Qozoqboy Yoldosh. Harmony

Looking back over the history of world civilisation, one sees that there have always been certain shortcomings in nurturing a true Personality and bringing it to maturity. In this respect, the rule that teamwork is the guarantee of victory has proved itself to some extent not only in sport but in literary studies as well.

Approaches to literature have diversified. Literary scholarship seems to have stopped performing its former role of “sanitary inspector”.

Thus, in today’s world — made up not of individuals with identical traits but of complex, heterogeneous personalities with diverse characteristics — the establishment of freedom of thought has created as many difficulties for scholars of literature as it has brought conveniences to writers. For scholarship requires dealing with regularities, and regularity demands universality. Universality matures in the lap of tradition. Today, however, not following traditions is becoming a tradition in artistic creation. Still, it is heartening that there remain among us critics who approach literature and literary studies with a vision of their own, both scholarly and practical.

The first distinctive feature of Professor Dilmurod Quronov’s scholarly work is that he is able to turn his philosophical and theoretical knowledge into a reliable tool for examining literary works. That is why he can penetrate to the essence of any difficult scholarly problem. For instance, he regards artistic creation as the product of a gifted person’s need to know the world and to express his thoughts and feelings about it. He particularly stresses that the need for expression is no less powerful than the need for knowledge. Regarding the creation and reading of a work of art as a form of aesthetic communication between people, Dilmurod writes: “…the material basis of a literary work is the text composed of linguistic elements, that is, speech that has taken place in time and been fixed by means of writing.” Such an approach implies that speech, being always addressed to someone or something, naturally gives rise to communication. The scholar reinforces this view: “…the literary work is in essence communication.” He notes that a writer, even while still writing a work, has a certain reader in mind, however vaguely, and enters into communication with that reader: “…the artistic text is a deferred… communication, and the work of art is the means that ensures this communication takes place.” He makes the view more concrete still: “…a literary work is, first of all, a phenomenon of speech: the creator of a literary work is a person delivering speech, and accordingly the reader of a literary work is a person listening. What entitles us to say so is that to write is in essence to speak to an imagined reader, and to read is to listen to an imagined writer.”

Dilmurod holds that not only writing a work of art but reading it too is a creative process. He points out that unless the reader approaches a work as an artistic phenomenon, it will fail to become a work of art. Indeed, a work of art exists only for the person who has read and understood it; for one who has not read it, it does not exist at all. Able to apply his theoretical knowledge to the study of literary phenomena, Professor D. Quronov sets out the theoretical foundations and practical methods of commentary-based reading in modern literary education. As an experienced educator, he writes in his article “Adabiy taʼlimda tarixiy-biografik sharhning ahamiyati haqida” (On the Importance of Historical-Biographical Commentary in Literary Education): “…commentary is the translation of the language of images in a work into the language of logic, and in this respect it is equally important in teaching classical literature and in studying works of modern literature.” He examines Cholpon’s famous ghazal “Qalandar ishqi” (The Love of a Qalandar) from an entirely new angle, taking into account the poet’s life, work, socio-political activity and personal traits.

Drawing on various documents, memoirs and his own well-founded conjectures, he succeeds in showing even what the poet’s mood was while he was writing that poem. By this method he uncovers a whole world of hidden social meaning beneath the ghazal. The scholar explains it thus: “Ghazals such as ‘Qalandar ishqi’, built on a symbolic and metaphorical mode of expression, are born from the very outset with the possibility of two different interpretations. That is, in such works the meaning that grows directly out of what is depicted (the plane of representation) and the subtext revealed in context(s) live on independently, without interfering with each other. Hence the differing understandings of the ghazal’s content are natural and legitimate.” In this way he shows that commentary-based reading is not the simple task of explaining unfamiliar words, but a productive scholarly approach that demands serious preparation from the researcher or teacher.

The scholar’s views on the mythopoetic interpretation of literary works were entirely new for Uzbek scholarship. Much had been said about myths in Uzbek literary studies too: research had been done and books published, yet what the mythopoetic approach actually is and how it can be applied in practice had remained obscure. Dilmurod writes on this: “The main factor that made ‘Oʻtgan kunlar’ (Days Gone By)… quickly famous and passed from hand to hand is, in our view, that it stands firmly on the ground of national literary traditions… Now that I think of it, I have long been expressing this idea in various forms, treating it as an axiom that needs no proof. The mythopoetic approach, however… turns out to make it possible to give this idea a scholarly foundation.” To be honest, it had never occurred to me that the mythopoetic approach had anything to do with revealing the roots of national literary traditions. I used to regard it as a somewhat artificial theory invented in the West. I was impressed by Dilmurod’s ability to interpret the novel by this method. True, I do not think this method can reveal the novel’s artistry and charm in full. At the same time, I cannot close my eyes to the fact that there are unchanging national universals in the novel’s mode of representation. Of course, the great writer never imagined that his book might be approached in this way. But by virtue of his scholarly power, the scholar was able to see, and to show, the objective regularity within the artistic object created by the subject. In his works Professor D. Quronov pays serious attention to identifying the factor that gave rise to each artistic and aesthetic phenomenon. Such an approach makes it possible to grasp the essence of an aesthetic phenomenon correctly. The scholar notes that the socialisation of literature began not, as many think, with Soviet writers but with the Jadid authors. The Jadids placed an entirely social burden on literature and turned it from an end into a means. This is clearly visible in everything the Jadid writers wrote.

