The role of literary and artistic works of Mirza Fatali Akhundzadeh in the formation of the national consciousness of Azerbaijan

Introduction . It is known that certain ideas play a key role in the formation and development of the national consciousness of each nation, in its self-awareness and progress. It is the national consciousness that emerges as a necessary expression of this process, and the ideas that serve its realization are increasingly giving an important impetus to the conscious orientation of national movements. In this regard, one of the important factors in the formation of the national consciousness of the Azerbaijani people in the XIX century and especially in the early XX century is the literary and artistic ideas. The emergence of national consciousness in Azerbaijan and the historical evolution of national-democratic ideas, the formation of the ideology of national enlightenment and especially literary-artistic thinking were reflected in the activities of Abbasgulu aga Bakikhanov, Gasim bey Zakir, Mirza Kazim bey, Seyid Azim Shirvani, especially Mirza Fatali Akhundov, and others in their works in Northern Azerbaijan in the XIX century.

Along with the socio-political and philosophical ideas of Mirza Fatali Akhundzadeh, his literary and artistic works also played an important role in the formation and development of the national consciousness of the Azerbaijani people. “Mirza Fatali Akhundzadeh is a separate stage in the socio-historical and literary-spiritual life of the Azerbaijani people. Akhundzadeh, the founder of professional national theatrical art, realist prose, democratic philosophical and aesthetic thought, the first alphabet revolution, and the "new era" in all areas of our spiritual culture, transcends local national boundaries, and it has a common and universal historical meaning and significance among Islamic peoples”.1

The Main text

The political-philosophical and literary-artistic works created by the thinker covering a wide range of areas have become a chronicle of Azerbaijani literature and played an exceptional role in the formation of the national consciousness of the Azerbaijani people. If the political-philosophical treatise "Letters to Kamaluddovle", the pearl of his work, is dedicated to exposing the lawlessness and arbitrariness of the feudal system, the promotion of revolutionary-democratic ideas and atheism, the six plays written by the playwright in 1850-1855, "The Story of Molla Ibrahimkhalil the Alchemist", "Monsieur Jordan and the Dervish Mastalishah", "Vaziri-khani Lankaran", "The Story of Khirs Robber", "Haji Gara" and "The Story of the Trial Lawyers" are devoted to important social issues that the thinker thinks deeply about.

In these six comedies, the author criticized feudal public relations, fanaticism, superstition, religion and the khan's court, showed the collapse of feudal society and the emergence of new bourgeois relations, and the state of family and women's rights. The thinker advocated the technical progress of the country, the development of industry and trade, expressed the wishes and aspirations of the working masses, constantly fought for the creation of a new society, and believed that only in this way can the welfare of the people be achieved. M.F.Akhundzadeh, who became famous as the founder of the Azerbaijani national drama, made a fundamental turn in the formation of national consciousness with his literary and artistic works and directed Azerbaijani literature to a new path of development with these six plays. With his plays, the playwright strengthened the connection between the national literature of Azerbaijan in real life, brought him new ideas on current socio-political issues, problems and the necessary demands of the people, laid the foundation of a new literary and artistic form in our literature.

M.F. Akhundzadeh's appeal to the art of drama was directly connected with his literary and artistic meetings, his inexhaustible energy and talent, his conscious dedication to the promotion of Azerbaijani literary ideas. He rightly and timely saw that drama was the most appropriate, the most convenient means, the weapon of effective ideological struggle, in order to spread the ideas of enlightenment in a literary and artistic way among the masses, began his active literary activity as a writer, and paid special attention to the promotion of plays in his literary-critical articles. Researchers show that M.F. Akhundzadeh loved comedy more than any other drama genre and laid the foundation of new literature in Azerbaijan with his works in this genre. His appeal to comedy is not a coincidence. This is due to certain objective and subjective factors. Thus, the decline of feudalism in Azerbaijan intensified and it entered the last stage of its historical development in the middle of the XIX century. During this period, as a result of the economic and social-historical process, the internal comic nature of the feudal rulers, their external luxury, the true inner meaning of their claims, futility, backwardness, inability to maintain their former role in life, a serious scourge in the face of economic and cultural progress and took an irreconcilable picture, during this period, Azerbaijani literary and artistic satirical works, as well as rich material for comedy were created, and Mirza Fatali's comedies were born directly from the Azerbaijani reality (The choices are ours – R.A).1

