IN SEARCH OF ABSOLUTE TRUTH

Ilham Badalbayli is a poet, writer, translator, member of the Moscow branch of the Union of Writers of Azerbaijan, and deputy chairman of the Moscow Society of Azerbaijani Culture "Ocaq". He was born in the city of Sabirabad in 1945 to a family of intellectuals who were reverent about arts and literature. He tried many professions when he was young: handyman at a factory, fitter, construction engineer, and newspaper reporter. He went to the Polytechnic Institute in Baku and participated in the construction of AvtoVAZ [car factory] in Togliatti [in Russia]. He completed his higher education at Tula Pedagogical Institute [in Russia]. His passion for poetry brought him to the M. Gorky Moscow Literary Institute.

The young poet's first poetry collections were warmly welcomed by readers and critics, and he was the first Azerbaijani writer to be awarded the N. Ostrovsky literary award for his collection of works "Islands in the sea". In his capacity as editor at the publishing houses "Khudozhestvennaya Literatura" and "Raduga", he prepared collections of works by Nizami Gancavi, Samad Vurgun, Mikhail Stelmakh, Mirza Ibrahimov, and two-volume and one-volume works by Nazim Hikmat, Nabi Xazri, Shota Rustaveli, Tamaz Chiladze and others.

- When did your passion for poems start?

- When I was in school. You know, few people did not go through passion for poetry when they were growing up or falling in love for the first time. Some people experimented with it, some used it to express the way they felt, and for some it came to be a vital necessity. I, too, like many others, went through this kind of a phase in my life. Perhaps, it was an attempt to express my attitude to the world and, if you will, an attempt for self-realization.

- Well, perhaps you also wanted to get girls to like you… 

- Yes, you are absolutely right. I wanted to get a girl I fancied to like me. I remember that in seventh grade our school newspaper ran my poem for the first time. It seemed to me that everyone in school was looking at me, and I was almost bursting with pride that overwhelmed me. It is not up to me to judge whether I am marked by God. Time and future generations will do it. I can say that I started to write early, but my first publication only came out when I was 20 and my first book came out even later - closer to when I was 30.

- Do you write poems in Russian only?

- The Russian language is as native to me as Azeri. For me, an Azeri person, it is as easy to write poems in Russian as it would be for a Russian person. I believe that I could teach Russian to many ethnic Russians. For the sake of justice, I should say that I wrote several poems in Azeri at the dawn of my poetic youth.

- Where do Azerbaijan and Russia stand in your creative work?

- My principle is that "poems are not written, poems happen". So, I have never set myself the task of writing "Azerbaijani" or "Russian" poems. Azerbaijan is my homeland, I was born here, opened my eyes to the world, and I soaked up love for it through my mother's milk. Homeland is not something you choose, in the same way as you do not choose the time you are born. Russia became my second homeland. I live and I create - excuse these emotional words - in the spiritual field of its culture, language, arts and literature. Therefore, in my poems you can find influence from both Azerbaijani and Russian cultures, because both of these two cultures fill my creative work with the vivifying power of their love.

- Creative work is a creator's invitation to his world. Where do the doors of your creative work lead to?

- I should say straight away that I do not invite anyone anywhere. I mean I can invite friends and people I know to a restaurant or a dinner party at my place, or I can invite my wife to a theatre or a concert, but this is something different. When it comes to my creative work, things are completely different. When I am writing [poems], I am only writing for myself, and I am not worried about how people will perceive my poem, whether it will be published and whether it will receive publicity and reviews. I have said on one occasion that for me an act of creative work is a sort of conversation with God. After all, I still do not know whether I have actually had that kind of a conversation with God even once. It is at a later stage - when poems have been written and have gone public - that they stop being yours only. They become independent and live their own life, independent of their author. And if the world created by them is of interest to somebody, then, here you are, the doors to that world are open to everybody. Free entry.

- Where does poetry originate from?

- From everything that surrounds a poet. From life. A poet grabs a phenomenon out of the reality around him, refracts it through the prism of his heart, puts a part of his soul in it and pours it all out on paper. All that he needs to do is put the right words in the right order. But if you resort to probability theory, it will turn out that even in a short poem there are millions and millions of options for arranging the order of those words, and all you need to do is choose the one. After all, there are big poems or the four-volume epic "War and Peace". That is proof that creative work is a conversation with God.

- You do translations. Do you think that translating a poem means giving birth to a new poem?

