Memoirs of Jumaboy Allaberganov (Recorded by his granddaughter Muxlisa Khaytbayeva)
First of all, I must say that it gives me great pride to speak about our intelligent friend and contemporary, Omon Matjon. Omonboy and I studied at the same school. He was a very diligent student, passionate about literature and history, and loved reading books. I can’t recall a time when Omonboy was just idly playing in the streets. He was always seen flipping through a newspaper or a book. He would somehow persuade his father to buy him new books, no matter how difficult it was.
He constantly engaged our school’s history teacher, Mr. Do’simmat, with various questions and eagerly sought answers. This curiosity is clearly reflected in the works he wrote later in life. He loved his homeland deeply and beautifully expressed the history of Khorezm through legends and stories.
Thanks to his great talent, Omonboy earned everyone’s respect while still in school. His poems and articles regularly appeared in the school’s wall newspapers. Nearly all the students knew his creative works by heart.
He quickly became the pride of our school. His first poem was published in the district newspaper under the title “The Fish and the Rotten Net”: The fish and the rotten net, Quarreled hard, you bet. Said the net: “Hey fishy boy, You’re in trouble, you’ve lost your joy…”
After that, his poems began to appear in various publications one after another. Even during his military service — this must have been in the 1960s — his poems were published in the journal “Sharq Yulduzi” (Star of the East). All of us peers felt great pride in his achievements and rising fame among the people.
Omonboy entered the world of literature in 1965–66. To see him sharing the stage with such great poets of the time as Abdulla Oripov and Erkin Vohidov, enriching the literary garden, was a double joy for all of us. Today, Omonboy is known to the entire nation as Omon Matjon. He became a prominent representative of the Matjonov family from the village of Bog‘olon, and through his work, he made our village known around the world.
His poems quickly gained popularity. Who from our village does not remember the following lines? “Even if autumn strews the roads with leaves, Even if snow covers the whole world, Even if spring bursts forth with joy, One day, I will cross your door.” With his sharp pen and rich creative legacy, he continues to delight our people.
At the same time, Omonboy played a key role in planting fruit trees over nearly 500 hectares of land in our village, helping transform Bog‘olon into a true land of orchards. In 1988, we brought fruit saplings from Andijan and together established the “Yoshlik” (Youth) Orchard. It was during this time that I truly realized just how deep his respect was for his birthplace and native village. Overall, Omon Matjon has been serving our nation and people with great devotion through his noble deeds. The library operating in our village today also bears his name. He has gifted readers a vast spiritual legacy.
As a People’s Poet of Uzbekistan and winner of the Hamza Prize, our fellow villager Omon Matjon has become a beloved and respected figure thanks to his diverse creative activity and great achievements. In my opinion, when Omonboy writes about our village, it feels as though he is putting into words the emotions and thoughts we ourselves could not express — and doing so beautifully, simply, and most importantly, deeply. That is why we hold such deep respect for creative people. There is no doubt that his works will live on forever and will continue to hold a special place in the hearts of readers.
Khaytbayeva Mukhlisa Mukhtorovna was born on July 11, 2004, in Yangibozor district, Khorezm region, Uzbekistan. She is currently a third-year student at the Faculty of Philology and Arts at Urgench State University, named after Abu Rayhon Beruni.
Anand posits restraint as the cornerstone of existence, both in the natural world and in human endeavours. This idea resonates with ancient philosophies like Aristotle’s *Golden Mean* or the Buddhist *Middle Path*, where balance is essential for harmony. In art, restraint manifests in the careful modulation of voice into song or words into meaningful sentences, illustrating how discipline transforms raw potential into beauty. The essay suggests that restraint is not merely a limitation but a creative force.
The essay concludes with a lament for a civilization “bred on excess”—excess of ambition, provision, and imagination. Anand critiques modern education for failing to teach humility or respect for human limits, resulting in a society that prioritizes achievement over humanity. This echoes critiques of modernity by thinkers like Thoreau or Gandhi, who warned against the dehumanizing effects of unchecked progress.The call to be “gentle to the elements” and “respectful to gods” is a plea for ecological and spiritual harmony. It suggests that happiness lies not in transcending limits but in embracing them with grace. [XAI]
Restraint and Discipline
Restraint and discipline when come from an understanding of the facts of life, help take life forward and, thus, retain their artistic value. However, when they are imposed by external agencies, it is good only to an extent, but under maverick dispensations, they take the shape of repression also, which scuttles human will, disorients the idea of self-discipline and restraint, and leads to suppression, followed by extreme discontent, rebellion, civil war and revolution.