The life of the people are reflected in a wide, deep and colorful way in the comedies of the playwright. He took the artistic material and theme of his comedies from real-life events, which he deeply observed, and described this life in a very accurate, natural and convincing way. The life depicted in his plays is far from any abstract, religious-mythical imagery. Researchers show that the literary and artistic embodiment of the national character and national nature has never been more vivid, natural and colorful than in Akhundov's "Representation". The pure nature of Azerbaijan, the crystal and cheerful, optimistic and fragile, wise and harsh spiritual worlds that express their zeal and sincerity, honesty and chivalry, as well as the pure climate, grass, flowers, blossoms, beautiful and healing plants of Azerbaijan are inspired here (Selections is ours - R.A.) 2 In his comedies, Akhundzadeh did not have a spectator attitude to the truth, did not spontaneously write about the life of the people to whom he belonged, did not artificially beautify it, and did not wear a romantic dress. The writer penetrated the inner spirit and essence of the events and facts of the life he described, wrote its most important aspects, typical features, reflected a full, realistic description of the family and social relations of a certain historical period of the native people. He took his life not in a stable state, but in motion, in development, and in his works he gave the good news of its outdated, frozen, and terrible social calamities, as well as the main features of the great future that is being formed. The new qualities of literary and artistic progress in Azerbaijan at the Akhundzadeh stage were related to enlightenment, nationalism and realism. The writer takes the demands of moral, national and social equality in dialectical unity and interconnectedness, and raises the problems of freedom, law and power both at the level of the individual and society the people. He showed that science and enlightenment should be spread among all people, from the lowest to the highest, from the rich to the poor, without exception, and that shepherds, farmers, merchants, and attendants should have the power in the hands of ministers. The playwright also applied this idea to the theater, noting that the theater should be open to everyone, from the king to the lowest class. Therefore, you should write in such way that the common people also like it (The choices are ours – R.A)3.

Akhundov emphasized the educational significance of fiction. He noted that he had a desire to help his compatriots to improve their morale, especially in writing comedy. He writes: “Those who see my protest in these works (we are talking about comedies – R.A) with a mockery of some unpleasant customs and actions among the muslim community, should not write this protest against my indifference and lack of love for my people! Because my purpose in these protests is to teach a lesson so that others avoid such bad habits”.1 The rich and colorful negative images depicted in Akhundzadeh's comedies play an important role. Appreciating public life as a writer, the thinker linked the main shortcomings of the feudal society primarily with the ruling elites and clergy, and therefore considered them the main heroes of his comedies and the target of criticism. The negative types such as Molla Ibrahimkhalil, a chemist, dervish Mastali Shah, Khan, vizier Mirza Habib, Heydar bey, Haji Gara and Aga Mardan, portrayed in the playwright's plays, reflect an abstract bey, an abstract cleric, an abstract merchant, an abstract judge or certain faults. They are not schematic, one-sided figures, copies, but vivid, full-bodied characters, which embody the typical features of a particular social class or class, but are also described by individual qualities, are typical copies in the true sense of the word.

In these comedies, Akhundov, speaking out against the religious and spiritual slavery of the people, individual and social oppression, came to the conclusion that “it is not necessary to turn to the oppressor to eliminate oppression, perhaps, on the contrary, it is necessary to tell the oppressed that, O ignorant one, you are many times more powerful and capable than the oppressor, so why do you add to the oppression? Awake from your slumber and set fire to the grave of the wrongdoer's father”2.

