The Diary of a Modern Eurasian in the Book by the Buryat Poet B. Dugarov The Sutra of Moments (Ulan-Ude, 2011)

The diary book by the Buryat poet Bair Dugarov, The Sutra of Moments, was published in 2011. It is based on a real poet's diary which he wrote in 1982. More than 25 years later, the author assumed that the diaries of the Soviet (or rather late Soviet) time, which were not intended to be made public, could be of interest to readers of the early 21st century. One of the important ideas of the book is the Eurasian essence of a modern Russian poet. The author explains Eurasianism as the unity of Eastern and Russian consciousness in the worldview and in the works of the bilingual poet. While writing in nonnative (or rather second native) language and realizing his involvement in Russian (more generally European) culture, Dugarov stays true to his Eastern-Asian mental community. His book provides a fertile material for explaining its “bilingualism” as the existence at the junction of two (or rather several) traditions, although its unique content is certainly due to the awareness of the primordial national identity. The Sutra of Moments diary book can be included in a series of prosaic works written by poets such as, for example, The Day Stars (1960) by Olga Bergholz or My Dagestan (1974) by Rasul Gamzatov. In such books, prose and poetry interweave: the prose part of the diary is invariably supplemented, commented, comprehended by poetic statements. But the form of Dugarov's prose-and-poetic diary is different for it incorporates the creative use of samples of Eastern prose-and-poetic writing, first of all the 13th-century historical literary monument The Secret History of the Mongols by an anonymous chronicler. The book title has the word “sutra” in it, which is translated from Sanskrit as a maxim, a concise utterance (literally, “thread”), or a set of fragmentary utterances united by some topic. In the preface, the author explains that he seeks to unite, to “stitch” all diary entries, memoirs, fragments of scientific speech and lyrical passages in a single outline. At the same time, Dugarov derives the meaning of this word from the Russian word “sut'” [essence]. Human life, in his opinion, consists of moments, and their essence lies in the search for their purpose, in the need for self-knowledge, a person's selfdetermination at a difficult time, “at a sharp turn” of history. The general lyrical principle, implemented in The Sutra of Moments in the form of a prose-and-poetic diary, corresponds to the Eurasian perspective. The diary form contains poetic inclusions filled with emotional, deeply personal statements of the lyrical “self”. Poetic inclusions are parts of a common thread (sutra), and diverse genre structures, while fixing the general outline, help to unfold the drama of self-comprehension of the bilingual poet, the Eurasian poet. The effect of the intertwining of “direct” utterances and metaphorical figurative speech reflects the process of selfcomprehension, self-determination, which allows revealing features of a historical personality in the poet.

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