Socio-psychological novel in modern Azerbaijan literature

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Socio-psychological novel in modern Azerbaijan literature

Gunel Askerova,

PhD Student at the Independence period Azerbaijani Literature Department Institute of Literature of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences

(Baku, Azerbaijan)

The article examines the formation and development trends of the socio- psychological novel genre in modern Azerbaijani literature. In the second half of the 20^th century, increasing the attention to the inner world of man and the world of spirituality in literature, led to the strengthening ofpsychologism in prose and the formation ofpsychological prose. In the last Soviet period, the tension of the socio-political situation, the increase of contradictions in the social life, the environment of moral erosion and degradation increased numerous social problems and this reflected the literature, too. In the prose, internally troubled, thoughtful heroes began to turn into social protestant characters. This conditioned the transition ofpsychological prose to socio-psychological prose, the creation of socio - psychological novels. For half a century, socio - psychological novels, in addition to reflecting the deep - rooted problems of the Azerbaijani society, have revealed the inner richness, character and psychology of the modern Azerbaijani man. In the period of independence, socio-psychological prose reveals new goals, layers, spheres in the life of society, and becomes even richer in terms of subject matter. Socio- psychological prose also develops in terms of genre. Socio psychological novel comes to the fore in the artistic study of social life. Especially the prose writers who came to literature in the 1980s and wrote down the processes of change occurring in society by directly experiencing them in their lives and biographies, socio-psychological novels are typical for the works of Safar Alisharli, Nariman Abdulrahmanli, Alabbas, Azad Garadarali, Eyvaz Allazoglu, Aslan Guliyev, Eyvaz Zeynalov, Zahid Saritorpag and other representatives of “the 80s generation". These writers were the first who create novels with deep social content of the period of independence. The importance of the genre can be seen in the functionality of socio psychological novels and in gaining the interest of a wide readership.

Key words: socio- psychological prose, socio-psychological novel, psychologism, Azerbaijani people, moral rebellion, protest literature.

Гюнель Аскерова,

аспірант кафедри азербайджанської літератури періоду незалежності Інститут літератури Національної академії наук Азербайджану

(Баку, Азербайджан)

Соціально-психологічний роман у сучасній азербайджанській літературі

У статті розглядаються тенденції формування та розвитку жанру соціально-психологічного роману в сучасній азербайджанській літературі. У другій половині 20 століття посилення уваги до внутрішнього світу людини та світу духовності в літературі призвело до посилення психологізму в прозі та становлення психологічної прози. В останній радянський період напруженість суспільно-політичної ситуації, загострення суперечностей у суспільному житті, середовище моральної ерозії та деградації посилили численні соціальні проблеми, що відбилося і на літературі. У прозі внутрішньо неспокійні, задумливі герої стали перетворюватися на соціальних протестантських персонажів. Це зумовило перехід психологічної прози до соціально-психологічної, створення соціально - психологічного роману. Протягом півстоліття соціально-психологічні романи, крім відображення глибинних проблем азербайджанського суспільства, розкривають внутрішнє багатство, характер і психологію сучасної азербайджанської людини. У період незалежності соціально-психологічна проза розкриває нові цілі, пласти, сфери в житті суспільства, стає ще багатшою за тематикою. Соціально- психологічна проза розвивається і в жанровому плані. У художньому дослідженні суспільного життя на перший план виходить соціально-психологічний роман. Особливо для прозаїків, які прийшли в літературу у 1980-х роках і описували процеси змін, що відбуваються в суспільстві, безпосередньо переживаючи їх у своєму житті та біографії, соціально-психологічні романи характерні для творчості Сафара Алішарлі, Нарімана Абдулрахманлі, Алаббаса, Азад. Гарадаралі, Ейваз Аллазоглу, Аслан Гулієв, Ейваз Зейналов, Захід Саріторпаг та інші представники «покоління 80-х». Ці письменники першими створили романи з глибоким соціальним змістом

Ключові слова: соціально-психологічна проза, соціально-психологічний роман, психологізм, азербайджанський народ, моральний бунт, література протесту.

Introduction

Socio-psychological prose has become relevant in Azerbaijani literature since the 70s and 80s of last century. The socio- psychological novel reflects the problems, contradictions, the upheavals between the socio- political situation and the spiritual world of man, through the heroes' psychology, it reflects artistically and reveals the reality. As indicated in the theoretical literature: “A socio- psychological novel is a literary genre written in prose, which involves a comprehensive description of the main character's life and personality in times of crisis, reveals the psychological characteristics of the hero, his psychological relations with the surrounding world, this novel reflects the current social issues and problems that concern the readers and the author” (Amirova, 2016).