Researchers who discuss some socio-political and legal issues in Akhundov's comedies also show that Akhundov believed in the power of the people and called on them to unite and destroy the existing system with a revolution in order to escape the tyranny. The general spirit of comedies is that in a world of feudal violence and ignorance, the triumph of justice is accidental. Akhundov's comedies pay special attention to feudal public relations, fanaticism, feudal morality, religion, unjust courts, family law and women's freedom. All this leads to the conclusion that the comedies of the thinker are characterized not only as an example of artistic creativity, but also to some extent socio-political and legal ideas, and differ in philosophical and aesthetic content (Choices are ours – R.A) 3.

The first comedy written by the playwright in 1850, The Story of Molla Ibrahimkhalil the Alchemist, was dedicated to the struggle against the rotten moral problems of feudal society, fanaticism, ignorance, the poor way of life, and the molded way of thinking. In this comedy, which is based on a simple plot line, the writer wrote about the life events, the artistic characters formed within those events, and the colorful characters with all their typical features. The acute socio-social, moral and ethical problems reflected in this comedy were developed on the basis of more acute conflicts in the author's later plays on the basis of more complex life events. In the comedy, Mirza Fatali Akhundzadeh Molla Ibrahimkhalili is not just a fraudulent chemist, but also created typical images of certain social groups of feudal society, and n this image, he generalized the characteristics of pseudo-chemists and scientists. With this copy, the playwright also brilliantly revealed a number of typical features that are characteristic of muslim clerics. Akhundzadeh in the role of Mastali Shah in the comedy "Monsieur Jordan and the dervish Mastali Shah" collected the characteristics of dervishes who played an important role in the life of the peoples of Azerbaijan and the Middle East, like Mullah Ibrahimkhalil, the Mastali Shah, taking advantage of the ignorance and backwardness of the people, looted it and sharply criticized it as a serious obstacle to its development, an important social scourge. Through these copies, the playwright exposed the futility and uselessness of medieval scholastic thought, opposed religious-feudal thinking as a whole, and promoted the mind, secular sciences, advanced culture, real labor, and a new system of understanding the world (The choices are ours - R.A.)1

The playwright portrayed the characteristics of the supreme judges of the feudal-oppressive system in the copies of Lankaran khan and vizier Mirza Habib, which he described in the comedy "Vaziri-khani-Lankaran". Both the khan and the vizier in the work are ignorant, ignorant, cruel and unjust rulers who are indifferent to the fate of the country and the people, completely unaware of the great, serious and described as responsible tasks and demands of the great leaders of their time. In the comedy, the thinker assessed the shortcomings of the khan and the prime minister not as an ancient feature of this or that ruler, but as a typical feature of the feudal rulers in general.2 In the comedy "Haji Gara" the playwright created the image of a typical representative of the beys, who went bankrupt in the middle of the XIX century in the image of the negative hero Heydar Bey, but in the image of Haji Gara the characteristics of the Azerbaijani merchants of that period were generalized. By penetrating the root and essence of the issue through the image of Heydar Bey, the writer showed that arrogance, contempt for labor is not an attribute of one or another nobleman, but a typical feature of the nobility of that period. In the second protagonist of the work, Haji Gara, the playwright wrote about the greed of the Azerbaijani merchants of that time, took their shortcomings as a concrete fact of historical life and reflected them as characteristic features of bourgeois merchants in the middle of the century.

Mirza Fatali created a realistic artistic image of court officials who took an important position in public life in the person of Aga Mardan in his comedy "The Story of Lawyers". Aga Mardan, who, according to his position, must oppose arbitrariness and lawlessness and stand guard over truth, honesty and justice, on the contrary, is completely deprived of the most ordinary human feeling, the sense of responsibility to the people. He abuses the legal profession as a source of income, causing trouble to the people. In the work, the author clearly shows that injustice, lawlessness, bribery are typical features of this class of officials. These features are a product of the social environment and are directly related to the existing management. In this comedy, as in other works, the playwright, through the negative types representing the ruling privileged classes, revealed the main social shortcomings and contradictions of feudal society, concluding that this structure was contrary to the people. In these comedies, the thinker not only criticized the ugliness of feudal society, but also called on his contemporaries, especially the youth, to master the secular sciences, praised the human intellect, and actively fought for individual freedom.

