The Genre of Kharal in 20th-Century Kalmyk Poetry

Introduction. In Kalmyk folklore, the genres of yöräl (well-wishing) and kharal (curse) cluster with magic poetry characterized by ritual and communicative functions. The latter genre remains understudied since informants had avoided uttering such narratives fearing their negative impacts, therefore the available records of kharals are much fewer than those containing yöräls. This affected essentials of kharals authored by 20th-century Kalmyk poets, including the former’s peripheral position in the genre system of Kalmyk lyrics and a small number of such poetic examples. The article discusses the genre of kharal in works by Mukebyun Basangov (1878–1944) and Bosya Sangadzhieva (1921–2001). Goals. The article seeks to examine three texts of the mentioned poets in the aspect of the folklore tradition. Materials and methods. The paper studies works of Kalmyk folklorists, ethnographers and historians. The to be investigated sources are one poem by Mukebyun Basangov and two poems by Bosya Sangadzhieva — the three titled ‘Kharal’ (‘Curse’) — created in Kalmyk in different years (1942 and 1966, 1991), including R. Khaninova’s artistic translation of B. Sangadzhieva’s text. The key research methods used are the historical/literary, historical/functional, comparative, quantitative ones, and that of descriptive poetics. Results. The study, firstly, reveals a connection between M. Basangov’s Kharal (1942) and the time of its creation (Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945) which determined its topic and problems raised, folk elements; secondly, two texts by B. Sangadzhieva are compared in ethnocultural and axiological perspectives; thirdly, it shows impacts of the folklore genre on poetic analogues; and finally, the work stresses a synthesis of yöräl and kharal genres observed in Kh. Syan-Belgin’s  Satire on Yöräl and Kharal (1929). Conclusions. In Kalmyk poetry, the genre of kharal remained somewhat undeveloped only to stay in a periphery of the 20th-century genre system, which most likely resulted from specifics of the folklore source. So, the rare appeals of Kalmyk poets to this genre attest to the surviving tradition of avoiding negative impacts of the verbal component inherent to magic poetry of ancestors, and following the postulates of axiology and folk pedagogy.

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