Chulpan

(pen name of Abdul-Khamid Suleiman ogly Iunusov). Born 1893 in Andizhan; died 1938. Soviet Uzbek writer.

Chulpan studied in a madrasa and later in a Russian school for local nationalities. He began his literary career in 1914. His prerevolutionary works, including the novella Doctor Mukhammed”iar (1914) and short stories, are deeply pessimistic. Chulpan’s works of the Soviet period reveal contradictions in the author’s ideology and approach to literature. Bourgeois nationalist sentiments are apparent in the poetry collections The Awakening (1922), Springs (1924), and Secrets of the Dawn (1926).

In the latter 1920’s, Chulpan repudiated his errors, abandoned his delusions, and recognized the historical and social superiority of the new reality. The evolution of his world view found expression in the romantic drama Iarkin-Oi (1920; 2nd version, 1926), the novel By Night and by Day (part 1, 1936), and his plays. Saz (1931), a collection of verse, celebrates the October Revolution of 1917 and the successful building of socialism in Uzbekistan. Chulpan translated into Uzbek the works of A. S. Pushkin and N. V. Gogol, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the plays of C. Gozzi and C. Goldoni, and V. V. Ivanov’s Armored Train 14–69.