Chingiz Huseynov: "I celebrate my birthday like it's Pushkin's Boldino Autumn"

Today famous Azerbaijani and Russian writer, doctor of philological sciences, professor of the philological faculty of Moscow State University, honored art worker of Azerbaijan Chingiz Huseynov celebrates his 91st birthday. On this day, Vestnik Kavkaza spoke with Chingiz Hasanovich about his life, literature and overcoming obstacles.

- Chingiz Huseynovich, happy birthday to you! How do you feel on this wonderful day?

- Thanks! I feel more or less normal.

- How do you celebrate your birthday?

- Due to the situation with the coronavirus, I will celebrate my birthday like it's Alexander Pushkin's Boldin Autumn. When there was a cholera quarantine and Pushkin escaped from the epidemic in Boldino, he wrote magnificent, wonderful stories and gave them to the invented author Belkin, “Belkin's Tale”. I am also in quarantine now, so we can say that this is my Boldinsky autumn. It remains only to write.

- What are you writing now in self-isolation ?

“I'm finishing the novel.” There is still a lot of work to do - both simple text repair and capitalization. And this is such a wonderful opportunity - work, write for your pleasure.

- What will the new novel be called?

- I called it "To Horseshoe." As you know, a horse must be shod, and if not, it will not run for a long time. Therefore, such a name - "Horseshoe horseshoe."

- What is your new book about?

- This is a novel about our present day, about the events of 10 years ago, showing a full description of reality. We have long forgotten how to censorship, in connection with the dominance of a certain ideology, freely cover the entire space of life from top to bottom. Therefore, our novels are half-hearted, and yet this form implies the coverage of space from the highest rank, from the sphere of the deity, to the very bottom.

Therefore, I made an attempt to look at our modern world. Mostly, events take place at my points of residence, in the Moscow-Baku-Jerusalem triangle. In this space, I consider myself a free artist and write what the pen tells me. And the pen, as you know, is a divine tool, and you just can't use it - it should be used to express big ideas, big human problems, and not fool everyone or work for a piece of bread or for a reward.

I think that this year I will finish it all the same, and it will be seen there how to publish it. Today, writing a book is 20% of the effort, and the remaining 80% is publishing it.

- We are sure that all your plans will be realized.

- I think they will be. In any case, I am full of desire to work. Coronavirus made my wife and I write a little more actively, she also writes now. So we continue to do our job.