Professor Dr. Terane Turan Rehimli, Azerbaijani poet, writer, and literary scholar.
Translated from Azerbaijani into English by Maskomania News.
The literary works of Ummulbanu were first introduced to Azerbaijani readers in the 1980s. Anar’s Encounters in France, Rauf Ismayilov’s Bonds of Friendship, and Nigar Abutalibova’s Azerbaijani French Cultural Relations were among the earliest literary and scholarly studies to awaken serious interest in the personality, life, and work of this Azerbaijani writer living in exile. The publication in 1988 of her celebrated novel Days in the Caucasus, translated from French by Hamlet Gojayev, brought Ummulbanu into closer acquaintance with Azerbaijan’s literary community. Emerging onto the literary scene in the early 1940s with her first novel, With Us (1942), and establishing herself as a writer with her second novel, Days in the Caucasus, Ummulbanu offers, through her literary legacy, an authentic understanding of the complex lives of Azerbaijani artists who lived and worked far from their homeland: their arduous creative struggles, their views on social and political questions, the hardships they faced, and the painful paths through which their achievements were won.
As historical and literary records indicate, Ummulbanu was the granddaughter of two of Azerbaijan’s celebrated oil millionaires, Shamsi Asadullayev and Musa Naghiyev, and the daughter of Mirza Asadullayev, Minister of Trade of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, who was said to control as much as sixty percent of the national capital invested in the oil industry of his time. She was born in January 1905, during one of the most turbulent and contradictory periods in the country’s history, when political unrest was spreading and Armenians were carrying out mass killings in Azerbaijan. Some sources give her date of birth as December 18, 1905. This was a period when the tsarist authorities, seeking to defuse revolutionary tensions, incited Armenians, Russians, Kurds, and Iranians into interethnic confrontation, deliberately inflaming historical hostilities among particular communities and fomenting unrest in the Caucasus. As innocent civilians were being killed, her father sent his pregnant wife, Ummulbanu, and their three children to a village far from the center of danger. Thus, the family’s fourth daughter was born in a neglected, impoverished village that Russian researchers would describe as “forgotten by God.” Her mother died in childbirth, leaving her life and aspirations unfinished, and the newborn was named Ummulbanu in her honor. Following provocations by Armenian–Russian groups in Baku, the family moved to Iran. Only six months later, when conditions in Baku had stabilized, were they able to return to their native city and home.
Of her eighty-seven years, Ummulbanu spent only fifteen in her homeland, Azerbaijan. The steadily worsening political situation, unexpected changes in the country’s administration, and, ultimately, the most devastating blow to its social and political life in the 1920s—the establishment of Soviet imperial rule—brought about a merciless turning point in the nation’s historical destiny. This upheaval struck first at the most influential families of the country’s upper classes, particularly the fortunes of the oil millionaires, including the Asadullayev family. With the arrival of the new government, Mirza Asadullayev’s property was confiscated, and the still greater dangers awaiting him eventually led to his departure for France. Ummulbanu’s own turbulent life, marked by hardship and struggle, began in the aftermath of this upheaval. To obtain a foreign passport and escape to Türkiye, she was compelled to marry a respected man whom she did not love. Some sources identify her husband as an engineer named Jamil, while most studies name the influential Balabey Gojayev. In 1924, at the age of nineteen, she separated from her husband, Balabey Gojayev, in Türkiye and traveled to Paris to join her relatives. Tensions with her stepmother soon forced her to leave the family home and establish an independent life. Beginning her working life as a fashion model, Ummulbanu subsequently worked in various parts of Paris as a saleswoman, office secretary, and translator. As circumstances compelled her to master every occupation within her reach, this indomitable woman’s determination and persistent struggle for happiness only grew stronger.
