Myths about Bayan-Sulu and Kozy Kopresh.

“Look at life as the night looks at the day!
Like a doe funny - on mountain cliffs,
How labor looks at dormant laziness...
But always beware of risk and profit..."

Tours behind the ancient legends of the Kazakh people.

An old legend about the tragic love of Kozy Korpesh and Bayan Sulu says: childhood friends Sarybai and Karabai vowed to marry their children, who had been betrothed before they were born. Without waiting for the birth of his son, he dies during the hunt for Sarybai.
The growing Goats and the Bayan, who had not yet seen each other, but bound by the bonds of a prenuptial agreement, finally fell in love. Time passes and the treacherous Karabay changes his life plans. He promises to give his daughter for the local paluan of Kodar, who once saved his flocks from jute.
Kodar becomes a barrier between lovers. In this eternal triangle, he first laid the goat's exuberant head. Saddened Bayan, to take revenge on the killer, resorted to cunning. She promises to marry Kodar if he digs a well with spring water for her. Kodar starts working, deepening, holding on to the hair of the insidious Bayan.
The girl suddenly cuts off the braids: Kodar falls into the abyss and dies. Thus, the goats avenged. On his grave the heroine of legend stabs herself with a dagger. The old men say that the burial sprouted with a marvelous rosehip bush, on which once scarlet and white roses bloomed...
Flowers, however, did not delight the traveler’s eye for long. They wilted, turned black, and withered... The names of the goat Koz-Korpesh and the beautiful Bayan have been inseparable for fifteen centuries! But the beauty and strength of their feelings overcame the darkness of death.
The light of love, left by two hearts, inspired akyns, playwrights, ethnographers and historians of all time and many nations. They even say that Pushkin, being in the steppes of the Orenburg region, heard and recorded an epic about the tragic love of the Kazakh Romeo and Juliet.
This is a beautiful, radiant legend, invented by the shepherds of the old century. This legend is told in different languages. Among the legends "Goats Korpesh and Bayan Sulu" occupies a special significant place in Russian literature.
Particular attention was paid to the monument of architecture - the tombstone “Bayan Sulu”. Ancient Kazakhs considered this tombstone a "mausoleum." They are preserved to this day in different parts of our country. The dome of Koz Korpesh and Bayan Sulu is located on the right bank of the Tansyk river near the Tansyk aul.
According to the legend of Kozi Korpesh and Bayan Sulu, the younger brother of Sarybay-Taylakbiy Tobol sent 40 thousand workers to build the mausoleum, and horse racing was arranged on the bank of the Tobol river.
On a solid tombstone, the faces of two lovers were carved. Especially clearly shown is the beauty of the Bayan. Chanting akyn Zhanaka Aybas with 50 thousand people built a stone dome. This dome has been preserved as a symbol to this day. According to popular legend, stones from nearby mountains were delivered to build the dome.
Between the mountain and Ayagoz, people were put up in chains and they passed stones from hand to hand. The most beautiful mausoleum in the vicinity belongs to “Goats Corps” with four busts inside. These busts and the mausoleum are ancient monuments.
They were built during the time of the Turkic Kaganate, i.e. VІ - VІІІ century of our era. At that time, stone busts were highly esteemed and the images of people were clouded from stones. These 4 stone busts embodied the specific images of the heroes of the legend. Three of them are women and a young horse.
The people believe that this is Bayan, Goats and sisters Bayan-Aytansyk and Aykyz. Surprisingly, these are the names of not only the heroes of the legend, but also of the localities. That mountain is the mountain of the heart of the Bayan. Two rivers flowing into the Ayakoz river are called Aytansyk and Aykiz.
This historical event is a national treasury that has kept the secrets of a beautiful and deep feeling. The image of these heroes of the folk epic is a symbol of eternal love between a young man and a girl, Kazakh Romeo and Juliet.
The names of Goats Korpesh and the beautiful Bayan have been inseparable for fifteen centuries! Ever since, by the will of the Most High, Love found them, and insurmountable circumstances and human malice tried to separate the lovers. But the beauty and power of feeling overcame the gloom of death and centuries-old unconsciousness.
A legendary poem has been handed down from generation to generation, the path to the majestic tombstones of Kozy - Korpesh and Bayan - Sulu near the village of Tansyk in the present Ayagoz district of the East Kazakhstan region where the memorial was built did not overgrow.
This is a poem about a young couple in love, who wanted to bind herself forever by marriage, but before them feudal orders prevailing for centuries became an insurmountable barrier. Unable to overcome them to the end, the heroes tragically die.
