Nomadic Influence in Contemporary Mongolian Poetry: B Yavuuhulan (1929-1982) and the Shine Handlaga

NOMADIC INFLUENCE IN CONTEMPORARY MONGOLIAN POETRY:
B YAVUUHULAN (1929-1982) AND THE SHINE HANDLAGA

Abstract

This thesis, the first academic treatment of the Shine handlaga (New Tendency) in any language, traces the influences which led B.Yavuuhulan to found the movement during the late 1960s, amid the thaw which followed the death of Josef Stalin, and the influence of his work upon the development of Mongolian letters over the past fifty years.

The importance of the nomadic worldview, both to Yavuuhulan’s work and to the traditional literature, presents a prism through which the suppression of these traditional themes in the 1930s and 1940s, and the elimination of writers such as Natsagdorj, Buyannemeh and Ser-Od, can better be understood.

Yavuuhulan’s early death presented his three main students – O.Dashbalbar, D.Nyamsüren and G.Mend-Ooyo – with an opportunity to reconfigure the literary scene in Mongolia, so that the breadth of Yavuuhulan’s vision, and his commitment to bringing the traditional themes and forms successfully into the modern world, could be realized. Now that Mend-Ooyo is the only member of this group still alive, he is working to preserve Yavuuhulan’s vision, and that of his students, as well as of the younger generation of poets.

Simon Wickham-Smith will soon be developing some of the themes of his MA thesis into a PhD dissertation. His translation and commentary on the 6th Dalai Lama’s strange biography is moving towards fall publication, as part of Lexington Books’ Modern Tibetan Culture series (www.lexingtonbooks.com). Not-for-credit Mongolian and Tibetan Studies resumed at the UW in October.