NIZAMI GONE GLOBAL

It does not appear long since the premier of the "Seven Beauties" production based on the poem of the same name by Nizami met with resounding applause at the Russian Drama Theatre. At the beginning of November this year a new version of this production was presented to audiences at the Russian Drama Theatre in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. [The theatre and film director] Jonas Vaitkus is the author of both productions. Whereas artists and composers from Lithuania were involved in the production group of the Baku production, our Tahir Eynullayev was involved in the Lithuanian interpretation, acting as choreographer.

Nizami on the stage

It is no accident that the Vilnius premiere was announced as the world premiere, for the works of Nizami have never been adapted for the stage anywhere before. The first time it was  done was in Baku and now it is in Vilnius. The production's author is not just producing a copy in the second version. The Azerbaijani and Lithuanian versions are two different stories staged in epic-drama style. For the Baku audiences it is a story on a planetary scale where the philosophy of late sufism, which has something in common with the official Islamic religion, comes to the fore and becomes the key to studying Nizami's thoughts and ideas. 

The dervishes keep the action moving, changing the colour of the clothes in the wake of Bahram [the day of the Sun]. Jebrail, who periodically comes into contact with Nizami, as a guide, is keeping an eye on people and should convey to people wise thoughts and revelations. The scenery also creates an atmosphere of action on a planetary scale.

The Lithuanians have a completely different production. Vaitkus moves from a generalised planetary picture to a specific story, mixing up earthy and heavenly characters. Whereas Nizami (played by Merited Artiste of the Azerbaijan Republic Fuad Osmanov) recounts the story of Bahram and the seven beauties for Baku's audiences, he comes right out of the auditorium onto the stage and pulls cardboard puppets out of a travel bag before beginning his story about Bahram, for the Lithuanians it is Jebrail who starts off the action.

Now we see through his eyes and with his direct participation, all the stories through which Bahram and the seven beauties are destined to pass. The director and producer has transformed the action into a polyphony of sounds filling the world of people. 

The main idea on which this production is based is the number seven. Seven Tibetan bowls, seven dervishes, seven fairy-tale parables and seven beauties. But each of them is presented in an age from 10 to 70. We can see each of them in that cross-section of time connected with the different cycles of life, namely a little girl, a maiden, a young woman, and an adult woman. (You can learn in more detail about the significance of the number seven in Nizami's poem if you read the scientific article "The master of the Maclis of the stars" by Aydin Talibzada - Author).

On the production and the theatre

At the very beginning of the production, we see seven Tibetan bowls stretching towards the horizon in reverse perspective, and Jebrail who, making sounds come from the bowls by making them vibrate, is dispatching them into the world of people. He is the conveyor of the superior idea of polyphony in the world, the observer and indirect participant in all that is happening to people. Jebrail does not leave the stage throughout the production, extracting fantastical sounds from all kinds of strange instruments and creating the necessary atmosphere in the act.

Nizami's philosophical idea which is concealed within the poem "The Seven Beauties" acquires a powerful polyphonic voice in Jonas Vaitkus's production. The dramatic and plastic performance of the actors imparts the necessary volume to the director's staging idea, which brings the production to life and makes it very topical. He examines problems connected with man's choice, his moral guidelines, responsibility before the Almighty and people for one's own actions, with relation to the mutual relations within the structure of society's composition, namely the master and his subjects. 

Therefore there are such emotionally strong mass scenes in the production: scenes depicting Bahram communicating with the people. Incidentally, all the actors in this theatre do themselves sing. The director does not recognise any kind of voice-overs. Therefore all the members of the troupe have to attend singing lessons twice a week, and classes at the horizontal bar twice a week as well. No allowances are made for anybody. There are age restrictions as well. An actor should be in control of his or her body and voice, and in excellent control as well. This is a prescribed truth, an unshakeable truth. 

Yes, and even the director does the training exercises with his actors, not allowing them to become unfit and to sit on the laurels of the success they have achieved. Any success may be short-lived, if you don't work at it constantly. That is a golden rule in the theatre, and no-one can contest it. Therefore, the entire troupe, ranging from 20 and as many as 60 people are in splendid professional form. They are glad to go to the theatre because there is creative environment there which brings joy even from the slightest success.

Nizami means "stringer of pearls"

When it comes to Nizami, he has rightly taken his place on the European stage. "The Seven Beauties", was first produced at the theatre in Baku, and then it set off on a European trip. It set off so that new life could be breathed into the drama theatre. It is quite possible that audiences in Belarus will soon see it, since the Lithuanian Russian theatre is heading there in the very near future. The genius of Nizami should acquire new life in the 21st century.