Restraint is the essential fact of life, as well as the soul of all art. When we make a medicine, we add so many items but what is more important is its proportion. Life, too, is made of chemicals, which blend with the laws of physics and mathematics. When these chemicals are altered, we get different formations. Restraint thus dominates the creative process, and dictates what will be what. It is the magic of this restraint which turns the voice issuing forth from our voice box into a cry or a song When people sing, a single simple breath can be altered in a thousand ways, to create as many ‘ragas’. Words are bound into sentences to mean certain things. Behind all this, there is the element of restraint which works to control variations and bring out a meaning we want to create.
Limits
While ‘restraint’ appears to be an intrinsic phenomenon, limits appear to be the outer garment of these restraints. How far a man can grow. How high a ball can go. How long you can live. Then there are limits on our faculties also. How high you can listen. And how low a voice you can pick up? How loud you can speak. Everything has a limit. Everything is restrained by an invisible force.
Limits are a natural supplement. We inherently know what to speak, how high to speak, what not to speak, to whom to speak, – these are restraints which define our conduct as good or bad. If we let go this restraint, it can bring chaos in human life. If we lose restraint in eating and drinking, we immediately fall ill. It is a minor issue. But, if the cosmic forces lose their restraint, there are calamities and catastrophes.
Universe: A Perfect System
The fact is that this Universe is a perfect system, and anything that violates the discipline is burnt up in the space. Men too, who do not observe discipline and respect limits of their being, soon meet a devastating end. In regard to personal freedom, a quote is quite popular: “Your liberty ends where my nose begins”. Liberty and restraint define civilized human relationships. Not respecting limits shows forth in personal life too. The rich people who go on amassing wealth, never eat their dinner with peace. Their mind is a burning grave-yard in which joys commit suicide. They bring misery to the lives of other people and the greatest sufferers are their own loved ones, their wives, their sons and their daughters, who are directly affected by this pathological madness.
The Crime World: Going Overboard
In society too, crime lords arrogate to themselves the powers of judgement, and gods are never comfortable with them. It is a strange paradox that dacoits are often considered great disciples of gods and goddesses, who they worship before they embark on any [mis]adventure. These are falsities perpetuated by men to cover up their foolish deeds. No god can bless a person who holds a gun in his hand and is planning to plunder homes of innocent people. These artificially powered people have only one destination. They end with a bullet in their back.
Are Gods manufactures of Pain & Misfortune?
Loss of discipline and failure to observe restraint coupled with utter lack of understanding are responsible for the pain and misery which society faces on a large scale. We think it was gods who gave this bitter gift to mankind. But the fact is gods carry only blessings for mankind. You will see all the pains and miseries are manufactured in a foundry called human mind. You are the manufacturer of the pains, misfortunes and miseries scattered around you. It does no good to you to ascribe these pains to God’s Will and then say, you accept all with resignation.
We err grievously if we think this misery and pain come to us from gods whereas they come to us from our own provision store. Gods have only one role in it. They have to deliver you the items you have ordered. We try to be smart with gods too. But, smartness does not pay. Gods make you leave your mind, your intellect, and your smartness in the cloak room while you check into the holy empire.
Leading a Happy Life
Gods are very unhappy with human beings and are sad too, to think that men, in their extreme wisdom, resort to smartness and try to befool godly systems. The facts however stand on the other side. In order to lead a happy life, we need to be gentle to the elements, and respectful to gods. It is better if we realize our limits as human beings. But, it is a pity, our education does not teach anything about these limits. They do not teach us to remain human. This is the tragic conclusion of a civilization which is bred on excess, excess of ambition, excess of provision, and excess of imagination.
Author:
Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, considered “the greatest poet among philosophers and greatest philosopher among poets” is a towering literary figure whose work embodies a rare fusion of creativity, intellect, and moral vision. Laureate of Seneca, Charter of Morava, Franz Kafka and Maxim Gorky awards with an opus of 180 books, his name adorns the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. He is the founder of International Academy of Ethics. If Tagore is the serene sage of a colonial past, Anand is the fiery prophet of a chaotic present with a voice that resonates globally while remaining fiercely Indian.
POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL (1773) was only the second book of poetry published by an American woman. The 20-year-old author was a slave, taken (according to scholarly consensus) to North America at seven years of age. In fact, of course, nobody knows for sure when she was born (perhaps 1753) or where (maybe Senegal or Gambia) or even what she was called in her youth. She arrived in Boston aboard the Phillis and was purchased by merchant John Wheatley; and so her “name” became Phillis Wheatley.
When she was 14 or so she began writing poetry, and by 16 her work began to attract public notice. Because of her gender and caste, she was forced to defend her authorship before the colonial governor, lieutenant governor, and other luminaries. Even after they attested that she had indeed written the verses ascribed to her, she could not get her collected material published in Massachusetts, though well-connected members of the nobility acted as her patrons and secured its publication in England. The book became an international sensation, prompting Voltaire himself to comment that it proved that black people could write poetry. Nevertheless, due to her own situation and the tumult surrounding the American Revolution, she was unable to publish another book before her death in 1784, though her work did continue to appear occasionally in pamphlets and newspapers.
One of her best-known poems is “On Being Brought from Africa to America”:
‘Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
“Their colour is a diabolic die.”
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.
Nikki Giovanni, on the other hand, trod a very different literary path, publishing numerous volumes of poetry and essays, teaching at several prestigious universities, and winning major awards including 20 honorary doctorates. Named for her mother, Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, Sr., she was born some 190 years after Wheatley, in Knoxville, Tennessee, but raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, until she was 10, at which time she returned to Knoxville to live with her grandparents.
In 1967, the year she graduated with honors with a bachelor’s degree in History from her grandfather’s alma mater, Fisk University, in Nashville, Tennessee, she published her first volume of poetry, BLACK FEELING, BLACK TALK, which sold over 10,00 copies its first year; BLACK JUDGMENT (1968) sold 6,000 in just three months. Together, they established her as one of the most successful representatives of the Black Arts Movement that dominated African-American culture in the 1960s and beyond.
Her fifth book, THE WOMEN AND THE MEN (1975), featured “Poem for Flora”:
when she was little and colored and ugly with short straightened hair and a very pretty smile she went to Sunday school to hear ’bout nebuchadnezzar the king of the jews and she would listen shadrach, meshach and abednego in the fire and she would learn how god was neither north nor south east or west with no color but all she remembered was that Sheba was Black and comely and she would think i want to be like that
It is almost as though Giovanni wanted to engage with her literary ancestor Wheatley in a poetical dialectic on the changes in racial attitudes over a pair of centuries of American development.
Both poets opened with a reflection on their youthful introduction to Christian worship. Wheatley claimed it was a “mercy” to be taken from her own “Pagan land” in order to learn that “there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too.” Giovanni seemed to project her psychic self onto a family friend, Flora Fletcher Alexander, who often babysat for young Nikki. — “she loved clothes. Flora was the sharpest dresser,” she later recalled. Nikki/Flora “went to Sunday school to hear / ’bout Nebuchadnezzar the king / of the jews” and about “shadrach, meshach and Abednego in the fire.” But in the style of the times, before the Romantics began to relax the formalist standards of prosody and semantics,Wheatley mostly confined her remarks to a generality, while Giovanni reflected the Post-Modernist penchant for grammatical laxity and politically charged specificity. The Chaldean ruler Nabu-kudurri-usur II was indeed king of the Jews but only because of his conquest of Judea in 597 BCE; he was portrayed as a foreign oppressor in several books of the Old Testament, including the portion of the Book of Daniel where he cast Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into a fiery furnace for refusing to worship a golden idol. (Ironically, as we shall see, the Alphabet of Ben Sidra posited Nebuchadnezzar as the son of Solomon and the queen of Sheba, a chronological impossibility.)
Both women expressed their approval of the universalism of the Christian doctrine that even “Negroes, black as Cain / May be refin’d, and join the angelic train” and that “god was neither north / nor south east or west” — though Giovanni insistently added the clarification “with no color but all” to counter Wheatley’s demeaning allusion to God’s punishment of Cain for the murder of his brother Abel by “marking” him, which was often interpreted as giving him a black skin and therefore providing a Biblical justification for racism.
