ISBN-13: 9781898823087 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 600 str.
Written down for the first time in the indigenous Sakha language of Yakutia (Sakha Republic, northeastern Siberia) in the early 1930s by the politician, poet, and story-tellerPlaton A. Oyunsky (1893-1939), this first English translation was proclaimed by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Olonkho is the general name for the entire Yakut heroic epic that consists of many long legends--one of the longest being "Nurgun Botur the Swift," consisting of some 36,000 lines of verse. Like Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the Yakut Olonkho is an epic of a very ancient origin dating back possibly as early as the eighth or ninth centuries.The Sakha language in which the Olonkho is written (previously only ever spoken or sung) is one that is enriched by symbols and fantastic images, parallel and complex constructions, traditional poetical forms, figurative expressions, and alliteration.