The Poetics of Dzhangаr Nasunov’s Stories, created in the 1970s

Introduction. The purpose of the article is to introduce into scientific circulation the stories of the 1970s by the Kalmyk Russian-speaking writer Dzhangаr Nasunov (1942–1979), to consider the poetics of these works. Materials and methods. The research materials are based on four short stories by the author, which have not become the object and subject of research in literary criticism. The comparative method, the hermeneutic approach, and the method of descriptive poetics are used to analyze texts. Results. D. Nasunov wrote and published four short stories from 1971 to 1977. The debut of the author’s poetry book “Voices of Distances” and the short story ”Heavy Whip” coincided in 1971. The writer planned to work in prose, having conceived a novel. Four author’s stories, unequal in volume and artistic level, went unnoticed by readers and literary critics. The names of the stories are one- and two-part: “Adyan”, “Bothn”, “Heavy Whip”, “Independent Decision”. Two texts stand out from these works artistically: “The Heavy Lash” (1971) and “Adyan” (1977). The first is addressed to the past, the second to the present. The action of all the stories takes place mainly in Kalmykia, the main characters are Kalmyks, and there are representatives of other nationalities. The themes of the narratives are wide: the history of the country, people, culture, nature, native land, ecology, folklore. The problems of national identity, the search for lost roots, the destruction of ties between generations, the upbringing of youth, crime and punishment, the preservation of steppe fauna, considered in the article through the prism of the relationship of “own” and “strangers” people, love conflicts, social, moral, ethical, etc., show the author’s intentions of the writer as his civil, a patriotic position, inseparable from his poetry. Both the lyrics and the short prose of the Kalmyk Russian-language writer demonstrate a connection with national literature, folklore, history, and culture, defining the significant place of Dzhangаr Nasunov in the history of Kalmyk literature.

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