Mintimer Shaimiev, The First President of The Republic of Tatarstan:
Words fail to fully express the tremendous importance of Tukay to the Tatar people, Turkic world and Eastern countries. His poetry is a dwelling place of our people’s soul, and we know that the soul is immortal and not of this world. It means that works by Tukay are also immortal combining the past, the present and the future of our culture.
Gabdulla Tukay lived a short but eventful life of creative fire and left a diverse poetic and publicistic heritage. On the one hand, he was a tender lyric poet arousing the subtlest feelings in the human heart, while, on the other hand, he was a biting satirist ruthlessly castigating vices of the society and an ardent publicist highlighting the crucial social and political issues of his time. Being confident that literature should serve people in their struggle for better life and freedom Tukay had laid the foundations of realism in the Tatar poetry that was later developed by other famed Tatar poets, writers and composers.
Holding A.Pushkin and M.Lermontov, classics of the high Russian literature, as his teachers and using his poetic language Tukay managed to bring to the Tatars timeless cultural values that join and unite our nations. The following well-known poem: “We were born and raised here, and here shall we die, and fate itself with Russian land, forever did us tie” — has actually become a sort of the poetic manifesto for the centuries-old friendship between the Tatar and Russian people.
Each generation opens classics anew for themselves discovering kin features in their works. Over one hundred years since first Tukay’s works were published his poetry has become the treasure of not only Tatar and Russian but also world culture. His works have been translated into numerous languages, while Tukay’s books and books about him have been republished hundreds of times. True poetry respects no borders. It is like the sun that shines for everyone and everywhere.
The famed Tatar poet Ildar Yuzeyev wrote the following:
You left your great footsteps on our common side,
You reflect the white light through the mirror of the people’s soul.
Your bright artistic light in is that of the Sun and Moon for people.
Our people and the whole world praise you, our priceless Tukay!
Gabdulla Tukay is the true sun of the Tatar poetry which rose once over our great land and will never come down.
