Yakhongir NOMOZOV - Interview
Moderator 
«THE THIRD MILLENNIUM WILL BE A SYNTHESIS OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE»
Our interlocutor is Asad Jakhongir — Chairman of the Center for Literary Translation and International Relations of the Azerbaijan Writers’ Union, literary critic, prominent poet and translator, laureate of the Shakhmar Akbarzadeh Jalaluddin Rumi International Poetry Award and the Yashar Garayev “Golden Word” Literary Prize.
– Your essay “The Voice” feels like a new stage in your literary journey.
In terms of style and direction, it seems to mark a novelty in the essay genre.
What kind of transformation did writing this essay bring to your creativity and inner world?
– Thank you for valuing an essay I wrote back in 1999, in my youth. Initially, I intended to write on an entirely different subject, but the subconscious stream drew me toward Karabakh. At that time, Karabakh was under occupation and was our most pressing national problem. For this essay I was awarded the title “Critic of the Year” by the Azerbaijan Writers’ Union.
The literary community first came to know me through it.
As for my inner world — the painful transformation had begun six or seven years before writing the essay. Through this process, I returned from Soviet atheism to our sacred religious faith, like millions of others, and came to truly know myself and recognize God.
The essay was born as an expression of this spiritual turning point.
It was not the cause but the result of that transformation.
I believe the Karabakh war was a punishment meant to turn us away from communist delusions and back toward divine faith on a national level. If I had not gone through this inner transformation — if I had not endured this “punishment” myself — I would not have been able to write about the collective transformation of our people. “The Voice” was both an individual and a national confession of sin, an act of repentance, a prayer.
– In the essay, the triad of “voice – word – color” unites at various levels.
Which, in your opinion, expresses life most deeply: word, voice, or color?
– The word is God, the voice is His creative energy, and color is the materialization of this energy.
The word is the creator, the voice is creation, and the color is the created.
The word is cause, the voice is the link between cause and effect, and the color is the effect.
For a plant to sprout, sunlight must fall upon it; for light to fall, the sun must exist. The word is the sun, the voice its ray, and the color the plant itself. Without one, the others cannot exist. Life is in the unity of these three.
– In literature, the Karabakh theme is often treated with grief, loss, suffering, and sorrow.
Yet you wrote with a completely different spirit — the reader feels exaltation, a divine strength.
Where did you find the power to write about such a heavy subject in such a high spirit?
– The source of my optimism is my faith in divine justice. I believed that God would resolve the Karabakh war, in which we were dragged against our will, with justice.
The outcome of events showed that my faith was not mistaken.
– In your essays, the genre combines literary criticism, prose, and even poetry. What does it take to masterfully unite so many forms within a single essay?
– I wrote my first poem at ten and my first article after twenty, when I was a student of philology at Baku State University. So, the synthesis of literary and artistic thought in my writing is natural. The essay, by its integrative nature, is closest to this synthesis and is very dear to me. Poetic thought is innate — you write poems beyond your own will. Literary thought, however, requires much reading and cultivation.
– Sufi sages say: “Voice is the first breath of the universe.” How, in your view, can a writer’s voice speak to the cosmos?
– The cosmos — stars, planets, trees, birds, stones — is constantly speaking to us, transmitting information. Existence itself flows in this endless stream of communication. Yet the dialogue is one-sided: the cosmos speaks, but we do not hear.
This means we do not hear ourselves; our inner ear is closed, our antenna cannot capture those voices.
In ancient times, people could hear the cosmos. As Socrates said, voices would rise from our hearts. That is why early humanity regarded everything as alive, striving for direct dialogue with nature, cosmos, and God. In the epic “Dede Gorgud”, when Khan Ghazan speaks to water, trees, dogs, wolves — it is an expression of that dialogue.
Over time, humans lost this transpersonal ability. Today, whoever regains it becomes a poet — one who can hear the voices within.
In moments of inspiration, the poet’s inner ear opens, he falls into a mysterious current, becomes another person. Poetry is metamorphosis, fever. True poems are not written with rational, “healthy” thinking — the poet must lose his reason to create. Plato called it ecstasy, divine frenzy.
When the poem is complete, the voices fade, and the poet returns to his ordinary state, carrying once again the same rational mind as everyone else. Of course, I speak of true poets, true poetry, and true inspiration.
– American psychologist Dawkins interprets these inner voices as information transmitted from one hemisphere of the brain to the other…
– Dawkins is not alone; many scientists hold similar views. But such conclusions arise from a materialist worldview. They fail to see that the voice comes not from the brain but from the soul. The brain is merely an instrument of the soul.