At that time, literary life in France was passing through one of its richest and most flourishing periods. New literary tendencies, movements, and schools of thought, fresh thematic horizons, changing concepts of the literary protagonist, and evolving artistic forms were enriching literature and sustaining its leading position in world letters. During the years when internationally renowned writers such as Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse, Louis Aragon, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Patrick Modiano, Jacques-Pierre Amette, and Jean-Marie Rouart were producing their masterpieces, French literature continued, on the one hand, to create new works faithful to traditional methods and, on the other, to attract attention through writing influenced by Decadence and Dadaism. By producing some of the most significant examples of existentialism, surrealism, and postmodernism, it challenged the intellectual imagination of the literary world.
Such a vibrant and multifaceted French literary environment in the 1920s and 1930s could hardly have failed to influence Ummulbanu. The desire to commit her memories to paper, to describe experiences belonging to a world unfamiliar to Europeans, and to immortalize the sorrowful history of her distinguished family and extended lineage, together with the encouragement of her French friends, prompted her to begin writing her recollections. After this first encounter with the art of words, this first step into the literary world, the young woman discovered her creative self in writing and never again laid down her pen.
Ummulbanu published her works under the pen name Banin. She adopted this pseudonym in honor of Ivan Bunin, the distinguished Russian émigré writer, fellow author, and cherished companion to whom she was bound by deep affection. The author of eleven books and numerous translations, Banin published her first novel, With Us, in 1942 through the renowned French publishing house Gallimard. It is worth noting that this prestigious publishing house, established in 1911 by Gaston Gallimard and still operating today under the direction of his grandson Antoine Gallimard, was regarded in the 1940s as one of the most influential publishing houses not only in France but throughout Europe. Gallimard, which published works by numerous Russian émigré writers, including Zinaida Gippius, Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin, and Alexei Remizov, also brought the Azerbaijani writer’s first work into print.
In With Us, the writer portrays the social and political calamities that occurred in Azerbaijan before the revolution, affecting every stratum of society and devastating the upper classes in particular. Although devoted to social questions of considerable interest to European readers, the novel failed to generate a significant response in French literary circles despite the appeal of its subject. Nevertheless, her first book opened new doors. Through With Us, Banin entered the literary community and met writers with whom she would maintain lifelong friendships. It was in this way that her friendship with the German writer Ernst Jünger began. Having read the novel and been deeply impressed, Jünger telephoned Banin, eager to establish a literary connection, and subsequently visited her home to meet her. Their friendship later inspired three books that Banin devoted to the German writer: Encounters with Ernst Jünger (1951), Portrait of Ernst Jünger: Letters, Texts, Encounters (1971), and Ernst Jünger in Different Guises (1989). Jünger, in turn, wrote of Banin with great affection and respect in Heliopolis and Paris Diary.
Four years after her first book, Banin wrote and published her second work, the autobiographical novel Days in the Caucasus, which would make her name known in literary circles and establish her reputation as a writer. This book brought her considerably greater success. Following its publication, French readers became more familiar with the name Banin and began to follow her literary work with increasing attention. The novel brought Azerbaijan to the forefront of literary discussion in Europe. It offered a distinctive authorial perspective on Azerbaijani realities and the country as it existed at the beginning of the twentieth century. Days in the Caucasus was memorable not only for its retrospective structure and its singular depiction of Azerbaijani life, memories, and cultural motifs, but also for the writer’s remarkably clear-eyed and sharply realistic treatment of the events and social and political realities she described. Its portrayal of Azerbaijan’s national and cultural history, way of life, and traditions before the 1920s was that of a Western-oriented writer raised with a European education in the household of an oil millionaire. This explains literary scholar Nikpur Jabbarli’s criticism that “the work of this ‘aristocratic’ woman is not, in general, a phenomenon of Azerbaijani literature or an expression of our national spirit. And not merely because of the language factor.” The demand for “national character” imposed by literary scholarship and criticism upon a writer raised within Western culture, who was compelled to live in one of its principal centers before reaching an age at which she could properly understand and appreciate life and her own national and spiritual values, and whose entire existence was profoundly shaped by Western influence, opens a separate and extensive debate. So, too, do accusations that she “changed her religion as soon as she arrived in Paris” and rejected her nation’s culture. The most reasonable answers to the questions arising from this debate must be sought in the writer’s life, her complex biography, and her literary works.
