Fatih Amirkhan: a many-sided lover of life and a dandy
This year, the friend of Gabdulla Tukay also turns 140 years old. An exhibition dedicated to Fatih Amirkhan has opened in the poet's museum.
This year marks the 140th anniversary of two close friends — poet Gabdulla Tukay and publicist, prose writer, and playwright Fatih Amirkhan. An exhibition dedicated to the birthday of the latter has recently opened in the literary museum named after the former. Here you can see a man who loved life, beautiful clothes, girls, and wrote about the future in his works.
How Amirkhan dressed
Even in the Tukay Literary Museum, they sigh that the figure of the main poet overshadows that of one of the prominent literary figures of the early 20th century. Nevertheless, Amirkhan's legacy is being studied — three volumes based on his archives were published last year, and a fourth volume was quietly released in December. Two more will be published by April. The earlier collection of Amirkhan's works consisted of four volumes, and the new edition includes a lot of new material, including previously censored content. A scientific conference is also expected in the spring.
The exhibition, located on the ground floor and based on materials from the funds of the National Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan, presents the multifaceted nature of Amirkhan.
The exhibition begins with publications from the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods, and the exposition is further built on a thematic and emotional basis. There are, for example, paintings by Elena Alekseeva, who, for the Jadidfest 2019 festival dedicated to the New Tatar Settlement, painted a series of characters from the early 20th century, including Fatih Zarifovich. In general, there are many portraits of Amirkhan here, including some that are unfinished.
Born in 1886 into the family of mullah Zarif, he became known as a dandy, as evidenced by the preserved suit, hat, shirt, and glasses. Probably, he was photographed in them for his most famous photos.
Amirkhan and beautiful girls
His Moscow period is reflected in the cover of the first children's magazine «Tәрbiayi etfal» («Education of children»), where Amirkhan was the editor. For the first time, the original and retouched photographs from the editorial office of the newspaper «El-Islah» («Reform») are displayed together. In the second photograph, Ibrahim Amirkhan, who was repressed, disappeared due to censorship, and later Kabir Bakir, who was exiled to Siberia and Solovki.
Amirkhan's younger brother, lawyer and diplomat Ibrahim, is also in other photos — in his house on the corner of Zhukovsky and Bolshaya Krasnaya streets (a yellow house with an expressive balcony), he lived on the ground floor in his last years. Now it is planned to place a boutique hotel there.
In August 1907, the young man suffered a paralysis, and until his death, he moved around in a wheelchair. But this did not diminish Amirkhan's vital energy.
At the exhibition, you can find a postcard from 1914 to a lovely girl; the text begins with the words «My lovely Fanichka!» and ends with the signature «Rybusya». By the way, it is written in Russian. The same is true when congratulating Darya Mikhailovna and Maria Iliodorovna on Christmas, or Zainap khanum and Rabigu tutash on Kurban Bayram.
A special pride of the exhibition organizers is the exposition of all the notebooks in which the novel «Khayat» was written, about the story of a girl from a Tatar family and her first love. The second part of the work was found in the archives ten years ago and published. But their originals are being shown together for the first time.
Class inequality and cell phones
A lot is said about the theatre at the exhibition. Here is Amirkhan in the Gabitovs' house (modern Ulyanovykh-Leninykh Street), where apartment performances were staged, and then the performers from the «Shimbachelary» («Saturday People») circle staged the first public performance twice in 1906 — this is where the official history of the Tatar theatre begins.
In general, Amirkhan is a writer who spoke and created a lot about the life of young people. At the exhibition, you can see documents related to the production of the play «Tigezsezlary» («The Unequals») — advertising, photographs from the production.
There is a memory of how Fatima Khuzhasaitova played in it for the first time: the author gave her flowers, and actor Gabdulla Kariev and playwright Karim Tinchurin called her «Il kyz» («Daughter of the country»), and she became Fatima Iльская, who served at the Kamalovsky Theatre for 60 years. Now this play is being staged by Farid Bikchantaev with the younger part of the troupe.
However, children, according to the head of the museum, Guzel Tukhvatova, of course, like the novel «Fatkhulla-khazrat» more, in which, according to the plot, after deep freezing, the mullah finds himself in a successful future: after all, here Amirkhan not only predicted cell phones, but even video communication!
Amirkhan with the family of his brother Ibrahim
The exposition is completed by two newspaper clippings. One tells about Amirkhan in our time. And the other is his article from the newspaper «Kyzyl Armiya» in 1920 with a large portrait of Mullanur Vakhitov, who was killed in 1919. The Tatar revolutionary, who has become interesting to many this week, also went to «Shimbachelary», so they had known each other for many years.
Amirkhan himself died on March 9, 1926, having managed to attend the premiere of the first Tatar opera «Saniya»; he participated in the work on the libretto. Even sick with tuberculosis, he remained at the forefront of Tatar art — a photograph with composers Sultan Gabysh and Gaziz Almukhametov tells about this at the exhibition.
The story of Fatih Amirkhan is a multitude of doors to various corners of national culture. We recommend taking a stroll.