Ruvim Moran (1908-1986) Russian poet, translator:
The work of Tukay that has not been studied till the end yet is pressed into short seven years, but its richness would be enough for more than one much longer lives. This is the reason of the greatness of Tukay. Lermontov, so much beloved by him, did not manage to live two and half months till his 27th birthday, while Tukay did not fill just several days to his one. But how much they have done!
In Tukay we see early poetical maturity and passion of Lermontov; Pushkin’s catholicity, multiple genres, and qualities of journalistic fighter; and Gorky’s character formation. Having only the madrasah education, the poet managed to reach the level of progressive-minded people of Russia of that time.
The work of Tukay, which rose on the revolutionary wave of 1905, is run through by the idea of service to the nation, to unfortunate people whose sufferings were familiar to the poet beginning with his childhood. Devoting his life and talent to his people, be spoken well among them were only senses of his life and destination.
Tukay is the first really national Tatar poet. His enormous figure rises at the waterhead of a new modern Tatar poetry at the beginning of the century. Once in hard times that were quite a lot in his life he wrote to F.Amirkhan bitterly, “I think and think and tell myself, ‘Oh, my God! Will the flame of my talent that I have saved and carried with myself for my orphanhood, poverty, starvation, and kept even being sold from village to village and serving to heartless Tatar bais and rotted in the Tatar madrasah really subsided?’”
No, the flame of the great Tukay’s talent has not died away. Even more, after decades it shines even brighter and brighter and lights fire in response in the people’s souls beyond native land.