Sergey Michalkov (b.1913), Russian writer, Lenin Prize (1970) and USSR State Prize (1941, 1942, 1950, 1978) laureate:
I will start with an interesting fact. In 1809, the great English poet George Byron wrote a poem Lines Written in an Album. In 1836, Mikhail Lermontov translated it into the Russian language. Having used his translation, Gabdulla Tukay translated the poem into the Tatar language in 1907, that was almost hundred years later than the great English poet wrote it.
Poets of different nations and generations have such an underlying connection with each other. However, it is surprising that Byron was 21, when he wrote his poems; Lermontov was 22, when he translated them, and Tukay was 22. Thus, the great youths of the world during one century, but being at the same age, thought, loved, worried, burned with poetic fire in the same way, like brothers.
However, I made this example not to surprise people with coincidence of the ages and the train of their thoughts. The point is that this coincidence was not accidental. It proves the fact that Gabdulla Tukay, first of all being the national poet of the Tatar people, at the same time is an outstanding representative of the Russian poetry. It means that he belongs to the world literature.
Gabdulla Tukay was an impassioned publicist and lyricist, journalist and scientist; he was a founder of the professional infantile Tatar literature and a creator of the national literary language. As well as he was a merciless and impassioned satirist. I want to pay more attention to Tukay’s satire. Light vein of humour, allegory, and merciless epigrams, which castigated all the vices of exploiter of every stripe and colour, are represented in his works written in this genre.
Tukay told that he was not only a poet of first water, but also a diplomat, and public figure. Thus he identified himself among his people and defined his role in the history of his country and the whole world.