If we all apply efforts, his genius will flare up with a bright star and the finale of the Lithuanian production will turn out to be prophetic. The dancing dervish whirls around in the empty space of the stage, in complete silence under a shower of sand coming down from above from the summit of the times. The sand pours onto his head, his arms and his shoulders. It pours down and as it blows away it forms a dense layer. These are the genius's grains of wisdom. They have been living for centuries and will continue to live while people keep handing them on to one another. Now it is our turn to pass on these words of wisdom to future generations, and not just in Azerbaijan either.

From his creative works, as from a well that never dries up, we can extract a knowledge and understanding of the world, which today's humankind needs, besmirched as it is by the chaos of war and strife. Shakespeare who lived many centuries after Nizami, travels across the stages of the world, bringing glory to the British with his genius. Our Nizami is no less worthy of that. All the more so since it turns out that his works can be transformed into dramas. And any of his works can be adapted for the theatre! The experience of Jonas Vaitkus and the S. Vurgun Russian Drama Theatre [in Baku] has confirmed this in practice. It is good that the Lithuanian director seized upon the idea of the Baku Russian Drama Theatre director Adalat Haciyev and went on to develop Nizami's subject back in his motherland. 

A start has been made. We need to go on with the work in this direction! The scientific work by Aydin Talibzada, who revealed the new boundaries in Nizami's works, appeared after the Baku premiere. The Lithuanian director had already found this version interesting. Who knows, maybe he will give birth to a third staging of "The Seven Beauties". It would be good to stage it in Ganca, in the poet's home town. Incidentally, the Lithuanian director himself, who has ultimately and irrevocably fallen in love with Nizami's genius, has talked about staging it in Ganca too. He would be glad to bring one of the works of Azerbaijan's poet to life on the stage in the poet's home town. But that is not enough to make Nizami popular world-wide.

Back in 1940 the well-known Russian orientalist Yevgeniy Belters expressed the idea that the works of the great Azerbaijani poet required thorough and in-depth study. His motivation for saying this was that the Russian translators were not completely able to translate Nizami's poem from Persian into Russian, because there are places in the text where the poet has written in his native tongue, Ganca dialect, which was used by the inhabitants of Ganca in the 12th century. He approached Azerbaijani scholars, suggesting that they might fill in these gaps, otherwise the texts of the great genius would be lost to the Russian-speaking population forever, and quite possibly lost to the rest of the world as well. He also proposed compiling a dictionary-type guide book to guide readers through the poet's works. This needs to be done not only for a better understanding of the 12th-century poet, but also to broaden the knowledge of the readers themselves. Alas, the Second World War began, and people had other things to worry about. So, perhaps now our linguistic and Nizami scholars could set about resolving these issues? They would return to the world community the works of the genius who could be accessed by all those who wish to make the effort. This fact is a crying shame! How can a person who was born in Ganca, grew up on its culture and never left it till he died belong to some other country and not ours? Yes, Ilyas ibn-Yusuf Nizami Gancavi was a subject of the Persian shah, and as a person with an excellent education, he did speak Persian fluently.

But he also spoke his native tongue just as fluently, which he evidently used all too often in the poems written by him, which attracted the attention of the Persian shah who suggested that the poet should write his works in a superior language, the language of the chosen, i.e. in Persian. Nizami reacted to this in the right way by writing "The Seven Beauties" in his native tongue. This was a protest, almost a rebellion. But it is not for nothing that his name is Nizami, which means "stringer of pearls"! He was so cleverly able to interweave his native tongue into the Persian language texts that nobody could object to it. These were the excerpts that the Russian translators could not translate.

Afterword

We are appealing to our scholars and those who are not indifferent to the works of Nizami to do something to return the full version of his texts to the whole world. Possibly the poet's words could be adapted to contemporary Azeri and would form the unabridged version mentioned by Belters. But even so, this would not be enough. The whole world needs to see his texts in Russian and English (we would like to remind you that Regionplus wrote about an enthusiast, the Norwegian Ragnhild Tori who published a variant of the poem "Leyla and Macnun" in English, adapted for children - Author).

But has anyone compared the existing translations with the original? Perhaps they have, but we don't know anything about that, do we? We would like to know more about that. I think that many people will find it interesting to learn what Nizami said at that time when he put his words into the mouths of his protagonists speaking in Ganca dialect or in the literary language of his own people. There might even be some very valuable information in these words: about the period, about the city, about him himself or a historical moment…