In Days in the Caucasus, Banin makes no attempt to conceal the fact that the children in the household where she grew up were shaped by three different cultures—Azerbaijani, German, and Russian—and that these foreign cultural influences overshadowed the national spirit in their upbringing. On the contrary, she brings this feature into sharper focus. We observe how Banin and her sisters, who studied English, Russian, French, and German but did not speak their native Azerbaijani language, became increasingly absorbed in a European way of life. Such tendencies gradually distanced the Asadullayev family from its national and spiritual values, while internal conflicts and tensions undermined the family’s foundations and ultimately destroyed it from within.
The writer offers a remarkably candid picture of her millionaire family’s detached attitude toward the national spirit and consciousness, the mother tongue, patriarchal values, and native culture. She subjects to literary examination the shortcomings and negative traits of her relatives and herself, the ugliness of the environment in which she lived, and the troubling realities she witnessed immediately after a childhood that “ended as soon as faith in the stability and beauty of life disappeared.” In short, she turns the “dark side” of the world into an object of artistic analysis. In doing so, like other writers who worthily continued the path of their predecessors, she demonstrates profound admiration for and fidelity to the artistic principles of realism.
In the novel, the author speaks with particular affection of Fräulein Anna, the German governess who cared for Ummulbanu and her sisters. She creates a finely drawn literary portrait of this fair-skinned, blond, silky-haired, gentle woman, whose extraordinary sensitivity and attentiveness toward the children made her a motherly figure and who introduced them intimately to European culture. The contrast between the Caucasian and French environments, the distinctive features of social life in Baku, and the influence of the upbringing provided by Fräulein Anna, Marie Charme, and Miss Collins upon Ummulbanu’s worldview and future life are all vividly reflected in the novel. The author writes:
“Although she lived in a devout Muslim household, in a city that embodied all the attributes of the East, Fräulein Anna had managed to create a distinctly European spirit around herself. She sang us songs that fair-skinned children had heard before us; she introduced us to the ordinary Christmas tree and extraordinarily delicious cream-filled pastries; she taught us the customs and everyday life of her country and showed us that firmness and determination could coexist with gentleness and patience. She was hardworking, resolute, and courageous.”
Initially attracting attention for its autobiographical character, the novel did more than introduce French readers to Azerbaijan, the writer’s family, and important episodes of her life. By offering candid answers to European readers’ questions about the Soviet regime, it also clarified their understanding of events that had influenced the course of world history. Having captured the general character of a changing era in With Us four years earlier, Ummulbanu explored that character more deeply in Days in the Caucasus, written in 1946. She succeeded in presenting the misfortune brought by the political upheaval in Azerbaijan and the establishment of Soviet rule upon herself, her family, and the families of other oil millionaires—who lost their influence, wealth, and comfortable lives almost overnight—as a tragedy of her entire nation. Against the background of events reflecting the history of one family and its lineage, the novel gives full artistic expression to Azerbaijan’s national tragedy, its bitter experiences, and their grave consequences during a particular historical period. In its realistic approach to events, its clear authorial position, and its sound understanding of historical reality, the novel differed from works being written in Soviet Azerbaijan at the same time under the influence of socialist ideology.
Alongside its sorrowful reflections on the past, Banin’s writing has sometimes troubled researchers through its undertones of anger and bitterness. Yet this anger was not, as some scholars have interpreted it, hatred directed against Azerbaijan or her own people. There were deep-rooted reasons for the apparent “coldness” and “indifference” toward her homeland occasionally discernible in Banin’s character and writings, for her prolonged avoidance of compatriots, and for her reluctance to engage in conversations concerning Azerbaijan. Foremost among these was her inability to forgive her countrymen for having accepted Bolshevism so readily. This attitude is also apparent in Days in the Caucasus. Yet although the novel is devoted to the artistic examination of a sorrowful past, it is governed by the author’s optimistic faith in the future. Eldar Ismayilov, the responsible editor of the 2006 edition of Days in the Caucasus, rightly concludes that “Banin’s novel Days in the Caucasus has not ended, because it embodies an optimism directed toward the search for the future, just like Azerbaijan itself, just like the Caucasus, this fertile region.”
