Aaly Tonomnaev Kyrgyz Soviet writer Date of Birth: 07.11.1904 Country: Kyrgyzstan

Biography of Aaly Tokombaev

Aaly Tokombaev was a Kyrgyz Soviet writer, a national poet of Kyrgyzstan (1945), an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz SSR (1954), and a Hero of Socialist Labor (1974). He was one of the founders of Kyrgyz literature.
Early Life

Aaly Tokombaev was born on November 7, 1904, in the village of Chon-Kayyndy (now Keminsky District, Chui Oblast, Kyrgyzstan). During the 1916 uprising, his family fled to China, and in 1917, on their way back, his family perished, leaving Aaly orphaned. In 1922, he was admitted to the Tashkent boarding school. In 1927, he graduated from the Central Asian State University. That same year, he started working for the newspaper "Kyzyl Kyrgyzstan." In 1930-1931, he served as the editor of the Kyrgyz sector of the Central Publishing House (Moscow), and in 1931, he became the chief editor of the State Publishing House of the Kyrgyz ASSR. He continued to work in various positions in different periodicals of the republic and, with breaks, headed the Union of Writers of Kyrgyzstan from 1934 to 1949. From 1963 to 1980, he served as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Kyrgyz SSR.
Creative Work

Aaly Tokombaev's first poem was published in the first issue of the first Kyrgyz newspaper "Erkin Too" in 1924. In 1927, his first poetry collection "Lenin tuuraluu" (About Lenin) was released in Tashkent. In the 1930s, his collections "Emgek guldu" (Flowers of Labor), "Ataka" (Attack), "Abalky irlar" (First Poems), and others were published. The renowned translator S. I. Lipkin wrote about the young poet's early steps: "At the same time, it is easy and difficult to write in a language so fresh that every phrase of the poet becomes an image, and every epithet becomes a new concept. Aaly Tokombaev is going through a difficult path. It is the path of overcoming conventional poetics, the path to realism." In the late 1930s, Tokombaev turned to prose. His first books in this genre were "Dnestr tere deyizge kuyat" (The Dniester River Flows into the Deep Sea), "Zharalangan zherke" (Wounded Heart), "Tayna melodii" (Secret of the Melody). During the Great Patriotic War, he created a series of patriotic works, including "Zemlyak Manasa" (Manas's Compatriot), "O dvadtsati vosemi" (About Twenty-Eight), "Klyatva" (Oath), "Gordost" (Pride), "Khozyaeva lesa" (Owners of the Forest). After the war, Tokombaev's books "Zhizn" (Life), "Lirika" (Lyrics), "Pod melodii komuza" (To the Melody of the Komuz), "My byli soldatami" (We Were Soldiers), and others were published. In 1967, he received the Toktogul State Prize of the Kyrgyz SSR for his novel in verse "Taa aldyna" (Before the Dawn). In the 1970s, his books "Voskhod solntsa" (Sunrise), "Ashyrbay", "Moya respublika" (My Republic), "Mir moyey zhizni" (The World of My Life), and others were released. Aaly Tokombaev translated a number of works of Russian and world literature into Kyrgyz, including those by A. S. Pushkin, J. W. Goethe, F. Schiller, M. Yu. Lermontov, Ya. Kupala, V. V. Mayakovsky, S. Y. Marshak, Nizami, Abay, Jambul, and others.