Writing the Circassian: Adil-Girey Ch’ashe on the Loss and Reclamation of Identity

• In Event: Forging Frontiers: Identity, Representation, and Alienation in Imperial Russia's Borderlands

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that Adil Girey Ch’ashe, both in his work and his life, challenges us to be critical of any concept of an “authentic” ethnic identity. Adil Girey Ch’ashe (or Keshev) is one of the most important literary figures of the nineteenth century in the North Caucasus. Educated in the Sevastopol Gymnasium, Ch'ashe writes about the Caucasus from a native perspective. Ch'ashe straddles two approaches: the humanist outlook by way of a Russian enlightenment education and his own Circassian cultural codes. In his literary works, he explores Circassian identity and what it means to feel like an outsider amongst one’s own people. He grapples with the role that his education played in alienating him from his own people. Ch’ashe’s critical eye is not only turned inward towards his own culture but also outward towards the Russian literary milieu in its representations of the Caucasus. He writes against the accepted romantic literary tropes of the Caucasus and states so directly in a letter to the editor of Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya. He writes, “My goal is to present the Circassian not on horseback, but at home at the hearth.” [1] In the five stories of Ch’ashe’s that survive, he adheres to his commitment to showing life in the Caucasus, removed of any romantic sheen, in all its contradictions and multiplicities.
[1] Translation, my own.
«Цель моя — представить черкеса не на коне, а у домашнего очага.»
Кешев, «Письма». Записки Черкеса. (Нальчик: Эльбрус, 1988)

Author

• Lily Tarba, U of Toronto (Canada)