Elements of Folklore in "Axtıılar (Memoirs)", the First Literary Work of Saha (Yakut) Turks

• Published in: Akademik Dil ve Edebiyat Dergisi
• Main Author: ERSOZ, Murat
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Turkish
• Published: Mehmet ÖZDEMİR 2023
• Subjects: Sakha (Yakut);A. Y. Uvarovskay;Axtıılar;folklore elements.; Saha (Yakut);A. Y. Uvarovskay;Axtıılar;halk bilimi unsurları.; Edebi İncelemeler; Literary Reviews; Sakha; Sakha language; Yakut; Yakuts; Siberia
• Online Access: https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/akaded/issue/76901/1260536; https://doi.org/10.34083/akaded.1260536

Axtıılar is the first literary work written in the Sakha language (Yakut language), and its author is Afanasiy Yakovlevich Uvarovskay. Uvarovskay was a bureaucrat who lived between 1800-1862 and held high-level public positions and was loved by the Yakut people. He was well-educated and had a high intellectual background. He knew the cultures and lives of the peoples of the Northeast Siberia region. Yakut was his homeland and he saw the Yakut language as his mother tongue. He could speak and write Yakut as well as Russian. He started to write his work, which is the subject of our article, in March 1846 at the request of the Turkology expert Otto Nikolayevich Böhtlingk and completed it on November 8, 1846. His purpose in writing this work called Axtıılar was to assist Böhtlingk's work on the Yakut language and thus contribute to the preservation of the Yakut language. In his work, Uvarovskay deals with what he had been through since his childhood. He sees his life as sad and worthless, but his life story contains invaluable material for Sakha (Yakut) folklore. He also adds notes on Sakha life and folklore at the end of his work. These notes contain the first compact folkloric notes on the Yakuts. That is why he is considered the first folklorist of the Yakut region. This work of his was translated into German as a full text in the middle of the nineteenth century and then into French as a summary. In this way, foreign scientists learn about the traditions and customs of the Yakuts from a reliable source. In this study identified and classified the folklore elements studied in Axtıılar, which has a significant place in terms of comparative folklore studies. Thus, we have tried to reveal the Yakut folkloric life of the Yakuts in the nineteenth century in a systematic way. Axtıılar, Afanasiy Yakovleviç Uvarovskay (1800-1862) tarafından yazılmış Sahaca (Yakutça) ilk edebî eserdir. Uvarovskay, üst düzey kamu görevlerinde bulunmuş ve bu sırada Yakut halkının sevgisine mazhar olmuş bir bürokrattır. İyi eğitim ...