Dilmurod Quronov is a scholar who thinks originally. He is always able to see and explain aspects of an aesthetic phenomenon that everyone has seen but no one has noticed. In his article “Dushmanni tanitgan doʻst” (The Friend Who Revealed the Enemy), with a single stroke he precisely shows what distinguishes Fitrat, Cholpon and Qodiriy — figures who are usually listed one after another as if they were all alike: “Cholpon and Fitrat lived within the social process, whereas the social process lived within A. Qodiriy.” The great writer’s own admissions confirm the accuracy of this view. He strives for the utmost precision in literary terminology as well, for every term is the verbal shell of an essence. That is why he notes that the concepts of “artistic interpretation” and “literary interpretation” must be distinguished: the first is correctly applied to the author, the second to the consumer of literature, that is, the reader or the critic. The scholar stresses that scholarly interpretation is “the interpretation of an interpretation”. He defines the essence of literary interpretation as “…translating the ‘language of images’ in a work of art into the language of logic; understanding and explaining the content expressed through images.” Dilmurod is one of the few specialists capable of expressing in rational terms works of art, which are to a large extent the product of irrational activity.

The professor emphasises that reading a work of art is not merely an act of consumption but a distinctive creative process, one that demands an interactive approach from the reader. He stresses that, just as it is wrong to tie the meaning of a work solely to its author, it is equally mistaken to confine it to the time in which it was written: a work of art, like life itself, is subject to constant change. He notes that a genuine work of art has a life of its own, independent of its author and of the place and time of its creation: “For an image, while preserving the spiritual and emotional state of the moments of creation, can also serve to express entirely different meanings.” As a keen observer of today’s literary process, the scholar pinpoints its sore spot: “In my view, the biggest problem is that today’s literature has lost its reader.” Dilmurod Quronov is a multifaceted scholar. He works productively in many fields of scholarship and letters, including pedagogy, literary theory, lexicography, textual studies, comparative literature, criticism, translation and publishing. He is the author of nearly five hundred scholarly articles, two textbooks, three monographs, three study guides and a dictionary. The “Adabiyotshunoslik lugʻati” (Dictionary of Literary Studies), published under his direction, is used as the principal teaching resource in the field. His textbook “Adabiyot nazariyasi asoslari” (Fundamentals of Literary Theory) is the only theoretical work fully in use in our country today. Talent is a great blessing, but a writer whose character does not match his talent can cause his contemporaries a great deal of trouble. Because Professor D. Quronov has been able to unite great talent with a strong character, he has had a marked positive influence on the development of Uzbek literary scholarship. Precisely because he has grasped the essence of the most complex scholarly concepts and problems in depth, he is able to discuss them in a very accessible way. Obscurity in scholarly expression is the outward sign of incomplete knowledge. Even when explaining the most intricate literary regularities, the scholar uses expressions common in the speech of Andijan people, such as “juday-la” (ever so), “hech yoʻq” (at the very least) and “boʻlibam” (what’s more), which lends his views a special sincerity. Dilmurod is a scholar who firmly defends his point of view, and that is why he often engages in debate. His arguments are directed not at his opponent’s person but at his opponent’s views, and he presses his case with logic alone. In a number of his articles, such as “‘Gipotetik usul’ haqida mulohazalar” (Reflections on the “Hypothetical Method”), “Adabiy jarayonda ‘Mom sindromi’” (The ‘Mom Sindromi’ in the Literary Process), “Roman haqida ayrim mulohazalar” (Some Reflections on the Novel) and “Yana davrlashtirish masalasiga doir” (Once More on the Question of Periodisation), the scholar’s ability to defend his views with great composure is clearly evident.

I too argue with Dilmurod a great deal, because I read him a great deal, am influenced by him a great deal and learn a great deal from him. Naturally, at times I hold a different opinion and, relying on my own views, respond to his ideas. I am confident that he argues with my views, not with my person, and that he will go on unswervingly along the right path.

We congratulate on his auspicious birthday this outstanding scholar, whose original and well-founded views on literature — the art of seeing and showing facets of this old world, known to all from every side, that no one has yet noticed — have had a marked influence on the development of the nation’s artistic and aesthetic thought, and we wish him many more achievements in his scholarly work and in his personal life. May further scholarly and creative heights attend Dilmurod Quronov, who unites in himself the qualities of an educator, theorist, critic, translator, publisher and thinker!