But even in these religious introductory remarks, race was an essential referent. For Wheatley the matter was a subtext, almost parenthetical, a pun on her “benighted soul.” But for Giovanni the blackness took center stage. Flora may have been “colored and ugly with short / straightened hair” (since African-Americans of Flora’s generation “conked” their hair by using lye to straighten their naturally kinky locks. Black nationalist leader Malcolm X claimed that the process “makes you wonder if the Negro has completely lost all sense of identity, lost touch with himself.”) But Flora’s own takeaway from Sunday school was that “Sheba was Black and comely” and Flora/Nikki decided “I want to be / like that.”
The queen of Sheba made only a brief appearance in the Bible, visiting Solomon in order “to prove him with hard questions.” But that cameo role led to her starring in one of the world’s most widespread and protean cycle of legends. She was probably from Saba (modern Yemen); the Sabaeans also had domains across the Red Sea on the Horn of Africa., and the later kingdom of Aksum (ancestral to Ethiopia) was sometimes referred to as Seba. Nevertheless, though history has recorded several Arabic queens, no African ones are known, even though the queen of Sheba has come to be regarded as such.
The literary confusion seems to have begun with the Books of Matthew and Luke in the New Testament, which referred to her as a “queen of the South” from “the uttermost parts of the earth,” At the same time, the historian Titus Flavius Josephus claimed she was a queen of Egypt and Ethiopia.A century later, the Christian theologian Origen conflated the “bride,” the female speaker in the Song of Songs, as the “Queen of the South,” (“I am very dark, but comely,” she proclaimed, or, in the NEW REVISED STANDARD VERSION, “black and beautiful,” though this translation would have been too late to directly influence the Giovanni poem).
Matthew preached the Gospel in Colchis (modern Ethiopia), and even earlier than that Philip the Evangelist had converted one of Queen Candace’s court officials there, making Ethiopia the site of the oldest Christian church (though “ethiopian” is Greek for “burnt face” and may have referred to Africans in general). The Ethiopians, in turn, seem to have taken particular delight in associating themselves with Biblical traditions. So the wordplay of Origen (conjoined to the comments by Matthew and various Islamic traditions concerning Queen Bilkis, the Arabic version of the queen of Sheba) seems to have been the basis for the Ethiopian national saga, the 14th century KEBRA NAGAST, in which Queen Makeda visited Solomon, who impressed her with his wealth and wisdom. She converted to Judaism and, on her way home, gave birth to Solomon’s son, Menilek, the ancestor claimed by all the kings of Ethiopia. until the last of them, Haile Selassie, was deposed in 1974. That last reigning descendant of Solomon and the queen of Sheba is regarded by the Rastafari as a divine messianic figure who will lead a future Golden Age of eternal peace, righteousness, and prosperity. (And thus the Rastafari bring the entire process full circle: they adapted their Haile Selassie symbolism from some rhetorical statements made by fellow Jamaican Marcus Garvey, who popularized the pan-African notion of “black is beautiful” and organized various separatist entities in the United States; one of Garvey’s followers was Earl Little, the martyred father of Malcolm X, whose own 1965 assassination sparked the creation of the Black Arts Movement of which Giovanni became a prominent representative figure.)
So, as a leading exponent of the “Black Is Beautiful” sentiment of the 1960s, Nikki Giovanni proudly focused on the fabled African queen of Sheba — “all / she remembered was that / Sheba was Black and comely” — while Phillis Wheatley was meekly apologetic about the way the Christians of Boston viewed her “sable race with scornful eye” because of the “diabolic die” associated with Cain, the world’s first murderer. Despite the commonalities in their two poems, this difference in attitude speaks volumes about how African-American views about the nature of their roles changed dramatically over the course of two centuries.
“Becoming a Butterfly, Becoming a Soul: An Existential Reading of Eva Petropoulou Lianou’s Poem”
By Rizal Tanjung
Eva Petropoulou Lianou’s poem “Nothing Belongs to Us” is a lyrical utterance that holds within it layers of existential reflection, critique of anthropocentrism, and a meditation on the spirituality of the body. In the increasingly cacophonous landscape of contemporary poetry—often overwhelmed by the aesthetics of form—this piece appears typographically simple yet philosophically sharp. This essay attempts to read the poem as a poetic contemplation of freedom, the infinitude of the human condition, and a critique of the illusion of possession. Through the lenses of existentialism (Sartre, Kierkegaard) and the cosmic mysticism of Taoist thought, it seeks to delve into the poem’s pulse in order to unearth what it means to be human.