Published one year after Days in the Caucasus, the novel Days in Paris (1947) is of particular interest as an expression of the writer’s sensitivity to a second major theme in her work: Western reality. Here, a different dimension of the autobiographical element so prominent in her writing comes to light. Alongside the writer’s attempt to gain acceptance in Europe while belonging to an Eastern mentality, the novel also offers European readers an opportunity to discover the secret of their own world’s hidden attachment to the East and to understand its unspoken affection for Eastern culture. Ummulbanu’s principal achievement in this work lies precisely here.
Days in Paris illuminates the difficult and painful road that Ummulbanu traveled in exile, from working as a fashion model to becoming a writer. It reveals the significant place in her life occupied by the enchanting city that witnessed the hardships of a young woman deprived of her millionaire family’s wealth and compelled to abandon the habits of an affluent existence. The novel places particular emphasis on her European upbringing, worldview, and knowledge of French as qualities that helped her succeed in her search for employment. We encounter Paris as the city that transformed Ummulbanu into Banin, carried her literary fame far beyond its borders, restored her smile, refined her beauty, fulfilled her spiritual needs, and allowed her to find happiness. Paris is presented as a cherished place where Ummulbanu found her great love, Ivan Bunin, and gained valuable friends and acquaintances among writers, artists, and philosophers: Jean-Paul Sartre, Henry de Montherlant, André Malraux, Teffi, Louis Aragon, Elsa Triolet, Roy, Marguerite Yourcenar, Ernst Jünger, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Marina Tsvetaeva, Konstantin Balmont, Igor Severyanin, Alexei Remizov, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and his wife Zinaida Gippius, Alexander Kuprin, Boris Zaitsev, Georgy Adamovich, the painter Alexandre Benois, and the philosophers Nikolai Berdyaev, Lev Shestov, and Nikolai Lossky.
To speak of Ummulbanu without discussing Ivan Bunin, from whose name her literary pseudonym originated, would be impossible. The story of her acquaintance with the distinguished Russian writer began at a gathering in the home of her close friend Teffi—the Russian writer, poet, memoirist, satirist, and translator Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya, who played an important role in Banin’s entry into literature. There, the forty-year-old Ummulbanu noticed a photograph of Bunin, whose silver hair and striking appearance made him look remarkably vigorous and handsome despite his seventy-five years. Curious about his identity, she learned that he was a great Russian writer. They met on June 13, 1946. Ivan Bunin was captivated by this beautiful Azerbaijani woman, who embodied all the grace of Eastern aesthetics and whose jet-black hair and dark eyes commanded attention. He addressed her as “the black rose of the Garden of Paradise,” “the Princess of Shamakhi,” or “the dark-eyed gazelle.”
Through such works as With Us (1942), Days in the Caucasus (1946), Days in Paris (1947), Encounters with Ernst Jünger (1951), I Chose Opium (1959), Afterwards (1961), Foreign France (1968), The Call of the Last Chance (1971), Portrait of Ernst Jünger (1971), Ernst Jünger in Different Guises (1989), Ivan Bunin’s Last Wish, and What Mary Told Me (1991), Ummulbanu became known and loved in French literary circles as a talented prose writer distinguished by her original thinking and literary manner. Her name was also familiar to Western readers through her accomplished translations. The masterpieces of world literature that she translated into French reveal another dimension of her literary talent. She translated Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky’s Another Man’s Wife and Tatyana Sukhotina-Tolstaya’s Memoirs from Russian, as well as Ernst Jünger’s Peace, Grigory Marton’s My Friend Blizzard, and W. T. Waqd’s What Sir Paul Really Said from German into French.