Think of a piano: without the pianist’s touch, it cannot produce sound. The pianist is the soul, the piano the brain. Dawkins sees the piano but not the pianist behind it. Hence such simplistic, fabricated ideas — the hallmark of scientific ignorance. Sometimes one may read much and still remain ignorant. Unfortunately, in Azerbaijan’s intellectual and literary circles too, there are many such “educated ignoramuses.”
– And what, in your view, is the cause of this “ignorance”?
– There are extensive and intensive causes. Extensively, their perspective is narrow — they cannot look beyond their time into the broader history of thought. If they could, they would see that the first millennium belonged to religion — the divine thesis; the second millennium to science — the human antithesis. The third millennium will unite the two in synthesis.
Atheist-materialist thinking is a leftover from the last millennium, a rudiment of the eras of Diderot, d’Alembert, Helvétius, Darwin, Comte, and Spencer. The intensive cause is their ignorance of the soul’s existence.
– In your opinion, can those who cannot hear the inner voices still write poetry?
– Certainly, they can write — just as one can write scientific monographs without hearing such voices. But as those authors are not true scientists, so too these poets are not true poets but imitators, epigones. Their poems are not true poetry but imitation. Their source of inspiration is another’s book. Their “poetry” is lifeless.
In the language of classical divan poetry: they are not “ashina” (intimate) but “biganə” (estranged). Today this estrangement grows stronger. Postmodern thought even normalizes epigonism and plagiarism. This denies the importance of talent, claiming that “anyone can write.” Andy Warhol, for example, said there was no need to be Leonardo da Vinci anymore — one could simply reproduce and distribute Mona Lisa’s photo. But that reproduction is not the original Mona Lisa; on a deeper level, it symbolizes humanity’s estrangement from the Original of all — God. We live in an era of simulacra.
– What is the primary task of literary criticism: to explain a work to readers, or to highlight its strengths and weaknesses?
– The task of criticism is to translate a work from the language of art into the language of science.
The artistic word is wrapped in metaphorical mist, full of multiple meanings.
Take any couplet of Fuzuli — it can be understood in several ways, sometimes even contradictory. For instance:
For the lover, giving life with passion is no difficulty,
Since you are the Messiah of the time, giving life is easy for you.
Here, “giving life” means both to die and to revive.
Criticism removes the metaphorical mist, bringing the text into clear thought and unambiguous meaning. Art is credit, which the reader may or may not grasp. Criticism makes that credit cash.
Indeed, the word “criticism” in Arabic means “to make cash.” The critic is the one who makes credit into real currency.
– How significant is the master–disciple tradition for you, and how does it continue today?
– The master–disciple relationship is vital — the foundation for literature’s future growth. Its last representatives in our tradition were Seyid Azim Shirvani, a great divan poet of the 19th century, and Mirza Alakbar Sabir, the genius of satirical verse.
Sаid Azim gifted his student Sabir a copy of Nizami’s Khamsa with the note:
“I hope you will advance in poetry.”
But the Soviet regime, seeking to sever all ties with the past, also wanted to abolish this tradition.
Now Lenin was to be everyone’s “master.” Poet Samad Vurgun even wrote:
I look into Lenin’s books
So as not to fall behind the group.
In the 1920s, “proletkult” ideas rejected classical literature and music, leading to slogans like “Down with Fuzuli! Down with mugham! Down with the tar!”
Some young Komsomol poets even played a role in the repression of great masters like Khuseyn Javid and Akhmad Javad in 1937.
The long-standing tensions between the older and younger generations of writers today, I believe, still stem partly from this subconscious Soviet influence. Sometimes you see a young writer calling someone only a few years older “ustad,” but it feels like imitation — a game rather than a true relationship.
As for myself, three great Azerbaijani philologists shaped my thinking: Yashar Garayev, Kamal Abdulla, and Nizami Jafarov. From the first two I learned through their books; from academician Nizami Jafarov I also received direct instruction in Turkology at Baku State University.
Despite the unavoidable revisions brought by age, they remain my masters.
– In your opinion, which directions should dominate the development of Azerbaijani literature?
– Writing has only one direction: from left to right.
Yet you have written extensively on postmodernism, and you were the first to introduce this concept into Azerbaijani literature.
I devoted nearly ten years to studying postmodernism, translating works of Carroll (USA), Adelheim (Poland), as well as Russian scholars like Dugin, Andreyev, Ilyin, and Nikitina into our language. I have no regrets — these writings outlined new theoretical directions for our literature.
Thanks to them, Kamal Abdulla’s novel “Incomplete Manuscript”, written with postmodernist methods, brought Azerbaijani literature to the doorstep of the Nobel Prize — for the first and so far only time.
He is our Umberto Eco.
oday, writers like Murad Kohneqala, Hamid Herischi, and Ilgar Fakhmi mostly belong to this orientation.