Across both Eastern and Western traditions of poetry, the question of the human self has never reached its final answer. From Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself to Laozi’s Tao Te Ching, human beings have long pondered their identity in a world relentlessly obsessed with possession, power, and selfhood. Eva Petropoulou Lianou’s poem comes as a whisper amid the clamor. With its formal simplicity yet profound meaning, it dares to challenge structures of society, belief, and even the logic of human ownership.
This poem invites a new reading of existence—fluid, self-sovereign, and spiritually free. It becomes a literary vehicle that resists the illusion of domination over oneself and nature. The central question guiding this essay is: How does the poem dismantle the myth of ownership and replace it with existential freedom and devotion to the soul?
Textual Reading: Structure and Symbolism
The poem is built from short lines, unconstrained by conventional rhyme or rhythm, yet it forms an internal cadence that is deeply reflective. Its narrative voice is declarative and intimate—as if the reader is being invited into a mirror held up by their own inner voice.
Key recurring symbols include:
“Butterfly,” “bee,” “ants,” “wolf”: Non-human beings that symbolize existence without domination.
“Laugh to your heart,” “touch the stars”: Invitations toward a spirituality born in simplicity.
“Stomach,” “instinct,” “inner soul”: The body as a center of wisdom—subverting the Western body-soul dichotomy.
The poem’s free structure becomes a metaphor for the freedom it articulates. Eva’s form reflects her message: the poem is free because it voices freedom.
Philosophical Approach: Existentialism and the Cosmology of the Body
Existentialism: Choice, Freedom, and the Absurd
Jean-Paul Sartre famously argued that human beings are “condemned to be free.” In this poem, freedom is not merely a moral choice, but a way of being—rooted in the body and instinct:
“We are choosing according to our feelings / Our thoughts / Our beliefs / Our stomach”
These lines are existential declarations: human sovereignty is not determined by external systems, but by the voice within. There is no divine hand dictating one’s fate. We belong to no one. We are the authors of our own will.
In the Kierkegaardian sense, the rejection of blind faith in systems, others, or societal order echoes through the poem:
“Show respect / Kindness / But no trust / Trust your instinct / Trust your heart”
Here, the poem becomes a manifestation of the leap of faith—not toward a god, but toward the sacred silence of the inner self.
Taoist Cosmology and the Mysticism of the Body
In Taoist tradition, human beings are not rulers of nature but parts of its flow. Eva echoes this cosmic humility in lines such as:
“We are nothing more than a fly / …than a bird”
The human body is not superior to other beings—thus, it becomes sacred in its humility. The poem rejects human exceptionalism. We are not creators, not owners. We are mere participants in the grand dance of nature, and our role is to attune, not to control.
Aesthetics of Being: The Child, the Soul, and the Stars
The poem closes with a shift into mysticism:
“Stay a happy child”
The child here becomes a symbol of ultimate spirituality: free from burden, honest in desire, filled with laughter. This is not psychological regression, but existential purity. In the symbol of the child, the poem stores a vital teaching: happiness is not a result of achievement, but a return to the most honest truth of the soul—play and dream.
Poetry as the Way Back
“Nothing Belongs to Us” is both poem and philosophy, both language and silence. It teaches that to be human is not to possess, not to know, not to rule—but to become the butterfly: fleeting, light, and meaningful through mere presence.
By weaving existentialism, the cosmology of the body, and natural symbolism, Eva Petropoulou Lianou has crafted not just a poem, but a spiritual map for those who seek meaning in a world weary of ownership. In a world overwhelmed with noise, this poem becomes the path home to a silence filled with light.
West Sumatra, 2025
References
Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling, 1843.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness, Gallimard, 1943.
Laozi. Tao Te Ching, trans. D.C. Lau, Penguin Classics, 1963.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass, 1855.
Petropoulou Lianou, Eva. “Nothing Belongs to Us”, 2024.