In Akhundzadeh's work, the theme of labor, the promotion of socially useful work, art and destiny have an important place. The playwright also created positive images in comedies that defended these issues. Haji Nuru in “Molla Ibrahimkhalil chemist”, Shahbaz bey in “Monsieur Jordan and dervish Mastali shah”, Teymur aga in “Story of vizier-khani Lankaran”, Bayram in “Khirs guldurbasan”, Aziz bey and Sakina khanum in “Story of defense lawyers” lady and so on is one of such positive images. The poet Haji Nuru, the positive hero of the comedy "Molla Ibrahimkhalil the Alchemist", is the first intellectual image in the Azerbaijani literary and artistic literature to express enlightenment encounters. The author's image of Haji Nuru is the complete opposite of "nukhulus" and chemist. He is an intelligent, hard-working intellectual who shines in a stagnant and dark feudal world, thinking about the fate of his talented people and homeland. With the image of Haji Nuru, the playwright, on the one hand, marks the "nukhulus" as enemies of development and light, and on the other hand, reveals the bitter fate and tragedy of intellectuals whose minds and talents were in trouble in feudal society.

In the comedy "Monsieur Jordan and the dervish Mastali Shah", the playwright, in the person of young Shahbaz Bey, praised the efforts of the Azerbaijani youth to acquire science, education and reunite with the new world, and wrote it with great sincerity and love.

In the comedy "Vaziri-khani-Lankaran" the author propagated the ideas of enlightenment through the copy of Teymur aga. The young protagonist of the comedy "Bear Robber" is Bayram. Bayram is a full-fledged peasant who combines a number of positive qualities of our people.

Akhundzadeh's comedies also feature a number of female characters. Researchers point out that “these images are not romantic, divine beauties or submissive, helpless, dumb women depicted in our classical poetry in a romantic style. Mirza Fatali's female heroes are vivid national characters, living characters, new, original and full-fledged realist images in the true sense of the word in Azerbaijani literature. Female copies of M.F. Akhundzadeh belong to different social strata. They differ greatly in character, mind and way of thinking, and in their position in the family and in life. Among them are the image of a submissive, helpless woman, who submits to her destiny, and who is able to actively fight for her personal desires and interests, as well as ignorant, naive, and cunning, deceitful women. The series of women's paintings written by M.F. Akhundzadeh in colorful colors was a great achievement of his dramaturgy and Azerbaijani literature in general. 1

In general, Mirza Fatali in his comedies gave a comprehensive, comprehensive description of the life of Azerbaijan as a whole, created full artistic images of Azerbaijani society, almost all classes, strata and social groups. Taking all this into account, our great writer Jalil Mammadguluzadeh appreciated Akhundzadeh's art and showed that all the issues touched upon by Mirza Fatali smelled of blood. Since Akhundzadeh wrote his comedies on the basis of a living vernacular, these works were understood by the people, therefore, the literary and artistic ideas reflected in these works played an exceptional role in the formation and development of the national consciousness of the Azerbaijani people. Researchers speaking about the literary language of the playwright, who brought a large part of the words and expressions of the living folk language used in his comedies to Azerbaijani literature for the first time, show that “ He deeply studied the features, grammatical rules, the most subtle shades, the speech styles of various social strata, skillfully used the rich and colorful vocabulary, power and capabilities of the vernacular. The naturalness, vitality, richness, variety, fluency and clarity of the literary language are the main features of the playwright's dramatic language.1

The playwright's images do not fit into the standard sociological pattern. Neither Teymur aga, Heydar bey, Shahbaz and Bayram, who have the traditional "positive" or "negative" stereotype in his comedies, nor Mirza Habib, Haji Gara, Monsieur Jordan and Tarverdi can fully express the socio-psychological diversity and richness of the characters. even the most negative copies are reflected by the author with multicolored lines. The author describes the honesty of the swindler, the courage of the coward, the diligence and seriousness of the greedy in an astonishing natural way, revealing the national and sociological image of the minister, first of all, his inner world, in the layers of psychological details. Taking into account all these features, researchers show that the heroes of the playwright, Heydar Bey, Bayram, Parzad, Sona, are not abstract, moral ideals or carriers of class ideas, but above all, they are attractive and heartfelt people. Although Bayram and Heydar Bey can rob and steal, they cannot lie, be greedy, be hypocritical, cowardly, ungrateful and hypocritical. Sharafnisa, Parzad and Sona are both hard and soft and fragile as a child. As an individual, they reflect the purity and morality of the mountains, nature and the people to whom they belong. Or Haji Gara is both stingy and cowardly, as well as sober and businesslike (The choices are ours – R.A).2

