Metropolitan Classics

Mukagali Makataev (1931-1977) spent his childhood in the Kazakh village of Karasaz, nestled in the foothills of the Great Khan-Tengri, the highest peak of Tyan-Shahn mountains. During WWII, as a teenager, Mukagali, like his peers, became the main labor force in their village and replaced the adult men who had left for the front. They tended to the cattle and maintained the farmland, alongside the women and elderly men, finding great pride in this. Upon graduating from high school, he tended the Red Yurt, a moveable library in the remote areas of Kazakhstan. Mukagali graduated from the Literary Institute named after Gorky, in Moscow. He authored the famous poems: “Life is a Legend,” “Life is a River”, “Mozart’s Requiem”, He translated many Russian classics and prominent world literature (including “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman and “The Divine Comedy” by Dante) into the Kazakh language. His personal life was, unfortunately, a tragic one. Emotionally scarred by the death of his wife and infant daughter, he struggled for many years with a heart illness, which he finally succumbed to in 1977.