Farewell, Gulsary!

7 hrs. 58 min.

Classics

Language Russian

Author Chingiz Aitmatov

Narrator Nikolay Koziy

Description

The main character is the herdsman Tanabai. He has never held “high positions” and never chased them; he is a true hard worker. All of Tanabai’s difficult and honest life is laid out before us.

He believes in life and loves it, loves people and labor; he meets the toughest trials head-on, wins difficult victories. Even Tanabai’s beloved horse, the dappled trotter Gulsary, is filled with the “fiery spirit of running,” its broad chest “open trustingly to the free steppe wind.”

Last autumn, Tanabai arrived at the collective farm office, and the foreman told him: “We’ve chosen a horse for you, aksakal. It’s a bit old, of course, but for your work it’ll do.” Tanabai saw the trotter— and his heart squeezed painfully. “So we’ve met again, it seems,” he said to the old, utterly beaten horse.

The first time he met the trotter Gulsary was after the war. After demobilization, Tanabai worked at the forge, and later Choro, a longtime friend, persuaded him to go to the mountains as a herdsman. It was there that he first saw the dappled, round “little one,” a one-and-a-half-year-old foal, like a ball. The former herdsman Torgoy said: “In those past times, in fights during races, they put the heads of people on such a horse…”