Representation of the human body in Gabdulla Tukay’s poetry

Abstract

For the first time not only in Tukay studies, but also in Tatar philology, the article has studied the representation of the human body and its individual parts based on the works of G. Tukay, the great poet of the Tatar people. Although there are no works in Tatar literary studies specially devoted to the problems of corporeality, some observations can be found on this topic in the works where the body acts as a material object. The analysis of research and the specific features of covering this topic in the works of the poet is the novelty of this paper. G. Tukay criticized the negative aspects of society and national reality, as well as negative character traits of representatives of upper classes or an individual person by using a metonymic image of the body and its individual parts. We find an active use of such parts of the body as the nose (boryn), head (bash) and stomach (korsak) with various shades of evaluation. At the same time, in the poet’s work, female beauty is the subject of inspiration and suffering, that is, it acts as an object of culture. In these poems, eyes, lips, teeth, face and hands express the lyrical hero’s intimate feelings and the beauty of his beloved. In some of G. Tukay’s works, individual parts of the body, the hand for example, are used as symbols, enabling to display various experiences and philosophical and existential thoughts of the lyrical hero.