To begin...to begin anything is not easy for me. To begin this story was extremely difficult. Thinking about it now, I began this story three times. Almost twenty years ago, I had started a piece entitled “Toroibandi” but I did nothing with it. Later on, I wrote a few pages, to which I gave the name “Single Towering Tree,” but when I read it now, I don't like it.

As customary, on the occasion of the birthday of Chinggis Khaan and the National Pride Day, an outstanding figure of Mongolia who contributed to strengthening the independence and sovereignty, studied statehood and historical tradition of the country is awarded with the supreme state prize of Mongolia the Order of Chinggis Khaan.

And, this year’s Order of Chinggis Khaan has been conferred to one of the most outstanding writers, authors, and poets of Mongolia, Gombojaviin Mend-Ooyo. The Order has been handed over by President Elbegdorj at the Hall of the State Nine White Banners.

As customary, on the occasion of the birthday of Chinggis Khaan and the National Pride Day, an outstanding figure of Mongolia who contributed to strengthening the independence and sovereignty, studied statehood and historical tradition of the country is awarded with the supreme state prize of Mongolia the Order of Chinggis Khaan.

Today, the annual award ceremony of the Order of Chinggis Khaan was held and President Elbegdorj, Speaker of the State Great Khural Z.Enkhbold, Prime Minister Ch.Saikhanbileg with his spouse, Chinggis Khaan’s Order laureates and other honored guests were present. Then, students of the Music and Dance College showed respect to the ceremony performing the State Hymn and “Khaluun elgen nutag”.

Mend-Ooyo attended the opening of the "Summer Mongolian Literature Translation Course" in Lakitelek. The Deputy Speaker of the Hungarian National Assembly, Mr. Lezbak Sandor, also attended the same opening. The course is led by Dr. Birtalan Agnes, who has selected 16 of Mend-Ooyo's works that are more related to the Mongolian nomadic culture. After the opening, the seminar of the translation course started the work of translating "Shiliin Bogd", Mend-Ooyo's latest novel, which came out in 2014. Mend-Ooyo is very happy with the organization of this program, citing that "One of the best ways to bring out a good translation of a piece of literature is for the writers and translators to work together to understand and express each individual word and the meaning of the book."
 

St.Petersburg State University

POET ABOUT POET: G.MEND-OOYO’S NOVEL ABOUT D.RAVJAA
G.Mend-Ooyo’s novel"Gegeenten"[16]can be called thefirst prose work, where theimage of the greatGobiNoyonHutuhtaand poetD.Ravjafoundan artistic expression.
Asmany works ofMongolian literature medieval type, writtenin the genreof namtar(eg."NeyzhToyin’s Biography ") novel "Gegeenten"consists of five chapters. Each chapteris preceded byan epigraphin the form ofquotations from D.Ravja’s orother religious figuresworks.

The people of Dariganga, in the south-east of Mongolia, have for many centuries, produced examples of their own particular cultural history. The "Ganga Nuuryn Chuulgan," which will travel through Dariganga studying the cultural history, the ecology and the natural sciences of the region, will reveal the lifestyle of the people, and their interactions with culture and the environment.

I was born on the wild eastern steppe, raised as the child of a nomadic herding family. When I was a child, watching the horizon of blue mirages and moving nomadically with a camel caravan, we would travel into the distant limitless skies, and I yearned there for a place of wonder and the unknown, and to discover it and understand it. From this period of my youth, desiring to gain such wonders through the fluttering images within my mind, I was led into the world of poetry. I didn't know how I might do this, but for a long time, and through a gentle rhythm, I guided my own caravan onwards, with its strange melancholy. Limitlss were the skies.
Endless were the journeys. They were what led me on.

The Mongolian poet G.Mend-Ooyo has been awarded Grand Prize of the Mihai Eminescu International Academy, named for the famous nineteenth-century Romanian lyric poet. Special prizes were also given to the Canadian Nicole Brossard and to the Senelagese Amadou Lamine Sall.

The Academy has founded with honored many writers, among them Wole Soyinka, Czesław Miłosz, Eugène Guillevic, Edoardo Sanguinetti, Mario Luzi, Ismail Kadare, Rafael Alberti, Eugenio de Andrade, Mateja Matevski and Mimmo Morina. 

In the reception hall of the Art Museum in Craiova, which has been named as European City of Culture for 2021, the President of the Academy, Ion Deaconescu, and Craiova's Mayor, Lia Olguta Vasiliescu, presented G.Mend-Ooyo with the Academy's award, and the famous Italian sculptor Vincenzo Bianchi himself presented the winner with a sculpture which he had created. The well-known artist Constantin Mihalache presented his own painting and the Academy's own silver trophy.

The rich tapestry of poetry which Mend-Oyoo weaves will live long in the mind of the Western reader. His exploration of the intimate connection between the personal and the universal is expressed with delicate perception and an undoubted gift for language. An added bonus for Western readers is that the book is an informative, introductory insight into the Mongolian psyche – a psyche which embraces the topography not simply of Mongolia or even the universe but of the world beyond this world, an ‘otherness’ which travels with the poet as surely as his nomadic ancestors.