Tales of the Amur


As we have seen, it was the railway which brought the world fame to the Nanai tribes fishing and hunting in archaic circumstances along the Amur and its tributaries. To the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway arrived from the east Henry W. Jackson who made the first photos of them, and on the completed railway arrived from the west the Russian ethnographers, among whom Vladimir Arsenev, whose book and the movies made of it – 1961 Babayan, 1975 Kurosawa – made familiar at least one Nanai, Dersu Uzala to most moviegoers. However, in the former Soviet Union and “the friendly countries” they became really popular not through Jackson’s never published photos, neither through the film of Kurosawa, but due to a story book published in 1975 with the title Tales of the Amur.


In fact, we should be grateful to the railway also for the book, since its author was born in Chita, its illustrator in Khabarovsk as descendants of railroad building engineers; their work was combined in Vladivostok, and both were inspired by the archaic culture of the Nanais living in the arch of the railway between these three cities.


Dmitry Nagishkin (Chita 1909 – 1961 Riga) studied electrical engineering, but from 1929 he worked as a journalist and illustrator for local papers, while he was more and more fascinated by the then still living Nanai folk culture. He published the tales collected among them for the first time in 1945 with the title Kid Chokcho, followed in 1946 by the Tales of the Amur and in 1949 by the Courageous Azmun. He himself considered as the peak of his literary work not these, but the historical novel Bonivur’s heart, written between 1944 and 1953 on the Far Eastern heroes of the civil war, the “partisans of the Amur”, also remembered in an extremely popular song. This novel, however, is hardly remembered by anyone, despite the fact that in 1969 they still made a film of it.


The ethos of the new world brought by the partisans of the Amur nevertheless infiltrated also into the Tales of the Amur. The last piece in the book  is an apocryphal folk tale, beginning as “It did not happen much ago”, on the encounter of two heroes, the powerful Kile Bambo and the even more powerful Ivan the Russian, who enter into eternal friendship, they expel together the Manchu – i.e. Chinese – landlords oppressing the Nanais, teach the Nanais to agriculture, and liberate them from every superstition of shaman cults. A beautiful tale, indeed.




The illustrator of the volume, Gennady Pavlishin was born in Khabarovsk where he lives even now. He studied at the Art School of Vladivostok. There he was fascinated by the folk art of the local tribes, as well as by the motifs of local archeological findings and early petroglyphs. He illustrated a number of ethnographic and archeological publications, but the world fame was brought to him by the illustrations of the Tales of the Amur, published again in 1975 in Kabarovsk, on which he combined the style of the Russian Art Nouveau, Bilibin and Roerich, with the motifs of the archaic art of the Amur. The book won the grand prize at the Bratislava International Biennale of Children’s Books, and several “friendly countries” published it in translation. It has been an extremely popular book in the Soviet Union, and many bloggers recall it with nostalgia from their childhood. Pavlishin was elected a honorary citizen of the city of Vladivostok in 1993.







amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1 amur1






amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2 amur2





amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3 amur3






The railway brought to the Nanais not only fame, but at the same time also the end of their culture. The Nanais living to the south of the Amur were transported by train into labor camps after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1935. By the end of the war barely three hundred of them survived. Today, called 赫哲 hèzhé, they are considered one of the 55 ethnic minorities of China, but the young people already do not speak their language. The traditional way of life of those living to the north, in Soviet territory was swept off by the kolkhozes introduced in the 1930s, and its continuation was made impossible by the industrial pollution destroying the fish population of the Amur. “There is no work here. The government gives people $30 per month. This is no life. The only work here is to find vodka”, says one of the last old men. Among the twelve thousand Nanais living in Russia only a couple of old people speak the language any more. The glorious world of the Nanai heroes and shamans, just as that of the Apaches and Mohicans, lives on in a book.




9 comentarios:

Effe dijo...

That glorious world lives now on the web too.
A very little curiosity (as a smoker): who knows what did they smoke? It's strange to me to think about tobacco crops in those cold lands of snow, bears and tigers

Studiolum dijo...

I tried to find an answer on the Russian web, but I have not found anything specific on Nanai smoking. However, I found an article on Cossack smoking which describes in detail the various local herbs they mixed with the tobacco, even to a very great proportion, partly to economize on tobacco, and partly for healing, tranquilizing etc. Nanais delivered fur to the markets of the northern towns of Manchuria where they obtained compressed black tea; I can imagine they bought dried tobacco there which they then enriched with local herbs. But I would be grateful for any more specific information.

Will dijo...

My God this must have taken a long time to assemble! Thank you for this amazing post and all your hard work and dedication.

Will @ 50 Watts (formerly A Journey Round My Skull)

Promotional Pens dijo...

Great post! Thanks for sharing.

Effe dijo...

tobacco from Manchuria mixed with local herbs: sounds plausible to me.
Well, tobacco is (was?) a "ethnic" leaf, maybe there is a tobacco story that joins different cultures around the world.

languagehat dijo...

A wonderful post, and now I want a copy of the book! By the way, "Courageous Amur" should be "Courageous Azmun." And as for "This novel, however, is hardly remembered by anyone," Wikipedia says "Наиболее известен его исторический роман «Сердце Бонивура»": I don't presume to judge between these opposing views!

exilestreet dijo...

Just noticed all the backlinks to 'Exile'...if you go to Blogger>Dashboard>Comments and choose the hide backlinks box, they will disappear and yr blog will look much nicer. It's due to the fact that I have you in my blog list...
Regards/
PS: Great post!

Studiolum dijo...

Never mind the backlinks, I am happy that so many of your readers come over and that so many links are offered to ours to go over there as well.

Language: Thanks for the correction of the name. As to the popularity of Nagishkin’s novel, I also read the Wikipedia article before writing the post, but I did not agree with this evaluation. Most probably the book and the film was highly appreciated in its own age, but we have never heard about it here in the krajina, and some Russian friends I asked about it did not remember it either, while the Tales of the Amur was a daily bread for all of them/us!

Thank you, Will, for your good words, and also for reminding me to change JRMS into 50Watts on the blogroll which I now immediately do. Please feel free to use any or all of the illustrations in your wonderful blog!

Fernanda Haiabe dijo...
Este comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.