Spiritual And Moral Studies Of Characters In Modern Chechen Drama

Abstract

This article analyzes the problems of moral and ethical foundations of modern Chechen writers’ drama works. The research is carried out on a wide representative material of modern Chechen dramas, plays, dramatic poems by Ismailov A., Yakhyaev S., Issa T. the research is quite broad and multi-aspect, explicating moral and ethical space of ancient Chechen ethnos. The authors come to the conclusion that the attitude to considered moral issues is declared both explicitly and implicitly. On the basis of a comparative, conceptual and linguocultural analysis, authors identify ways of representing traditional moral values ​​of Chechen people in the context of changing epistemic spaces. Moral philosophy of modern Chechen drama in its evolution can be described by the heritage of both writers of the Soviet period and authors of the new era. Dramatic archetypal oppositions “friend / foe”, “good / evil”, “freedom / dependence”, reflecting ethnospecific, specifically historical and human dichotomous relations, explicating the essence of cultural development and a specific period of the formation of a nation, is embodied not only in the images and actions of heroes, but also in the monological remarks of the characters, as well as in the ones by the authors. The authors note clarity of the author's position expressed in digressions and remarks, and vagueness of the representation of character’s spiritual and mental struggle, which is characteristic of the Chechen linguocultural value-oriented system.

Keywords: Morality, traditions, drama, main character, moral and ethical space, characters of the play

Introduction

Contemporary Chechen drama is represented by authors who, to varying degrees, are known by readers of poetry and prose. These are Akhmadov (2014), Abalaeva (2015) and others. Drama for these authors, as noted above, is a test of their capabilities in a new genre. Most of these authors turned to drama in the 90s of the last century.

As you might know, significant drama does not grow from scratch like everything else in art. It is inconceivable without roots, without traditions. New names in Chechen drama seek to establish direct contact through perception and suggestion, broadcasting moral and ethical values in the so-called semi-documentary drama against the background of their opposition to modern deprivation of any social or moral agenda (Zhuchkova, 2019).

A feature of today's drama can be considered the fact that the play gradually ceases to play an unenviable role for itself, which is a semi-finished product for the future (if only this is possible). Performance acquires an independent value in the reader's perception. The republican magazines “Orga”, “Vainakh”, “Nana”, which willingly provide playwrights with pages of their magazines, contribute to the acquisition of this “status” by the drama.

Problem Statement

Today, Chechen drama is diverse in its themes and genres. Creation of characters of the new era is becoming the main concern of today's drama. The events of recent decades enable playwrights to raise highly topical social and moral problems, to achieve a response in the hearts and minds of those to whom Chechen art is directed, and to achieve feedback. Playwrights strive to reveal the complex relationships that exist in our society nowadays.

Research Questions

It is necessary to print plays – without this, drama, waiting for proposals from the theater, “withers” and loses its topicality. Modern theater often creates its own, rather free version of a drama work. A director, an artist and actors become co-authors of a playwright. Each of them makes his own contribution to the production and adds his own attitude.

It should be noted that self-expression in a particular work, even if it was transformed on the stage, is not an essential dominant of specific “psycho-emotional acts that convey moral and ethical values of both linguistic culture and an author. It can only be applied to certain objective content. “There is no univalent interpretation in the correlation of aspects and conditions of detention, since there are no procedures for checking correlations of this kind” (Bredikhin et al., 2019). Each specific reading, each specific staging or screen version of a dramatic work that carries traditional moral values to the masses, introduces individual shades of meaning and increases the volume of already “endless” cultural moral concepts. It is often that the life of a play, good name of a playwright depends on the success or failure of a theater.

A playwright has to constantly think about the following: Will the theater be able to capture and express his thoughts in its performance? Hence, it is clear that a playwright can only affirm and defend the literary merits of his work in a “typographical” way. It should not be that the character created by the playwright is complemented by the theater. It should be complete by itself.

What are the challenges of our time? How are these problems captured and reflected in dramatic works? Who is the drama character? What does he preach and convey to a reader in his innermost depths? These are the questions to which we must seek answers as we study the dramatic works of the last 15–20 years. We would like to present our critical reflections on the successes and omissions of modern drama by talking about the work of Akhmadov (2014). His contribution to Chechen drama seems to be the most significant nowadays.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to analyze moral and ethical aspects of the explication of the worldview of modern Chechen authors in various genres of dramatic text. The article gives a description of a powerful layer of reception for Chechen people's moral and value heritage, which is represented in contemporary art and corresponds to the conceptual and valorous systems of the previous drama and prose tradition.

