https://joshualfreeman.com Joshua L. Freeman Sat, 15 Jun 2024 11:48:48 +0000 https://joshualfreeman.com en https://joshualfreeman.com/Yillargha_jawab Sat, 15 Jun 2024 11:48:48 +0000 Joshua L. Freeman https://joshualfreeman.com/Yillargha_jawab ANSWER TO THE YEARS Lutpulla Mutellip tr. Joshua L. Freeman Time hurries ahead, it waits for no one, years are the great steed on which time rides by. Rivers flow and dawns break, they never repeat, the galloping years run away with our lives. The years chase each other with quickening pace, without looking back they abscond with it all. Nightingales barely fly in the orchard of youth before the leaves start to crumple and fall. So graceful a chapter of life is youth, yet the end of the chapter comes much too soon. Each page that is torn from the calendar is a petal that falls from youth’s delicate bloom. This tree without leaves grows so dry and forlorn, as the tracks are buried by a wind of years. The generous years never come empty-handed, to girls they bring wrinkles, to boys they bring beards. Yet cursing the years is no answer at all, let them pass ever onward and make their own plans. Man too will collect what he chooses from time, the wilderness flowers to life in his hands. So much can be done in the years’ great expanse, triumphs rise up like peaks as the years make their way. Only last night the infant still lay there so small, yesterday he was crawling, he’s walking today. Young people chase fearlessly after the years, their fearless grandchildren will come in their wake. They’ll gather up flowers to place on the graves of those martyred last night for a better world’s sake. Let the years gild my face with a beard if they will, I too will grow strong in the years’ wide embrace. My creation, my poems will all leave their mark on the neck of each year that passes in haste. In the hour of struggle I shall not grow old, my verse lights the way with the blaze of a star. In the mountains of struggle, to fall back is death, those who dare and endure are the ones who go far. I’ll hold fast to the hand that was hardened in gunfire, with my banner held high, I won’t stray from the path. In the wastelands of struggle I’ll never grow tired, we will march on the wide road of triumph at last. There is no need to howl with laughter, oh years, I won’t rage against you—I’d rather be dead. Your efforts to age me are all made in vain, my son will fight on in the battle ahead. Oh ocean of years, though your waves may be fierce, our ship cuts its way through the furious roll. You may threaten us all with the passage of years, we answer that creation makes the years grow old. &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Aqsu, January 1944 Translation copyright © 2024 by Joshua L. Freeman. Translation based on&nbsp; L. Muṭṭalib, “Yillārghā jawāb,” in M. Noruzof and Elqem Ekhtem, eds.,&nbsp;Ālmānākh, 18-19 (Ghulja: Sharqi Turkistān inqilābchil yāshlār teshkilātining meṭbeʿesi, 1947). https://joshualfreeman.com/Homepage Fri, 22 Jul 2022 23:03:25 +0000 Joshua L. Freeman https://joshualfreeman.com/Homepage Joshua L. Freeman CV (Aug. 2025) I am an assistant professor of comparative literature at Brown University, where my research focuses on Uyghur literature and the cultural history of twentieth-century China and Central Asia. Drawing on literary works, archival records, oral history, and other sources, my work examines the connections between literary canon, communal identity, personal networks, and ideology in socialist states. I am particularly interested in questions of cross-border nation building and literary translation, as well as all things poetry. Before arriving at Brown, I was an assistant research fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, following three years at the Princeton Society of Fellows. I received my PhD in Inner Asian and Altaic Studies at Harvard University in 2019. Prior to my doctoral studies, I lived for seven years in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, an experience that deeply informs my research. In addition to working there as a translator, I completed a master’s degree in Uyghur literature at Xinjiang Normal University with a thesis on avant-garde Uyghur poetry. In my monograph&nbsp;The Poetry of Power: Uyghur National Culture in Twentieth-Century China, forthcoming from Columbia University Press, I trace the interlocking careers of a remarkable group of Uyghur literati. Between the 1930s and the end of the century, these poets, translators, editors, and officials deftly deployed the resources of socialism, nationalism, and Islam as they transformed the local culture of Ili—a small and marginalized community on the Sino-Soviet border—into the new Uyghur national culture.As a firm believer in bringing our work beyond the academy, I have written public-facing scholarship for&nbsp;The New York Review of Books,&nbsp;The New York Times, and&nbsp;The Times Literary Supplement, and have translated Uyghur poetry for&nbsp;The Atlantic,&nbsp;The Guardian, and numerous literary journals. My translation of Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut Izgil’s memoir,&nbsp;Waiting to Be Arrested at Night (Penguin Press), received the National Book Critics Circle’s 2023 John Leonard Prize for Best First Book and has formed the basis for translations into sixteen other languages. <img width="3024" height="4032" width_o="3024" height_o="4032" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/836fb1307910a79ee629cd0e7e4cd9ad8b1e0180a8324fba943511bf43755d32/20220625_145905-josh.jpg" data-mid="149206059" border="0" data-scale="97" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/836fb1307910a79ee629cd0e7e4cd9ad8b1e0180a8324fba943511bf43755d32/20220625_145905-josh.jpg" /> Email: j [dot] freeman [at] brown [dot] edu Brown faculty page