immoral"):

"The boy and girl go on battling with their voices ——— and Tchitchy
understands, abruptly, that soon someone will come and begin to write
some of these down in the New Turkic Alphabet he had helped frame . . .
and this is how they will be lost."

It is so ironic and so tragic for Tchitcherine that this is exactly what
he is doing with the aqyn's song (which is an emblem or expression of
devotional faith for this culture in the same way that the ajyts is a
part of the community's social development), but doesn't know it. Later
Tchitchy will meet Enzian but not recognise him either -- he never,
quite, gets the point.

best