Habibullo-Eugene Kiselev
A Synopsis of my Life
January 2nd, 2018, Tuesday, 09:34:45 p.m.
Yekaterinburg, Russia. GMT 05:00
I begin the New Year 2018 with this record today. In sooth, this is sort of a belated message, but… Okay. I will provide a short synopsis of the two past days of the year 2018. Yesterday midnight my Mom and I had a frugal New Year’s party. We had bananas, kiwi, persimmon, apples and a very sweet layer cake. We drank mineral water, but we did not have any alcohol whatsoever. I have sent around 10 SMS messages to my friends, acquaintances and colleagues, but only few of them deigned to send me their congratulations in return. Having watched TV a little bit, we went to sleep.
I woke up the next afternoon at about 12:45. The streets were quiet, there were only dog owners walking over their pets a second time, I think. Having had breakfast, I turned on my cellular phone and guess what? There were some more Happy New Year messages! This kind of inspired me.
Later, at about 04:38 p.m. I gave a call to Professor Andrej Gorbunov to wish him a Happy New Year. Judging by his tone he was glad to hear from me, luckily he has almost overcome his pneumonia. Andrej Gorbunov briefly told me about his work on commentaries for the new book about Shakespeare. In particular, he is doing some research on the meaning of words of the Shakespearean vocabulary. For example, as he said, the word “academe”, which means “an educational institution”, also meant “a brothel” or “a bordello” in the times of the greatest playwright and poet. I will not cease to repeat that Professor Andrej Nickolayevich Gorbunov is one of the most intellectual people I have ever met in my life regardless of the fact that I know him just by correspondence.
At the end of the day, I at last received the explanations for my credit task from the professor of the Bashkir State University, following this message I hastily carried out this task and sent it in to the professor.
As for today, I can say it was much richer in emotions, but not in actual useful work. I regret to write about it, but I have lost the draft of “The Feast”, the poem which I wrote on September 1st last year. The poem was dedicated to ʿĪd al-aḍḥā, a Muslim holiday, which took place on this date.
Today, I have been trying to put my works, both literary and scientific, in order. In particular, I was trying to improve one of my free verse poems, apropos, I have some thoughts on writing free verses and I am working with it on a scientific level. So, as I was writing this poem, I came to a conclusion, that I was just “constructing” my work, rather than writing. This kind of perplexed me, because my Teacher Eugene Lobanov said that this was not good. Having fallen into deep despair I gave a call to Alexey Kuzin, a poet and scientist, member of the Union of Writers of Russia and professor of the Ural State Mining University. He was sincerely glad to hear from me, but he reported to me that he had his three grandsons over. I wished him a Happy New Year; he did the same to me. So, I asked him about my worries and concerns about writing poetry. Alexey Kuzin tried to console me, saying, “You are doing the right thing. You should write poetry the way it comes into your mind. Also, it is very praiseworthy that you are trying to dedicate yourself to literary criticism. You are a gifted poet and you will be a success, just work”. I was grateful to Alexey Kuzin. Am I a gifted poet? Well, other people will decide not me. Anyway, this gives hope and motivation for writing.
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