In terms of folklore, simplicity, realistic artistic beauty, expression, stylistic skills, naturalness of the national language and the diversity of psychological details, the playwright's comedies became a poetic peak for several literary and artistic generations.

Mirza Fatali Akhundov, with his short story "Deceived Kavakib" written in 1857, also made an exceptional contribution to the formation and development of literary prose in Azerbaijani literature, created a very successful example of Azerbaijani prose and determined its future development. With this work, the writer not only became the founder of realist prose in Azerbaijani literature, but also laid the foundation of the narrative genre in our national literature, based on the concept of "common sense should rule the world", Iran sharply satirized the social shortcomings of the feudal system, the country's top leaders, in his work "Deceived Kavakib", in addition to criticizing ignorance, fanaticism and superstition, he also exposed injustice, arbitrariness and bribery.

Mirza Fatali raised a small event from history to a high literary and artistic level with his realist thinking and said, “I have used a small issue as an excuse and expanded it in my opinion. At that time, I exposed the folly of ministers and heads of state to be a lesson for future generations. Let them no longer believe in the words and news of foolish astrologers".

In this work, Mirza Fatali criticized the government of Shah Abbas I (actually the Ghajar rulers of the 19th century - RA) because he entrusted his will to the words of a foolish astrologer, he decided the fate of the people with his false, superstitious reports, ruthlessly persecutes and punishes free-thinking people in order to strengthen, the shah's ministers, Sardar Zaman khan, Mustovfi Mirza Yahya, Mirza Mohsun and Akhund Samad, are proud of their actions that harmed the people. The writer created the image of Yusif Serraj, whom he sympathized with and chose from among the people, against all these negative types. This hero, created by the author, is a typical representative of a far-sighted, hard-working people working for the benefit of the people. During his short rule, he overcame the damage done to the people by Shah Abbas, carried out a lot of positive work, and carried out extensive socio-political and economic reforms in the country, by arresting the chief justices, he appoints his trusted friends, abolishes the position of astrologer, begins to develop trade and agriculture, repairs roads, builds bridges, opens hospitals and schools, in short, does everything for the benefit of the people.

Akhundzadeh tried to develop the national consciousness of the people by directing all the literary and artistic components of the work to the sharp criticism of the social wounds of feudal society, the clear promotion of positive ideas. In "Deceived Kavakib", the author turned the "People's ideal" and nationalism into the main idea, and in fact wrote the tragedy of the deceived people, not the "deceived stars". The writer no longer thought about the "ideal king", but about the "good people". A nation that is united in all respects, and "fire the father of the oppressor!" Because the writer sincerely believed in such a belief that if the people do not wake up, even with a good shah, "this world will not change otherwise."

Thus, Mirza Fatali Akhundzadeh connects the genre of the story not only with literary and artistic modernity, but also with the "fate of the people" with the modern social destiny and historical problems of the world.

Along with the fate of the people, the thinker also considered the problem of the "perfect man" and showed that a perfect man must refrain from evil deeds, try to do good, repel oppression, ally himself with his countrymen in society, pursue science and spread science everywhere. within the limits of its capabilities, must fight to maintain law and order among its like-minded people.1

Conclusion

In general, the formation and development of national consciousness is associated with certain stages of historical development. National literary and artistic consciousness is formed and developed in accordance with the events in the life of society. Therefore, this problem is related to the responsibility of the nation's writers and poets, their political and ideological thinking, the level of development of the people's cultural level, its long historical development, the impact and factors of literary and artistic events of the time.