- I am convinced that a poetic and adequate translation of a poem is not possible in principle. We can only talk about a certain extent of approximation to the original. Poetry, especially lyric poetry, is a tragic art, mainly because of the impossibility of it being translated in an adequate manner. Things are much simpler with prose, epic genres. There is a plot, storyline, conflict, the characters of the heroes, and action, and all of this can be depicted fairly well through a different language. But how can you convey the subtlest emotions Pushkin, Lermontov, Tyutchev, Blok, and Yesenin experienced, and poems that are based on subtle nuances, sounds, alliterations, untranslatable idioms, metaphors and other figures of speech that only Russian readers will understand. Therefore, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov are world-scale geniuses, and Pushkin, who is not inferior to them in either talent or greateness is a national genius, a Russian one. Yet translations are needed as a powerful tool for learning the cultures of other nations. Only a talented poet can do a talented translation that would be as close to the original as possible.

- What is your vision of the role of arts in social life: arts for arts or arts for the people?

- Arts are impossible outside society. If there are creators of arts, there must be those who consume those arts. "Pure arts", "arts for arts" are actually an attempt to demonstrate an artist's freedom, their independence not only from the ruling elite, but from actual society as well. But that is a futile attempt because arts as an integral component part of culture cannot but be a form of social consciousness. Take, for example, poems, the means of expression in which are words. Words are unthinkable without language. They actually are a manifestation of language. Language is a main, if not the main, characteristic of any society: of an epic, people, nation. In poetry, language acquires new features, expands the boundaries of its application, and generates new associations. In addition, poetry, as a kind of art, is capable of having an aesthetic impact both on individuals and on society as a whole. It creates in people a sense of beauty, defines a vector of moral bearings. It could be argued that poetry is elitist in nature and only accessible to the understanding of select people. This is not quite true. The basis of a song are music and words, that is to say, poetry. Songs can hardly be regarded as an elitist form of arts. Poetry, undoubtedly, is a powerful form of imaginative cognition of the world.

- Does a poet need glory? Is glory an obstacle for creative work? 

- Everybody wants recognition. But there may be nuances. You will be treated kindly by the powers that be. You will receive lots of insignia, medals, ranks, and posts. In return, they will want your soul, like in the story of Faust, except that the authorities play the role of Mephistopheles here. If you lose your soul to the authorities, you cease to be an artist, a creator. Your false eulogies in the form of thick volumes will gather dust on the shelves of bookstores, and you will be forgotten the very next day after you die. A true artist should, to a bigger or lesser extent, always oppose the authorities, even though it could cost him many outward benefits. But are recognition by one's people and their love not worth the outward, feigned well-being? Remember, Nasimi and Fuzuli, Pushkin and Lermontov, Galich and Vysotsky fell out of favour. Those who persecuted them are now forgotten but the poets' names are steeped in glory and eternally alive in the memory of grateful descendants. Glory can also come to a person while they are alive. The main thing is for one to make sure that they do not pursue that glory, that they do not lose themselves and do not waste their talent on trifles and that they create, create, create. They should not let their soul relax.

- How do you feel about the idea of never regretting anything done? Do you ever regret anything?

- I regret a lot of things. First of all, time lost. A long life has been lived and so little has been done. I regret that I have often indulged in laziness, frolic, and bliss. Even now, too, I cannot always overcome it in me. I may have hurt someone with a word or lack of trust or with an action. I sincerely repent and ask for forgiveness. In short, there are things to regret. Would I want to live another life, to correct my mistakes? No and, once more, no. It's my life, and I will not trade it for any other.

- In your poem Tertium non datur ("No third is given") you project this principle on good and evil. But it makes the world look black and white. Are there no other colours in the world? 

- I normally do not comment on my poems. Sometimes people ask me what I meant to say in one or another line, what thought is laid in one or another verse. Most often I refer them to the actual poem, telling them: "Read the poem attentively. It has all the answers to your questions." Well, now, let me try and do it, I might actually be able to do it.

Good and evil are two dominant ideas, two opposite poles. Each of us has a bit of both. This can be about what prevails in us, what is the vector of our moral bearings. God and spirit are absolute good, and lack of God, Satan, the devil, and flesh are absolute evil. Victory and choosing the spirit elevates man, brings him closer to absolute truth. The victory of flesh overthrows him to vices and sins. But man is free to choose. I think this is what the poem is about and not about what colours our world is painted.

- Do you think that good and evil are a manifestation of single truth?

- Definitely not. Good constitutes indissoluble unity with concepts like love, truth, God. Between them and evil there can be no unity, because evil is lack of good, love, truth, God.

- What reconciles you with reality and what is to be done when conscience says one thing and reality says another?

- Those are attempts at being in harmony with yourself and searches for harmony within oneself. This is one thing. Second, instead of feuding with the reality around you, I think that it would be better to come to agreement with this world through reasonable compromises. But in all cases, conscience is priority.

- What can surprise you?

- Life in every manifestation of it. Every moment, every minute, every hour, every day. As long as I am alive.