Russian Media Shares İnformation on the Novel “Azadliq”

The Russian literary community has met with great interest the book “Selected Works” by Afag Masud published last year by the “Khudozhestvennaya Literatura” Publishing House (Russia). Analytical articles and reviews about the literary pieces included in the book, such as the novel "Freedom" and short stories, have been published in the Russian press. In its today’s edition the “Literaturnaya Gazeta”, Russia’s leading newspaper, has published an extensive interview with the writer that reflects a complete picture of her thoughts. The interview entitled “The Mystical Secret of Freedom”, along with the analysis of the novel “Freedom”, includes the author’s views on the overall picture of Azerbaijani literature and other issues.

     - Mrs Afag, in your book "Selected Works" (the novel “Freedom” and short stories) you touch on topics related to the subconscious to varying degrees. To what extent do you think the issues of subconsciousness and freedom are interrelated? In other words, can’t person be free even in his subconscious? Is it possible to be free in general?

     ‒ I think this is one of the eternal topics – the most mysterious and secret one that requires endless research of the eternal creation of a human being. In the Quran, Almighty God refers to man as follows: “I created you free.” These words, of course, are addressed to the first human being created, Adam and Eve. However, human history, events, documents and facts, as well as reality and life, show that this free person hasn’t been free for centuries and is not free now as well. I think that the root cause of this is that fateful moment, described in all religious and heavenly books ‒ the fall of a man into temptation and his expulsion from Paradise. The rest of the troubles, as well as the problem of freedom, which has been fought for thousands of years, but never achieved, I think, begins here. Temptation, a man who is drawn to the lower levels of materialism by his relentless appetite, and the delusions and sins that are superimposed on whirlwinds of false ideas, endless desires, inspired in him about himself and about the world around him, thick report notebook and so on and so forth.

Strange as it may seem, no matter how many centuries have passed, a civilized person is a person who was expelled from Paradise from the point of view of his spiritual memory and subconsciousness. I think this is the story of the “right to freedom” that conditioned his participation in real life, his thoughts and actions, which he sought in the illusion of injustice and obscurity and which he could never get. Obviously, despite the fact that, throughout the history, all nations and peoples of the world had fought for democratic values, a free society, the ideals of enlightened freedom, and considered it the highest value of human life, the Right of Humanity, but in the end nothing had been achieved. Neither in the society, nor individually. So, it had existed in this way for thousands of years, and I think it will always be so. And when you delve deeper into this matter, you reach the threshold of inexplicable, mystical truth. So, you begin to guess that it is impossible to understand the bitter truth about this freedom, which means that it can be a forbidden goal, as well as about the universe and its boundaries. I think it’s a divine obstacle, the highest sentence. What freedom is at stake? About what freedom can we talk, if a person, not to mention others, is condemned to death, oldness, sickness, depends on the state of his health and organs, temperature of the air, etc.? And if we consider that the Universe itself is not so free, and that all the stars, solar systems, galaxies and planets continue to move in a perceived, well-designed and unified system, then what is a person, who is not even the tiniest dust as a percentage of the universe, looking for something on a scale of all this greatness?

‒ Does the novel "Freedom" reflect your views on the events that took place in the history of Azerbaijan? Or are you interested in the mystery of dreaming? Concerning the human being’s powerlessness before this sacred, inexplicable world of vision the novel clearly demonstrates the person’s equality, regardless of any social status or social position.

‒ “Freedom” is considered a historical and psychological novel. It can also be characterized as such. Political and social events in Azerbaijan in the mid-1980s, popular uprisings, events on Freedom Square, a puppet government that, due to illiteracy and inexperience, dragged the country into the abyss, the tragicomic adventures of representatives of the state, and so on.

The novel continues to resonate with what is happening today in many countries of the world in terms of human freedom, the problem of political and social freedoms, the square movement and so on, and meets the interest in every country. This is the first, that is, the top layer of the novel. But there are other layers of the novel too. The unfreedom that we have just talked about is not only the unfreedom in real life, even in a lonely bed, where no one can break into, in dreams. Regardless of human will, becoming a participant of events and situations that take place in the secret labyrinths of the subconscious, in the areas of mysterious sleep and so on show that the root of this problem, that is looked for in social life and in reality, goes much deeper.