But every creative direction, including postmodernism, is transient; talent, however, is as old as the world itself.
Whatever direction a writer chooses, if he has talent, he will be read and loved, enriching both his nation’s and humanity’s spiritual treasury.
For me, the chief criterion is talent — not whether one is realist, modernist, or postmodernist.
– On an international scale, what activities does the Center for Literary Translation and International Relations of the Writers’ Union undertake to strengthen intercultural dialogue?
– Today’s world is one of global integration. Intercultural dialogue is of great importance.
Naturally, the Azerbaijan Writers’ Union pays special attention to this matter.
As the Center, we strive to fulfill our part. A book of People’s Writer Anar’s poems translated into Russian is ready for publication.
We are preparing to publish translations from Korean, Uzbek, and Kazakh literature. By the end of the year, God willing, these books will be out. Soon, novels by the distinguished Azerbaijani writer Aziz Jafarzadeh will also be translated into Uzbek.
– What should writers and poets do today to strengthen peace and solidarity among nations?
– If a writer directly engages in politics, say by aspiring to become a deputy, it signals creative exhaustion. A writer must express his political views through his works.
Tolstoy wrote: “In the Battle of Borodino, the French proved they deserved victory, while the Russians showed they were invincible.” This was not a diplomatic gesture to please both sides, but a heartfelt conviction — a truth absent from history books. That is why War and Peace is embraced by both Russians and French.
Similarly, Remarque with All Quiet on the Western Front and Hemingway with For Whom the Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms stood in the same position — against war itself.
From Azerbaijani literature, Kamil Afsaroglu’s novel “Dog’s Blood” shows that war, regardless of victors or losers, is humanity’s defeat through barbarity. Armenian writer Levon Khechoyan, too, in his story about a burned Azerbaijani village, has one of the occupying soldiers cry out: “Was this what we wanted?!”
The writer’s duty is to tell the truth. In the face of truth, both sides fall silent — and peace begins with that silence.
– In your work “The Voice”, the individual soul seems to merge with the memory of the nation. What bridge connects the voice of the human soul with the voice of a people?
– A person is connected to God through the soul, to the nation through blood, and to parents through the body. The bridge that binds each to the nation is the memory of blood.
This theme has been expressed in various forms in Azerbaijani literature:
Isa Muganna’s “Ideal”, Sabir Akhmadli’s “Blood Transfusion Station”, Movlud Suleymanli’s “Migration”, and Sabir Rustamkhanli’s “Book of Life”.
In Akhmadli’s anti-Soviet work, the theme appears within a family setting, where the dying mother symbolizes the nation and her children, hesitant to give her blood, symbolize Soviet citizens stripped of national memory. In Suleymanli’s novel, the theme expands — the dreams of a six-year-old boy, Imir, reflect the entire history of the Turkic people, almost an artistic analogue of Jung’s theory of collective unconscious. Muganna’s novel broadens the scope further, to cosmic-metaphysical dimensions. Rustamkhanli’s collection, published before the collapse of the USSR, reflects blood memory in a historical-publicist dimension.
All these works share one idea: a person who loses national memory is no different from animals or inanimate things. The idea finds its most striking expression in Chingiz Aitmatov’s “The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years” with the legend of the mankurt.
– In mystical tradition, voice – breath – remembrance (dhikr) are means of reaching divine truth. While writing “The Voice”, did you also touch upon these mystical layers?
– Not only touched — I lived fully within mysticism while writing it. Until twenty, I was an atheist.
Since then, I have experienced countless mystical events that utterly changed my worldview. “The Voice”, as well as my essays “The Word” and “The Irremovables”, emerged as expressions of that transformation.
In the 1990s, I encountered mystical experiences almost daily, for that era itself seemed wrapped in a mystical aura. Even today, though not as intensely, mysticism remains part of my daily life.
– In writing on the Karabakh theme, you do not only recall the souls of martyrs — you keep them alive. In your view, what kind of immortality does the artistic word bestow upon martyrs?
– Martyrs attain eternity through their martyrdom itself. Our holy book, the Qur’an, affirms this. Artistic word, however, preserves their memory in this world. Thousands of years separate us from Homer’s time, yet the names of his fallen heroes still live and will continue to live as long as the world exists.
– As a critic you have evaluated writers, and as a writer you have evaluated yourself.
How do you critique your own soul?
– I intend to write a novel titled “Self-Recognition” about my spiritual journey. It will be a memoir, but unlike traditional ones. It will describe not so much external events, but the inner transformations within me.
God willing, when the book is published, you will see how I critique my own soul.
Jakhongir NOMOZOV, is a young poet and journalist from Uzbekistan.
He is also a Member of the Union of Journalists of Azerbaijan and the World Young Turkic Writers Union.