The light of love, left by two hearts, inspired akyns, writers, playwrights, ethnographers and historians of all time and many nations. The epos "Goats - Korpesh and Bayan - Sulu" is spread as a magnificent legend among the Turkish-Mongolian people.
Only in Kazakh folklore does the epic exist in more than twenty versions. The versions in the languages ​​of the Tatars, Bashkirs, Altai, Teleuts, Uighurs, Karagas, Sakha also survived. One of the versions of "Goats - Korpesh and Bayan-Sulu" was released in 1812 in Kazan in Russian.
The authenticity of the legacy of this legend is a unique archaeological find - the golden belt. A fragment is depicted on the belt: against the background of poplars, a seated female figure, bent over the head of the murdered dzhigit.
The found belt belongs to the finds of the XVIIIth century. It was found in the eastern part of the Irtysh in the steppe among the Altai mountains. The Golden Belt is currently in the Hermitage. One of the first researchers of the epic, A. Pushkin, heard and wrote down a poem while in the villages of Orenburg. As you know, the poet died in 1837.
Over the next hundred years, a series of troubles haunted all the innovators of Kazakh folklore. C. Valikhanov died of consumption in less than thirty years, N. Pantusov died at the hands of a villain, I. Castagne miraculously escaped red terror and left for his homeland, France (even mentioning Castan, the writer Y. Dombrovsky testified, was already an occasion for arrests in the Soviet years, everyone who was involved in ethnography, folklore or archeology.
In 1927, in the new capital of Kazakhstan, Kzyl-Orda, the first translation of the poem into Russian was carried out with the preservation of its poetic form. The publication of the book "Song of the Goat-Korpech and Bayan-Slu", with a circulation of three thousand copies, was carried out by the People's Commissariat of Kazakhstan.
There was a book for the people of 60 cents. But for its creators it cost the price of more than one human life. The preface and note to the 174-page work was written by Smagul Sadvakasov, the youngest commissar in the socialist government who was barely 23 years old.
He had his own love for the beautiful Elizabeth, unfortunately, the daughter of the notorious NKVD authorities Alikhan Bukeikhanov (S. Bukeikhanov’s book “You must not forget about the past” was written about their love).
The People’s Commissar of Education of sunny Kazakhstan was removed from his post at the age of 28, but was not killed immediately. He was given the chance to prove himself as a first-year student at the Moscow Institute of Railway Engineers. In the winter of 1933, during the construction of the Moscow-Donbass railway, the former People's Commissar and failed student dies of typhus.
He remained with a great love for E. A. Bukeikhanova, akin to the story of Kozy and Bayan, the one that, unfortunately, he commented in Kzyl-Orda, being a great literary nugget... The poetic translation “there is no sadder story in the world” was carried out by the Siberian poet Georgy Vasilievich Tveritin (1899 - 1921), his childhood passed in the Peter and Paul County of Akmola Province, he published the translation of the Kazakh poem in 1917.
In the meantime, the Surgut city newspaper Vestnik passed the attention of archivists, whose journalists found the elderly resident Nina Vasilievna Bondarenko, nee Tveritina. She remembered her brother, who was shot in Alma-Ata on charges of Trotskyism and an attempt to overthrow the Soviet regime. “Lord!
My brother, the poet Grigory Vasilievich Tveritin, is such a swinger, an athlete, an avid theatrical. He died at the age of 29. He worked in the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture...". The poet’s archive, the sister says, died during the arrest. But miraculously there were posthumous lines. The fact is that George gave Nina an album with dedication for her fifteenth birthday:
Look at life as the night looks at the day!
Like a doe funny - on mountain cliffs,
How labor looks at dormant laziness...
But always beware of risk and profit...
In the case of the poet and translator of the Kazakh poem “Kozy-Korpesh and Bayan-Slu” there is sparse information: he was born in 1909 in the Omsk region, arrested on March 8, 1938 in Alma-Ata, sentenced to death.
He was taken from his workplace, from the building of the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture, which stood on the corner of Stalin and Oktyabrskaya Streets. Street names are very symbolic in the fate of the poet Tveritin - in 1927 they celebrated the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution, the time of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Land of Soviets and the resounding success of his book “Song of Kozy Korpech and Bayan Slu”.
Stalin Street, the name is also understandable, iconic.The name of the main avenue of the republic was given in 1933. In the same year, his friend, Smagul Sadvakasov, a great writer, journalist, public figure, died. In the country, the machine of repression took ominous momentum, new song forms arose.

Authority:
Local Lore Essays by V. N. Proskurin