(Review of the book “The Fairy Tales of Kazakhstan" by the writer Serebryansky Yu.)

We imagine a girl and cat sitting in front of the window and looking at the starry night sky when we consider fairy tales. This is how almost all fairy tale begins: someone starts it, for instance, a grandmother tells a story to her granddaughter before going to bed. Before going to sleep, the child plunges into that magic world. Then the child becomes a part of the fairy tale. The boy looks at the starry night sky and starts the conversation with his companion - the cat. It is, first of all, a belief: a different approach to the truth, the world of knowledge, and the reality. Convince yourself and others. If you cannot convince, it's not a fairy tale. That is why fairy tales are at the forefront of the literature of every nation. Nevertheless, no matter how time changes, knowledge is renewed, perceptions are altered, fairy tales are constantly renewed in the course of the human history of culture and literature because the essence remains the same. 

The book “The Fairy Tales of Kazakhstan” ("Aruna" Publishing House, 2017) is written by author Serebryansky Yu. also contains fairy tales created by our today’s time. Historians, politicians, ideologues and political scientists have been writing the history of independent Kazakhstan for the last quarter of a century in different ways. The writer also determined this story from his own perspectives. His choice fell on this old and new model of art. To the question of why I would say that we should pay attention to the fact that the writer has a different taste in art. He knew exactly how to and get deeper and easier into the complicated subject. In nowadays fantasy world, we will grasp a different image of Kazakhstan, unknown to us. The point to note is that without this free imagination of the writer, we might never have encountered this consideration and world. There is no doubt that in a fairy tale there will be a child with a vivid imagination. The boy, looking out of the window of the trolleybus, leads us into a magic world. The book begins after the boy meets, talks to and says goodbye to the man who rode the turtle in the city. It should be emphasised that in the history of culture, the turtle is often denoted as a different dimension of time. Probably, this is also an intentional choice of the writer while entering the topic.

While reading the book, I realized that the writer has a different view of the world we know. How was Almaty built? After the answer of the author to this question, I seemed to acknowledge the artistic nature of the past. For instance, the founders of our beloved city are people who were accustomed to stand high and look down. They did not reckon with anyone's will, they lived on their own, and when the time came, they stood on the same heights and disappeared. And the city and the people remained in place. What is your point of view, reader? One day the shepherd said to the owner of the mountain, “Lord of the mountains, I know that you have great power, so people are afraid to even stand next to you, and I live in fear in the steppe. There I am as small as an ant. But I have a dream. I want to be big, I want to be visible from any part of the steppe, that would be wonderful ... ” What happened then? The owner of the mountain touches the shepherd's turban with his stick. When the shepherd finds the turban, he realizes that the shanyrak (an arched cross-shaped top of the Kazakh yurt) on his turban has become yurt - his home. Isn't it interesting to recognize that the nomadic people who have lived in Eurasia for decades have a dark shanyrak on their heads, and to think in that way? It is also true that Kazakhs consider their homeland, motherland, and place of birth as a spiritual home. It is obvious that in this work of the writer he adheres to the idea that“ everything has its own internal destiny”. Why is there a golden sun and a soaring eagle on the sky blue flag? The author refers to this by looking back at an example from ancient Greek mythology. People are beginning to look for ways to get rid of the eagle, which in the past did not look at anything. One day the eagle considered engraving his image on the sky blue flag. At that time, the painter said to the eagle, "You are too big, if you do not fly higher if you do not get close to the sun, I cannot draw you like the sun.” The eagle soared into the sky. The painter said, "Still closer to the sun, otherwise, I will not be able to draw correctly.” So the eagle, while approaching the sun too much, died of sunburn. People who finally got rid of it put the image of a soaring golden eagle along with the sun on the sky blue flag so as not to forget this memorable moment. This story could be comprehended in many ways. I personally considered the imagination of the author in accordance with the principle of difference attempts to render the justice of Jacques Derrida. And it is impossible not to admire the legend about why Lake Balkhash is so named and travelling the Aral Sea and the Caspian Sea in search of the great sea. It is real and understandable that we, as an independent, emerging state, are taking stock of our past, rewriting and reinterpreting it, as well as embarking on a new journey towards a common human civilization. In this sense, the writer has given us a wonderful idea.

Every writer is a world. In that world, in that space, there is the nature of the writer. The new book by the writer, poet Serebryansky Yu. is a world for us as well. In that world, our nature is living. If “The Fairy Tales of Kazakhstan” as two appearances of one world is on the shelf of your bookshelf, it will never be superfluous. Because the writer gives us a marvellous fairy tale that will last for centuries.

Translated by Bayan Ardakh