Kekilov, Aman

Born May 9, 1912, in the aul (village) of Keshi, present-day Ashkhabad Raion. Soviet Turkmen poet and literary critic. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Turkmen SSR (1969), People’s Writer of the Turkmen SSR (1967), and Honored Scientist of the Turkmen SSR (1972). Member of the CPSU since 1951.

The son of a poor peasant, Kekilov studied at the Institute of History, Philosophy, and Literature in Moscow from 1935 to 1939. His first works appeared in 1927. Kekilov is the author of the narrative poems Forward (1935), The Last Meeting (1940), and Love (books 1–2, 1947–57), reflecting the history of the Turkmen people in the Soviet period. He also wrote the words of the national anthem of the Turkmen SSR (1946). General literary problems, the tasks of Turkmen literature, and specific artistic works are discussed in his essays “On the Language of a Literary Work” (1942) and “On the Form and Content of a Literary Work” (1947) in Theory of Literature (3d ed., 1961), and in the monograph Mollanepes (1957). In 1970 he published the first volume of his three-volume study The Art of the Word. Kekilov has been awarded two orders and several medals.