Hamlet Goja and Nikpur Jabbarli describe Ummulbanu as “a French writer of Azerbaijani origin.” This characterization is entirely natural. Gabriel García Márquez, whose works are read with great affection throughout the world, is also described here as an American writer, yet he is of Spanish origin, and it is impossible not to perceive the Spanish spirit in his works. Hundreds of comparable examples can be found not only in literature but throughout world art. When we read Banin, too, we recognize that she was Azerbaijani and that, whether consciously or not, this spirit found expression in her writing—even when she was not explicitly promoting Azerbaijan. At first glance, she appears to be a Western writer who, from the moment she was compelled to leave Azerbaijan, forcibly distanced herself from her homeland—or tried to appear to do so—sometimes displaying indifference, sometimes anger, and ultimately becoming thoroughly Europeanized. For this reason, researchers repeatedly accused her of turning away from her origins. Yet this impression is deceptive. Deep in her heart, Ummulbanu never forgot that she was Azerbaijani. Rather, her sense of shame that her homeland had been unable to free itself from Russian domination led her to form negative judgments about her country. Toward the end of the twentieth century, in the 1990s, when the Karabakh conflict was beginning to intensify, Ummulbanu no longer wished to conceal from European society the love for Azerbaijan that she had for years so skillfully hidden beneath her anger toward a country that had surrendered to Soviet rule. For her, this was the divine justice she had long awaited: the social and political order that had destroyed her family, the people she valued, and Azerbaijan as a whole was finally approaching its end. The political developments that would redirect Azerbaijan’s national life coincided with the final years of Ummulbanu’s own life. At that time, as a member of the Azerbaijan House Association in Paris and a passionate publicist, she spoke out in the French press in defense of her country, responding with exceptional sensitivity to the processes unfolding in Azerbaijan in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Banin expressed her patriotism, her love for her nation, the emotions of an Azerbaijani living abroad and worrying about her homeland, and her principled opposition to political injustice in articles devoted to the Karabakh question. Through them, she brought the realities of contemporary Azerbaijan to the attention of French society and the wider Western public. A striking example is her article “Nagorno-Karabakh,” published in the January 20, 1990, issue of the French newspaper Le Monde, accompanied by an editorial note stating that “the Azerbaijani writer Ummulbanu expresses Azerbaijan’s point of view.” In that article, the writer presented information about the history of Karabakh, drawing attention to the settlement of Armenians on Azerbaijani lands by the tsarist government in the early nineteenth century following the Iranian–Turkish war. She also sought to give French readers a clear understanding of the Dashnaks’ alliance with the Bolsheviks against Azerbaijan, the tragedies they inflicted upon the country, and the mass killings they perpetrated. It is therefore no coincidence that, in announcing Banin’s death on October 29, 1992, the French newspaper Le Figaro described this first French-language Azerbaijani writer as Azerbaijan’s “national pride.”
In every dimension, the literary legacy of Ummulbanu (Banin) holds exceptional significance for the development of cultural and literary relations between East and West. It is a valuable literary source both for introducing Azerbaijan’s national and historical identity to France and the wider Western literary world and for acquainting Azerbaijani readers with French and European culture.
References
- Anar. “Encounters in France.” Baku newspaper, January 9, 1985.
- Ismayilov, R. Bonds of Friendship (French–Azerbaijani Literary Relations). Baku, 1982.
- Abutalibova, N. “Azerbaijani–French Cultural Relations.” Gobustan, No. 3 (75), 1987.
- Jabbarli, N. Azerbaijani Émigré Prose. Baku: Chashioghlu, 2011, p. 19.
- Guliyev, V. Writings of Recent Years. Baku: Ozan, 2009, p. 62.
- Banin (Ummulbanu). Days in the Caucasus. Baku: Qafqaz, 2006, p. 9.
- Banin (Ummulbanu). Days in the Caucasus. Baku: Qafqaz, 2006, p. 4.
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