It is strange that the theme, that is, the fact of human’s unfreedom, as well as the line of dreams and consciousness, somehow exist in all my works. Even in my early stories. In the novel “Freedom” this topic is studied more fundamentally ‒ against the backdrop of the entire historical stage. The work was not built intentionally, it almost turned out itself. The important political events that I witnessed in the 1980s, the realm of dreams that has always troubled me, are somehow reconciled in this work with a spontaneous, mystical adaptation, and I think this is just the main reason for success of the novel “Freedom!” Although, masses of people roamed the streets, they didn’t know what it was in fact; Academician who with his scientific research on human existence, unconsciously penetrates into some kind of neutral, forbidden zones and is killed there; General, who loses in his subconscious, and Veyisov, a psychiatrist who is trying to save these people from the destruction of mysterious dreams, but disappears there... This is such a territory that does not recognize any political or social status, hierarchical rank, authority, and so on. There all are equal.

  - How do you assess the state of modern Azerbaijani literature compared to the Soviet era?

- Today strong literature is emerging in Azerbaijan. This was observed in the works of the middle generation, as well as young writers. Since ancient times, the Azerbaijani literature has provided the world treasury of ideas with an incomparable treasury of the artistic word, both in qualitative and quantitative terms. The shining path started with Afzaladdin Khagani, Nizami Ganjavi, Mahammad Fizuli, Imadaddin Nasimi still continues today. Sure, the Soviet ideology greatly affected the literature of Azerbaijan and the literature of other CIS countries. Many talented writers created numerous false ideological works. However, at that time, serious literature, which was not subject to any regime, was emerging. Poets and writers such as Mammad Said Ordubadi, Jafar Jabbarli, Huseyn Javid, Aliaga Vahid, Mikayil Mushfig, Mir Jalal, Anvar Mammadkhanli, Mammad Araz, Musa Yagub, Isa Huseynov, Sabir Ahmadov wrote unprecedented works regardless of all regimes. This process continues today too, and the general picture shows that the ‘Word Seed’ of this land is fruitful, and it will give the world many nutritional ‘fruits.’

- You have translated the works by Marquez, Wolf, Cortazar, Borges. Which great difficulties did you encounter while translating and why?

- The most difficult work for me was Marquez's “The Autumn of the Patriarch.” This work, as you have probably read, is extremely difficult and complicated in terms of narration and language, with confusing, phantasmagoric descriptions, events and situations, feelings and thoughts expressed in one sentence of the two-page size, and sure, the translation also has its own difficulties. At first glance, the spontaneous flow of thoughts and emotions, not based on any logic and traditional worldview, loss of boundaries between the past and reality and others complicate the translation not only in terms of expressions of abrupt changes in the text, but also in terms of sudden changes in the state of the author while passing from one page to another. During the translation, I was sometimes impressed that Marquez had deliberately created all this complexity, thought and imagery. The author did not want to confuse the reader with his virtuoso skill, words and ideas. He aimed not to introduce the world as a monotonous socium, but as an incomprehensible, mystical world full of secrets and codes that is not perceived by the human mind.

- Who has had the greatest influence on the formation of your views? Which of the Russian classics is closer and more interesting to you?

- I think that the great Russian literature had an important influence not only on me, but on writers all over the world. Without reading Gogol, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, it is difficult to get a complete picture of a person, his character. They're teachers. These geniuses, who were able to study the secrets of the human heart and its inner world microscopically, almost at the level of tissue, made an unparalleled contribution to the world treasury of ideas. But this is not the end of the line. That is, we are talking about literature, about the path of great and compassionate literature. There is no end to this path ‒that is, the path of studying man, the world, the mystery of being. As the Sufis say: “If a person lives a thousand years and tries to understand the truth for these thousand years, he will not be able to do it.” Sure, in the history of world literature there are those who came after the “conquered territories”, and everyone moves forward along the path to the best of their ability and understanding, discovering new territories untouched by human breath. Thus, the path stretches to infinity. This is a serious literary path, without an end. In this sense, those who say “There is nothing new in literature, what is being written today is a repetition of what has once been written in another form” are mistaken. The lines of a human hand and the patterns of snowflakes do not repeat each other. Neither do double vision, feelings and thoughts.

- Thank you very much, Mrs Afag, I’d like to express my deepest gratitude for an interesting interview.

Prepared by: Lyudmila Tarasova

AzerTAC

24.10.2018