Chinghiz Aitmatov’s Humanistic Principles in On-Screen Interpretations: A Dialogue of Cultures

The purpose of this article is to actua­lize the humanistic principles of Chinghiz Aitmatov (1928—2008), one of the brightest writers and humanists of the 20th century, whose 90th birth anniversary is being celebrated by the world community. The article considers the problems of on-screen interpretations of Chinghiz Aitmatov’s works in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The author considers interpreting of literary classics not only as a “translation” of a work from the language of one art into the language of another, but also as a “dialogue of cultures” (according to M. Bakhtin) — in this case, the book one (culture of the word) and the screen one (audiovisual culture). The article uses the historical-comparative and interdisciplinary methods: the artistic and cultural approaches are combined with the method of lite­rary analysis of texts. The chosen research topic is relevant due to both the revival of interest in Ch. Aitmatov’s works, which raised the problems of “cultural me­mory” and “cultural identity” to the rank of universal, and the increase of scientific interest in the issues of on-screen interpretations. The article analyzes the films by A. Konchalovsky, G. Bazarov, L. Shepitko, I. Poplavskaya, S. Urusevsky, T. Okeev, B. Shamshiev, K. Gevorkyan, B. Karagulov, and other directors who filmed Aitmatov’s prose. The author concludes that on-screen interpretations are able to “actualize” and “moder­nize” the classics in the era of globalization; and the task of the interpreter is extremely complex and responsible.

The article has three main sections. The first one, “In Line with the ‘Sixties’”, considers the proximity of young Aitmatov’s works to the search and discovery of the artists of the “Thaw” period. The second one, “How a Man Can Be a Man...”, reveals the features of the worldview of the writer who rethinks the Soviet reality, which changes the atmosphere of the films based on his works. In the third section “From Drama to Philosophical Parable”, the author focu­ses on the strengthening of moral and philosophical problematics in Aitmatov’s works, which complicates the artistic image of on-screen adaptations and makes them a kind of mirror of the era of social upheaval.

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