Within the framework of the analysis of moral and ethical issues actualized in modern Chechen drama, the following tasks are performed:

1) the article describes a consistent comparative-typological analysis of the explication of moral and ethical components of the worldview in Chechen drama on the Soviet period and modern times;

2) it demonstrates the primordial culturally determined value-orientational space has the greatest influence on the formation of moral attitudes and problems in the dramatic description of everyday life by modern Chechen authors;

3) it traces the mechanisms of transformation of the general linguocultural moral space in the explication of individual author's moral and ethical components..

Research Methods

The methodology of this research is a complex linguocultural and literary approach, which includes elements of a comparative conceptual, distributive, and cultural analysis, as well as modeling the epistemic-conceptual apparatus of the modern Chechen drama.

Findings

Akhmadov (2014) tried to have his word in almost all genres of drama: comedy, drama, tragedy, tragicomedy, film script. The drama of Akhmadov is also different thematically: in his works the reader finds out about the past of the people, plunges into the problems of today. Whatever Akhmadov wrote about, the main discussed issue remains the question of morality (Inderbaev, 2007). In recent years, he has written and staged more than 20 plays on the stage of a national theater.

A person without a morally pure past cannot be morally clean. The reader comes to such conclusions after reading the screenplay of Akhmadov (2014) “And do not destroy the anthill ...”. The action of the movie script takes place in one of the villages of Shatoy region. The events take place in a small mountain village with very friendly and peaceful people. But their peace is disturbed by the appearance of Zhakharbek and his two sons, who were sheltered by one of the respected elders of the village of Zukhaira. Old man Zukhaira, his son Kerim, Zhaharbek and his sons are the main characters.

Zhakharbek and his sons turned out to be very dangerous and ungrateful people. There is absolutely no moral and ethical principle in their images. All of them, having become full-fledged members of the aul, disrespect the customs of Chechen people, violating them deliberately. For example, Mukharbek, the eldest son of Zhakharbek, tries to look after the girl loved by Zukhaira's son. Zuhaira and his son Kerim suffer the most because of the immoral behavior of this family.

As these people appeared, great troubles and grief came to this aul, rains began to fall incessantly. The action of the script ends with a number of deaths: Zhakharbek's sons die from the hand of Kerim. The chairman of the Soviet regime, Askhab, and Zhakharbek himself perish. The author tries to explain the immorality of Zhakharbek and his sons by their commitment to the revolution and Soviet power.

The reader may have questions about the title of the scenario “And don't destroy the anthill ...” But in the end, this question will find a clear answer. High morality, spiritual purity, good intentions are the main things for a person. The dialogue between the grandfather and the grandson is very interesting. The child listens to all the conversation and memories of the grandfather as an adult. At the end of the work, the reader learns about the meaning of the title of this work, i.e. it is impossible to destroy the anthill even by accident, otherwise it will rain, the harvest will perish, and people will suffer great misfortunes.

In the dramatic poem “Edal” by Ismailov A., the reader does not find any obvious signs that would allow attributing the action of this work to a particular period in the history of Chechen people. The background against which the events unfold in the poem is conditionally historical.

The poem “Edal’ takes place in one of the villages of the auls of Chechnya. The protagonist of the poem is a young man Edal, who was morally ahead of his time: he does not accept cruel laws and traditions of his ancestors.

Edal was ten years old when his father decided to send his son to the mountains, where he was supposed to study martial arts from old Nazhi. For ten years Edal was cut off from the life of his native village. The wise Nazha taught the children to use not only a saber and a flintlock. He taught young men to think, reflect on life.

Unexpected terrible news forced Edal to return to his native aul: his brother Yandar was killed while carrying out a night watch on the border of the aul.

Ozdamar, Edal's father, summoned his son so that he, as required by the age-old laws of the mountaineers, would find his brother's killer and avenge his own blood.

The laws of antiquity, which his parents and aul residents adhere to, are seen as wild and cruel by Edal. He does not want to rob people passing on the high road like his fellow tribesmen, nor does he want to kill a weak and unarmed opponent.

Edal does not consider himself entitled to decide anyone's fate. Having met in the forest Mahti, the suspected killer of his brother, Edal basically refuses to kill him, although the killer himself begs him about it.

The poem “Edal’ is a philosophical work in many ways. In lyrical digressions, the author discusses time and meaning of a human life together with his characters.

The content of the poem is projected onto our time, finding in it well-known parallels (Inderbaev, 2016).

Audience meets the hero of the play at a time when a person must be extremely sincere and honest not only to himself, but also to the people around him. Both the reader and the audience are presented not as an outside observer, but with a creator of the moral space, who gives each concept a new sound (Elam, 2002). The terrible sentence passed on him the day before by the prison doctors forced Gadaev M.-S. to ask himself the question: Did his life path correspond to the purpose that was determined for him by fate?

