A POET OF WEST AND EAST

The professions of poet and teacher are inseparable, especially if you have chosen the path of a poet and an enlightener and if children are part of your audience. This year marks the 140th anniversary of the birth of the poet Abbas Sahhat, whom we have all known since our childhood.

Children's poet, translator and Occidentalist

The future poet was born in Samaxi in 1874 into the family of a cleric. After attending a course at the medical department of the "Muzaffariya" school in Iran in 1901, Sahhat returned to Samaxi and gave up medicine. At the time, despite the expectations of his father, who had spent a lot of money on his son's education, Abbas, instead of becoming a doctor, took up teaching the Azeri language in local schools. Most of his children's poems were written at that time. His poems "Mother and Child", "Father and Son", "Summer", "Birds", "Lazybones" and others are familiar to us since our schooldays.

However, Sahhat's real vocation was enlightenment. In those days most schools in Azerbaijan were so-called spiritual schools where education did not go beyond the teaching of Islam and the Arabic language. Humanitarian sciences were not on the curriculum, never mind social sciences. Sahhat was one of the prominent figures of the movement for the "new-method" school. Such schools already existed in Iran (Persia). At the time this country stood on the threshold of a bourgeois revolution and trends towards enlightenment were strong there. The poet joined the romantic literature group of Professor A. Huseynzada, who published the "Fuyuzat" magazine in 1906-1907. Sahhat's work was published in almost all the magazines and newspapers in Baku; as a poet and translator he introduced the people of Azerbaijan to the works of Russian poets and writers (A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov, I.A. Krylov, I.S. Nikitin, S.Ya. Nadson, M. Gorkiy and others) and also translated from the French (V. Hugo, A. Musset, S. Prudhomme, etc) and from German and Armenian.

As the arts critic Lacin Samadzada told R+, as an enlightener Sahhat was an advocate of the binding of East and West. "That was why he devoted so much time to the translation and promotion of western literature," he says. "The poet conveyed the typical ideas of the liberal Turkic bourgeoisie of that time.  There is also a great deal of the Islamic element linked with his time in Iran in his ideas. However, in his works he gave prominence to the themes of 'all-Muslim westernization'," Samadzada says. "If anything, he had this idea of a kind of synthesis, a desire that both cultures should become mutually enriched; after all, Sahhat had a good knowledge of both Persian and Russian literature in all its variety." 

He received the bourgeois revolution which took place in Iran from 1905 to 1911 very warmly. He devoted his best poetry to it, in which he pointed rigidly and realistically to the roots of social problems and poverty, the lack of education and dogmatism.

The enlightener

In Samaxi Sahhat got to know the poet and satirist Sabir. They had common views and interests: Sabir was older and as a teacher he was a substantial help to Sahhat in his self-education. "There was a lot that linked him with Sabir," the critic says. "After all, Sabir was not just a poet, but also a teacher and at one time he attended one of the first 'new-type schools' in the country which was opened by the well-known poet and satirist Seid Azim Sirvani." Unlike traditional schools these taught general-educational subjects and the Azeri and Russian languages. When Sabir died suddenly in his twilight years in 1911 Sahhat was preparing and published the complete works of his friend. And it was just a year later that Sahhat published the first collection of his own verse "Broken Saz", as well as a book of translations from Russian and West European poets "The Sun of the West". His poem "Ahmad's Courage" also appeared at that time, and in 1916 his romantic poem "The poet, the muse and the townsman" was published. He also wrote a comedy in two acts "Poverty is not a vice", a kind of send-up of Ostrovskiy, "The Sun of the West" - a collection of the translations of poetry by Russian writers, published in two volumes, a one-act comedy "The Oil Gusher", and a collection of verse "Broken Saz".

Sahhat's work in educational awareness is not as widely known as it should be today. Many works which did not find their way into books that were published in his lifetime remain scattered in numerous magazines, newspapers and textbooks of his time, and also in private hands. These are mainly articles on enlightenment, critical sketches about eastern and European literature, poetry and drama. Back in 1909, with M. Mahmudbayov, he prepared the textbooks "New School" and "A First Step to Turkic Literature". Possessing a fine knowledge of European and, especially, Russian literature, he was also greatly influenced by Persian poetry. The works of Hafiz, Saadi, Nizami and other classicists influenced Abbas Sahhat's literary language and poetic metre; at the same time, an interest in the Turkish poetry of his contemporaries, Azerbaijani and Turkish authors, can be detected in Sahhat's work.

Today, one is struck by the energy and - in a positive sense - fanaticism with which Abbas Sahhat taught culture and knowledge, tried to bring East and West closer together, to mutually enrich both cultural worlds and virtually make Azerbaijan the crossroads on this path. 

Abbas Sahhat died in Ganca on 11 July 1918.