Literature as the art of the word and the opening of “Alpomish”

The word “adabiyot” has two meanings. In the narrow sense it means imaginative literature – works that reflect the world through images and symbols; in the broad sense it covers any written work of value (historical, scientific, encyclopedic and so on). A scientific text raises knowledge and trains thought, while an imaginative work stirs feeling together with thought. A painter works with paint and a sculptor with stone, but literature has one “material” – the word. Its oldest form is oral folk art (folklore), whose author cannot be identified. Imaginative works divide into lyric, epic and dramatic kinds according to whether they were made to be sung, staged or read and whether they express feeling, events or the actions of characters; each kind splits into genres. National literature keeps the spirit of a nation, which is why a nation without literature is forgotten.