Bakhtiyar Vahabzadeh, Azerbaijanian poet:
Every time I read the works of our great poet Mirza Sabir, I remember about great poet of the Tatar nation Gabdulla Tukay. Probably it is because of the similarity of their ideas, way of thinking, the years they lived in and common fates…
Both poets, having turned their hearts into bright ray, strived for victory over the ignorance for the sake of freedom and happiness of the Motherland. They had no any more goals than the interests of their Motherland and its nation. For these poets the Motherland became a sacred mihrab, development of the nation was a great ideal and, shining on this way until the very end, they have managed to win a real greatness…
I have known the poems of Gabdulla Tukay since I was young, and I love him as a poet of my nation, my love to him grows every year… Even today Tukay is quite like Sabir for me, my blood and spiritually close relative …
Everyone is born just once, and the nation seems to come into this world all over again in the hours of the birth of its great son. Great sons teach their nations to look with another eye upon themselves and the world. And it, in its turn, leads to spiritual, material and political enrichment of the nation which has looked at the life in a new way. It was Tukay, the son of the Tatar nation, who wrote to his people about their duty, because he was born from the sorrow of his nation. Such poets usually search for ways of salvation from these sorrows and grieves and find them…
As it is impossible to think about the Englishmen without Shakespeare, the Russians – without Pushkin, the Germans – without Goethe, the Azerbaijanians – without Sabir, the Tatar nation cannot be thought without Tukay. Because each of them is a giant that has become a soul, symbol and emblem of their nations. Having become an honour, fame of their nations, these great persons are close and dear to all the nations. That’s why today we think Tukay to be is not only a son of the Tatar nation, but the genius of all the humanity.