Many stories, narratives and novels created in the 1960-1980s, including Isa Huseynov's “Telegram”, “Kollu kokha”, “Dry Branch”, Sabir Ahmadli's “Mark on the Hillside”, “Throne of the World”, “Green theater”, Anar's “Majal”, “The Sixth Floor of a Five storied House”, Elchin's “Aquarius”, “White camel”, Isi Malikzadeh's “The man of the house”, “The well”, Movlud Suleymanli's “The Mill”, “The voice”, Aqil Abbas's “The happiest man in the World”, Seyran Saxavat's “Stone houses”, Afag Masud's “Accident”, “The passage” and other works are considered examples of socio-psychological prose.Socio-psychologi- cal prose has taken the main place in the creativity of writers who came to literature in the 1980s, defined the creative directions of the “eighties” such as Safar Alisharli, Saday Budagli, Nariman Abdulrahmanli, Alabbas, Aslan Guliyev, Azad Garadarali, Eyvaz Allazoglu and others.

Discussion

The formation of the socio-psychological novel in Azerbaijani literature has literary-historical roots and socio-political foundations. The first factor of the genre in Azerbaijani prose is related to the concept of “psychologism”.Increasing attention of the prose to the inner worldof a person in 1960. The character and psychology of a national person,turning to the spiritual world led to the strengthening of “psychologism” in prose a method of artistic expression.

The concept of psychologism in modern time arose with the development of the science of psychology in parallel, it appeared as an artistic method in literature and art. Along with science, literature also actively participates in the study of the human soul. In this sense, psychologism has become the subject of artistic research and description of writers, the richness, complexity and subconscious processes of the human's spiritual world have been the object of influence. From the 19^th century, even many writers in the world's literature, including L.N. Tolstoy, F.M. Dostoevsky, Stendal, Balzac, V. Hugo, G. Flaubert, A.P. Chekhov have gained fame as “writer - psychologists”. The period of creation of psychological novels in literature also begins from this time.

The penetration of psychologism into literature is mostly connected with the development of the realistic prose. In this sense, the role of the classics of the Russian literature such as A.S. Pushkin, M.Y. Lermontov, N.V. Gogol, I.S. Turgenev, L.N. Tolstoy, F. Dostoevsky, A.P. Chekhov, M. Gorkin is considered undeniable in the formation of socio- psychological novels. In particular, the emergence of psychologism in Azerbaijani realist prose is connected with these traditions, in the works of J. Mammadguluzade, A. Hagverdiyev, Y. V. Chamanzaminli, the depiction of national character and psychologies is the main subject of interest of writers.

In modern literature, psychologism is defined as follows: “Psychologism is a complete, detailed and deep description of the feelings, thoughts and lives of a literary character” (Esin, 1988, p. 18). L. Ginzburg considers psychologism “an artistic study of contrasts and depth of spiritual life” (Ginzburg, 1971, p. 286). In modern scientific psychology, Z. Freud`s theory of psychoanalysis is considered a revolutionary step in the deepening of the concept of psychologism. According to the B.M. Proskuri, the author of the article “Artistic Psychologism before and after Freud (based on the experience of Russian and foreign literature)”, Freud's theory that human actions are subject to the subconscious rather than to consciousness is based on the truths revealed by the literature of the 19^th century: In the literature of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the artistic study of the inner world of the person was called artistic psychologism” (Proskurin, 2008).

In the second half of the 20^th century, along with Z. Freud's psychoanalysis, K. Jung's theory of archetypes has a strong influence on the humanities and fiction. K. Jung writes: “Everyone is sure that we have done something extraordinary in the course of time. We have discovered the rocket and the atom. But we have only looked at what happens inside a person” (Jung, 1996, p. 279). As a result, new human concepts emerge in the world literature, the deeper psychological layers of the human character become the object of artistic research. New achievements of European, American, Eastern and Latin American novels confirm this.

Despite the great discoveries in psychology of the 20^th century, these theories remained in the shadow and were banned in soviet literature for a long time. In the soviet era, the dominance of collectivism ideas in literature also prevented the development of the individual's life and inner world. Despite all the obstacles of the soviet regime in the literature of the 60s, there was an opportunity to penetrate the inner of the human world. Yashar Garayev writes about it: “Above all, the attention of the sixties deepened on the person, the sixties re-introduced the theme of “Man” into fiction as a new theme and a new problem. In this problem, they raised layers that were not the target of special analysis and attention for the previous decades or were still in the background. It is about the growing artistic interest in personality, individual, moral psychological “inside”, it is about the artistic analysis and research that open the time, era, spiritual reality directly “not as a social system and structure, but rather a conscientious, ethical wealth” (Garayev, 1996, p. 502).

