Vurgun, Samed

(pseudonym; real name, Samed lusif ogly Vekilof). Born May 12, 1906, in the village of Iukhary-Salakhly; died May 27, 1956, in Baku. Azerbaijani Soviet author and civic figure. Folk poet, Honored Artist of the Azerbaijan SSR (1943). Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR (1945). Member of the CPSU from 1940. Founder of a new poetic school in Azerbaijan.

The son of a peasant, Vurgun worked as a teacher. Beginning in 1929, he studied at the second Moscow State University and was a graduate student in Baku. His first works were published in 1924. The revolution and construction of a new life are the themes of his poetry anthologies The Poet’s Vow (1930) and The Lantern (1932). Vurgun was an implacable foe of“pure art” and formalism in literature. From the first years of his work, the strong influence of his poetic word was determined by the harmonic fusion of the idea with the innovative form of the verse and the depth of feelings it expressed. Some examples are “Komsomol Poem” (Part One, 1933; unfinished), “Twenty-six” (1935), and “Basil” (1937). The artistic form and stylistic medium of these works speak for their folk base. The heroic-romantic verse drama Vagif (1937; State Prize of the USSR, 1941) is about an 18th-century poet; the historical verse drama Khanlar (1939) is about a Bolshevik revolutionary; the heroic love drama in verse Farkhad and Shirin (1941; State Prize of the USSR, 1942) is based on Nizami’s poem “Khosrov and Shirin”; and the verse drama A Man (1945) exposes the ideology of force and affirms the creative work of socialist humanism. During the Great Patriotic War, Vurgun wrote about patriotism, friendship among peoples, and faith in victory: “A Mother’s Word” (1941), “Partisans of the Ukraine” (1942), and “So They Told Me” (1943). He created contemporary heroes, as in the poems “Mugan’ ” (1949) and “Aigiun” (1951). The poems “The Negro Speaks” (1948), “Reading Lenin” (1950), “Flag-bearer of the Century” (1954), and the verse cycle “Burnt Books” (1947) praise the Communist Party and V. I. Lenin. Vurgun’s laconic and restrained style influenced contemporary Azerbaijani poetic style and language and helped rid it of archaisms.

Vurgun is the author of articles about Nizami, A. S. Pushkin, V. V. Maiakovskii, M. Gorky, and other writers. He translated into Azerbaijani such works as Pushkin’s Evgenii Onegin, part of Sh. Rustaveli’s poem “Hero in a Leopard-skin Coat,” Nizami’s poem “Leili and Medzhnun,” Gorky’s “A Girl and Death,” T. Shevchenko’s “The Spoiled Girl” (“Katerina”), Khagani’s rubai, and poems by I. Chavchavadze and Dzhambula. Vurgun’s works have been translated into many languages. He was a deputy to the First through Fourth Congresses of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and was awarded two orders of Lenin, two other orders, and medals.