BIOGRAPHY

The great Azerbaijanian prose writer, dramatist, philosopher, enlightener and the founder of the modern realist school and literary criticism M.F. Akhundzade opened a new stage in the literary history of Azerbaijan.

Akhundzade was born in 1812 in Shaki (named under Russian rule Nukha) in the family of Mammadtaghi, who was originally from Southern Azerbaijan. His parents, and especially his uncle Haji Alaskar, who was Fatali’s first teacher prepared young Fatali for a career in priesthood, but the young man was attracted to the literature. Akhudzade’s encounter in Ganje in 1832 with Mirza Shafi Vazeh, a famous Azerbaijanian lyric and philosopher, who won world-wide fame yet in XIX c. with his works translated into almost all European languages, was an event of paramount importance, which is considered to have influenced the further whole fate of the writer. In akhundzade’s words it was Vazeh, who inspired him with "enlightened ideas, removing from [his] eyes the veil of ignorance". Later in 1834 he moved to Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi, Georgia), where he worked as a translator of Oriental languages. In Tiflis his acquaintance and friendship with the exiled Russian Decembrists A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, A. Odoyevsky, poet Ja. Polonsky and others played a large part in formation of Akhundzade’s views.

Akhundzade’s first published work was the "Oriental Poem" (1837) written on the death of the great Russian poet A.S. Pushkin. But the rise of Akhundzade’s literary activity comes to 50s of XIX c. In the first half of the 50s Akhundzade wrote six comedies – the first comedies in the Azerbaijanian literature as well as the first samples of the national dramaturgy. The comedies by Akhundzade are unique in their critical pathos, mercilessness of the analysis of the Azerbaijanian reality of the first half of XIX c. These comedies found numerous responses in the Russian, German, French and other foreign periodical press. The German "Magazine of Foreign Literature" called Akhundzade "dramatic genius", "an Azerbaijanian Moliere". Akhundzade’s sharp pen is directed against everything that hindered the way of progress, freedom and enlightement, and in the same time his comedies are imbued with the feeling of faith in the bright future of the Azerbaijanian people.

In 1859 Akhundzade, with difficulties, published his short but famous novel "The Deceived Stars". By this novel he laid the foundation of realistic prose, giving the models of a new genre in Azerbaijanian literature. By his comedies and dramas Akhundzade established realism as the leading trend in Azerbaijanian literature.