In this way, from the 1960s, Azerbaijani writers benefited from our classical prose, J. Mammadgulu- zade`s and A. Hagverdiyev's works and began to penetrate psychologism, the inner world, character and psychology of a modern national person. Another factor influencing the actualization of the socio-psychological novel genre in Azerbaijani literature in the 1970s and 1980s is the tension of the socio-political situation in the country, which is also reflected in literature. The fact that writers gave importance to this genre in the 1970s and 1980s can be explained by the realities of the social life.

As in all socialist societies of the soviet period the emergence of serious social problems and contradictions in the life of Azerbaijan, cataclysms in the material and moral condition of society, crisis of ideas, the failure of the official communist propaganda, the fact that people pursue happiness rather than social life, closing themselves into their individual worlds, protests against a hypocritical environment, new class divisions instead of an egalitarian socialist society, the emergence of massive inequality created a completely new social landscape. If in the socialist realism novels of the previous era, the target of social protest was the previous life and the unjust capitalist world, now literature faced the need to uncover, reflect and expose the environment of social injustice created by the socialist society itself. There was a need for works that reflected the new social situation and could penetrate the life and thought of the heroes of the modern era.

We can see the heroes of the modern era, mostly in the examples of psychological prose created by “60s”. These heroes are closed in their inner world, don't reconcile with the environment. They are more “thinking heroes and make people think” (Garayev, 1977). Life problems and moral upheavals gradually bring these heroes out of their inner world to the outside world, and push them into direct collisions with the social environment. This prompted the actualization of socio- psychological prose, which illuminates certain problems of society against the background of the modern human themes. “Thinking heroes” were replaced by social protest heroes. So, social novel, also known as a social problem novel (or social protest), as a work of fiction, the superiority of social problems dramatized by gender, race and class is seen through the influence of novel characters (Social romance).

In Anar's story “Majal”, Fuad like his fellow student Oktay, has an opportunity to protest against the alien, socialized intellectual environment and manages to come back to himself, in the writer's novel “The sixth floor of a five-storied house”, the character Tahmina reflects the protest against the attitude towards women of the morally disfigured society. In Elchin's story “Aquarius”, the target of exposure is that society is losing its moral support in the face of the corrupt upper classes. In Movlud Suleymanli's work “The mill”, both materially and morally division of society into classes causes protest. In the work “The well” by Isa Malikzade, the violation of national morality in the conditions of social alienation is represented by the moral rebellion of the hero. In Sabir Ahmadli's novels “The throne of the world”, “Boats float on Yasamal lake” the process of gradual destruction by social contradictions in the village and in the city is presented in the face of the hero's internal protests. Isa Huseynov's “Ideal” puts forward the human ideal based on purity, originality and human naturalness against the socialist society.

The increase of social contradictions, the inverse proportionality of official lies and real life relationships, social injustice, violation of social morals, the establishment of an environment that is against human morality, as well as: Ilyas Afandiyev's “The tale of Valeh with Sarikoynak”, Sabir Ahmadli's “Green theater”, “Boats float on Yasamal lake”, Isa Malikzade's “The well”, “Green night”, “Red rain”, Movlud Suleymanli's “The devil”, “The mill”, “Walnut worm”, “Voice”, Afgan's “Secretary” was reflected in these novels and short stories and was met with strong opposition from the writer (Azerbaijani literature of the period of independence, 2016, p. 56).

Thus, we see that the decaying views of the Soviet society are reflected in the socio- psychological prose of the time, which acquired new shades. In his research on the Azerbaijani novel of the 1980s, Tayyar Salamoglu summarizes the results of that process and writes: “The purpose and quality of the intervention of the novel into the social life of the 1980s is fundamentally different from the stage of the genre before the 1950s. Until the 1950s, social life came to the novel in the sphere of social and political problems, but in these novels human destiny was in the background. The prose literature of the 60s and 70s brought it out of the level of socio-political problems and brought it to the level of spiritual and moral searches in order to return prose literature to its subject and connect it with human destiny. Influence on social life is strengthened again in the 80s. But this reputation is different from the one before the 50s. The novel hero of these years is a person who perishes in the whirlwind of socio- political contradictions. The novel of the 80s creates a socio-political picture of modern life and portrays the image of a person living a tragic fate” (Salamoglu, 2012. p. 34).