The audience “sees and listens to” answers to this question in the poet's monologues, in the characteristics of his friends and acquaintances, voiced by the lead actors (Inderbaev, 2016). These answers form the plot of the stage play “Magomed-Salakh and thoughts about him”, from which the audience grows up the image of an unusually gifted person who is not from his era and does not want to understand and accept life circumstances and people by what they are. Hot-tempered and impulsive by nature, he does not tolerate lies, injustice, humiliation.

Gadaev (Inderbaev, 2016) tried with all his heart to serve poetry and the rules of honor and decency remained above all for him. The poet constantly felt an internal discord with time, and this state led him to vicissitudes, which were many in his life.

The poet's poems, which he wrote in the last months of his life, are not pessimistic or hopelessness. They are full of vitality instead, full of a sense of joy and life. While in difficult conditions of detention, sentenced to death by doctors, Gadaev (Inderbaev, 2016) never stops thinking about the fate of his people. He is interested in everything: the state of education in the republic, issues of pedagogy and family education of children.

In his monologues, the poet does not lock himself in his own pain. On the contrary, pain makes his heart more sensitive to the people with whom he has to part. Thus, even the very communicative situation of the generation of this or that work is not the dominant in objectifying inner world or value orientations for a creative person. Moral and ethical load is determined by the aspirations of the creator himself, his imaginative-connotative capabilities in explicating basic cultural values (Eisаesser & Hаgener, 2010).

The play adaptation “GadaevMoh'mad-Salah' a, cunahojlanash a” by Yakhyaev S. for the stage, which had a stage life in the national theater of Chechnya, allowed the Chechen audience to get acquainted with the life and work of Gadaev M.-S. to some extent, who was a Soviet poet of the 1930s – 1970s.

However, it should be noted that the form of staging did not allow the author to create the socio-historical background necessary for revealing the personality of Gadaev (Inderbaev, 2016).

In Chechen literature of the first decades of the 21st century, Tauz Iss (Iss is the poet's literary pseudonym, his real name is Isaev) is known as a poet and essayist. Iss also tries himself in drama. He wrote the drama “Star of the Caucasus” and the play-buffoonery “Homa da adame!” (“God forbid!”).

Action in the buffoonery “God forbid!” is developing rapidly. The characters reveal themselves in the eyes of the reader. Their actions are logical, and they are largely recognizable.

The nameless characters of the buffoonery (“As”, “So”) are a product of Gorbachev's “perestroika”. These are scammers, careerists, bribe-takers, people who want to appear in the eyes of others by someone who they not really are.

In his buffoonery, Iss T. managed to create situations in which the pictures a characteristic of a part of Chechen society before the first Russian-Chechen war.

The buffoonery play is a new genre in Chechen drama, although its genre elements were often found in the comedies of Akhmadov (2014).

The action in Iss's drama “The Star of the Caucasus” takes place in the mountains of Chechnya in 1859.

The drama attempts to tell about the events and problems that were happening in Chechnya after the defeat of the highlanders in the Caucasian War.

The play “Star of the Caucasus” consists of two acts and fifteen scenes.

The main characters of the drama include old man Ruzba, his son Boklo, Chechen officer Elmirza, murids, etc.

Having won a victory over the highlanders, tsarist authorities are in a hurry to firmly and forever gain a foothold in Chechnya: new fortresses are being built and strengthened, new Russian laws and procedures are being introduced into the everyday life of Chechens, which the highlanders find it difficult to get used to.

Chechens are confused, morally depressed. The events of the post-war period excite the mountaineers. Part of the Chechen population does not want to put up with the current situation and is ready to again oppose the invaders.

Boklo, a son of Ruzba, gathers the surviving murids in the mountains and intends to oppose the Russians who are building fortresses. Boklo shares his plans with the officer Elmirza, who is in the service of the Russians. He seriously discourages Boklos from the dangerous act because the opponents are too unequal. Boklo nevertheless comes out with his few murids against Russians and is defeated later. Here is a brief summary of the main content of Issa's drama.

It should be noted that the drama was not successful. It is very weak ideologically and artistically. Having touched an interesting, little-studied topic in Chechen literature, Iss was unable to develop it in images and truthful situations. The conflict between Boclo and Elmirza, which could move the plot, unfortunately, did not receive its development in the play.

The drama of Iss T. lacks a true picture of the historical life of the people (Akhmadov, 2014).

In recent years, the Writers' Union has been actively publishing books by modern authors of Chechnya, both in their native and Russian languages; and also republishing literary and artistic works of the classics of Chechen literature.

