Language – the Soul of the People

On February 18, 2024, within the framework of the Week of Native Languages, the Mari National-Cultural Autonomy of the Leningrad Region “Shiy Korno” held an event “Language – the Soul of the People” at the House of Friendship of the Leningrad Region. Poetess Zoya Dudina gave a lecture “Heroes and Prototypes of ‘Songs of the Mountains and Meadows of Mari’ (music by Andrey Eshpay, lyrics by Zoya Dudina) in the Mari language.

“The prototypes of my poems were my generation – the Mari people who lived during the restructuring, the change of epochs, centuries. People who seemed to live and create for a bright future,” noted poetess Zoya Dudina. The prototypes of her works, which the author talked about, were absolutely specific, well-known people in the republic: poet Alevtina Senkova, Ksenofont Sanukov, Alexey Yuzykayn, Nikandr Popov, Alexander Tanygin. Zoya Dudina writes poems in Russian and Mari languages, remembering one important rule – if you don’t speak the language, you can lose it one day.

For the activists of the Mari autonomy, the meeting with the poetess became a new practice that everyone liked, regardless of who and how well mastered the native language. Lectures devoted to the Mari language are planned to be continued in the future, involving teachers, linguists, poets, writers, and ethnographers in this work.