Tehran Alishanoglu characterizes this prose as “Literature of resistance”. In the literature of resistance and protest, it was like this: the hero, standing against the foreign social environment, on the one hand analytically reveals the incompleteness, anti- humanist character and bankruptcy of the regime, and on the other hand, in his generalized face and image as an idea as a social- spiritual, national moral or deeper existential- philosophical load carrier, he expressed the spirit of intransigence and could drag the reader along. It shows that this literature continued in the prose of the independence period (Alishanoglu, 2015).

Social-psychological prose entered a new stage during the period of independence and developed in Anar's “The hotel room”, Elchin's “Bayragdar”, Aqil Abbas's “Uzeyir Hajibayov can't be born in a tent”, Sabir Ahmadli's “The pleasure”, Afaq Mag- sud's “Freedom”, Safar Alisharli's “Maestro”, Aslan Guliyev's “Sergeant in civilian clothes”, “Rebel” by Alabbas,”Alone”, “Without the way” by Nariman Abdulrahmanli, “Fisher man”, “Warmish Seagulls” by Elchin Huseynbayli, Azad Garadarali's “Shaha- rcik”, Sharif Aghayar's “Gulustan” and etc.

In the period of independence, socio-psycholog- ical prose reveals new goals, spheres in the life of society and becomes richer in terms of subject matter: “In the works of our prose writers of different ages, we can see the presentation of the environment, social life from the point of view of the hero chosen from the wide ranks. (Alishanoglu, 2017, p. 304) Socio - psychological prose is developing in terms of genre, socio-psychological novel comes to the fore in the artistic study of social life.

Especially the prose writers who came to literature in the 1980s and wrote the processes of change happening in society directly in their lives and biographies - Safar Alisharli, Nariman Abdulrahmanli, Alabbas, Azad Garadarali, Eyvaz Allazoglu,Aslan Guliyev, Eyvaz Zeynalov, Zahid Saritorpag and others. Socio- psychological novels are typical for the creativity of the representatives of the “generations of the eighties”. Modern literary criticism has also recorded this fact: “The last strong wave of realist psychological and socio - psychological prose belongs to the generation that came to literature in the 1980s such as Safar Alisharli, Saday Budagli, Alabbas, Eyvaz Allazoglu, Aslan Guliyev, Nariman Abdulrahmanli. In recent years, most of the successes of these writers are more related to the novel genre” (Alishanoglu, 2017, p. 409).

In the novel “Maestro” by Safar Alisharli, we can see the difficulties of the 1990s period of transition to independence, the struggle for the establishment of a new society against the old socio- political system in the face of hero's moral and spiritual upheveals. In Nariman Abdulrahmanli's novels “Alone” and “Without the way” the internal turmoil of the hero is presented in a society, where the moral environment is distorted and double morality prevails. In Zahid Saritorpag's novels “Sorrows yellow hat” and “Ashes” meeting the world of spiritual purity with material well being, reveals the violation of social balance in the society by presenting it on the level of the deep psychological and existential lives of the hero. The spirit of irreconcilability with the regime and the spirit of rebellion left a heavy mark on the fate of prose writers, almost the whole generations of the eighties. Perhaps, it is because these writers were the first who created novels with deep social content during the period of independence. In Alabbas's novel “Rebel” we see the struggle and victory of the national man against the Soviet regime and the alienated social environment in which he lived.

Azad Garadarali, like the writer Alabbas, sees the troubles of the period of independence in the loss of the moral image of the society, starting from the Soviet period, in the novels “Where the Sun eclipsed”, “Kuma Manich depression”, “Shaharcik”, “One less than fifty” it presents this mostly with the description of conflicting heroes, alienated characters and alienated society landscapes. Azad Garadarali sums up the idea of overcoming the social evil that constantly preoccupies society in his novel “Weirdness”.

The motives of fighting against social evil are also on target in Aslan Guliyev's work, but they are manifested in a different, original way. Determining the boundary between good and evil is not easy at all in the writer's novels “Sergeant in civilian clothes”, “The last”, “Pain”, “In hot and cold countries”, “7+1night”. The beginning of good and evil in the family, household, social life, within a person and in the actions, thoughts and dreams of an individual are in a different way. No matter how strong and comprehensive the social evil is depicted in Aslan Guliyev's novels, in the end, beauty, morality and justice prevail.

Conclusion

Thus, we see that the socio - psychological novel genre has maintained its relevance in modern Azerbaijani literature for almost half a century. In this genre, Azerbaijani writers reflect the motives of resistance and protest against the former Soviet regime,as well as, the rich character, dreams and ideals of the modern Azerbaijani man. The fact that he fights for these ideals today as well as yesterday, he braves social problems and remains faithful to his spiritual world. The importance of the genre is seen in the functionality of socio- psychological novels and in gaining the interest of a wide readership.

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