In Chechen literature, one can find those links that relate and unite its rich, spiritual potential with universal, moral and ethical values, and it makes it close and understandable to readers of other nationalities (Abalaeva, 2015).

According to the author's opinion, explicated in the majority of modern Chechen dramatic works, genuine human happiness is based on the observance of moral and ethical norms inherent in the whole ethnic group and shared by all members of a small or wide linguocultural community (aul, city, republic). Harmony and good in the broad sense of the word is achievable only for those individuals whose soul each time awakens in a new way, experiencing unity with others, soars towards the truth, for those who are always ready for self-sacrifice. In this aspect, the traditional moral and ethical values ​​of individual authors, representing individual facets of the moral and axiological space of the entire Chechen people, are quite comparable with the value orientations of all mankind, the dominant of which at the present stage is the formation of a harmonious inner world in accordance with the general conceptual-valerian system.

It should be noted that for a brighter and more multifaceted presentation of the basic components of the moral and ethical space in the modern Chechen drama, the volume of author's remarks increases along with character remarks, which are designed to expand the potentials of the phonographic explication of an emotionally and morally loaded text, which ultimately has an indirect influence as on stylistic and verbal means proper, but also on stage realization of the “visual-iconic narrative plan” (Bredikhin & Pelevina, 2019).

In contrast to the clear author's position expressed in digressions and remarks that directly translate the axiological space of the author, the character representation of an enduring spiritual and mental struggle does not always have clear and marked boundaries that are outlined in the linguocultural value-orientational system, but this is what ultimately leads to the achievement quite definite moral and ethical guidelines that give them the opportunity to lead a truly moral life in goodness and happiness. Failure to comply with these guidelines often leads to the collapse of the world, persecution and death.

Conclusion

An analysis of the specifics of moral and ethical issues in modern drama in the context of modern glocalization processes of the representation in literature of the archetypal opposition “friend / foe” and manifestations of not just ethno-national self-awareness, but also the search for a national idea (Bronskaya & Ivanova, 2018) is a key aspect of the study of the possibilities of separating basic components of conceptual-valeric systems by different peoples. In addition, the identification of primary moral themes in works of modern Chechen playwrights contributes to a more adequate interpretation of the ideological and artistic author's intention and a more detailed and clear classification of the genre originality of modern ethnotypical dramatic works. The moral philosophy of modern Chechen drama in its evolution can be revealed within the creative heritage of both the writers of the Soviet period and the authors of the new era. This fact makes it necessary to interpret each of the considered dramatic works within the vertical cultural and historical context. The moral and ethical concept of the new Chechen drama is mainly represented in traditional, cross-cutting themes and motives. However, in some cases, the identification of certain moral and ethical constants, such as “good” and “freedom,” belonging to various epistemic systems (Soviet, post-Soviet, modern period), makes it possible to assert the archetypal nature of their motives in Chechen literature. Moral and ethical components in a dramatic work are realized not only in the character and replicas of the characters, but also in the increasing remarks of the author, which not only can be interpreted in the context of both the individual author's and the general linguocultural conceptual sphere, but also in the system of character relationships, in the process of producing an ethnospecific type of conflict, which can be represented at various levels of the deep structure of the modern Chechen drama.

References

• Abalaeva, M. (2015). Banner of Chechen literature. Mashar, 46-47.

• Akhmadov, M. M. (2014). And do not destroy the anthill. Vainakh, 12, 29–40.

• Bredikhin, S. N., Marchenko, T. V., Pelevina, N. A., & Pelevina, I. I. (2019). Fundamentals of metatheoretical understanding of nature based on comprehensive reflection of discourse. SHS Web Conf., 69, 00025. DOI:

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

• Bredikhin, S. N., & Pelevina, Y. I. (2019). Realization of the perlocutionary effect in different linguistic cultures (based on the phonographic derivation signs). Professional Communication: current issues of linguistics and methodology. Annual sci.-theoret. and appl. J., 12, 29–37.

• Bronskaya, L. I., & Ivanova, I. N. (2018). Dichotomy “friend / foe” in the modern Caucasian and Ural texts. Human. and legal stud., 170–177.

• Eisаesser, T., & Hаgener, M. (2010). Film Theory: An introduction through the senses. Routledge.

• Elam, K. (2002). The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. Routledge.

• Inderbaev, G. V. (2007). Reflection of time. State Unitary Enterprise “Book Publ. House”.

• Inderbaev, G. V. (2016). Chechen dramaturgy: problems of origin, formation and development. ANCHR.

• Zhuchkova, A. V. (2019). When everyone became a god. The literature of the beginning of the eon. Quest. of literat., 4, 57–74. DOI:

  Google Scholar

  Crossref