The first literary text of the Yakut tradition in the aspect of new approaches to poetics

Abstract

The article provides in-depth the issue of the first literary text, which serves as the foundation for the development of literature as a distinct system apart from the oral tradition. In this context, we aim to revisit the question of which work by A.E. Kulakovsky should be regarded as the inaugural text of Yakut literature: the chronologically first by its conception and composition or the first by publication, which became widely known to readership. The paper forwards a hypothetical proposition of the importance of the publication of A.E. Kulakovsky’s first poem “Oath of Abasy” in 1908, which was selected by the author himself from the entire corpus of his early body of work. The purpose of the paper is to analyse the first poem by A.E. Kulakovsky in the aspect of poetics of the literary text itself. The research objectives include the analysis of the poem in the aspect of identifying the “poetic principle” within and in the context of the formation of the literary text as a whole, which determined the principles of formation of the poet’s literary poetics. The results of the analysis of A.E. Kulakovsky’s first poem demonstrate that it was this exact work, rather than “Algys to Baianai”, should be seen as the first literary text of the tradition, symbolising the beginning of literature as a new type of text, distinct from folklore. Analysis of this poem confirms that literature, unlike folklore, is aimed from the start at the author’s creation of the poetic principle proper, which permeates the text on all its levels. The scientific justification of “the primary text” of Yakut literary tradition should be considered as a fully motivated departure from the ideological assessments, characteristic of Soviet literary criticism and, in particular, in the history of studying the literary heritage of A.E. Kulakovsky.