Izzat Sulton

Izzat Sulton (full name Izzat Otaxon oʻgʻli Sultonov) was born on 29 June 1910 (16 June in the old style) in Osh, now in Kyrgyzstan, into a tailor’s family. He attended a Russian-native school, came to Tashkent as a teenager and studied at the Narimanov (Namuna) school, finishing a teacher-training technical college in 1929. From 1930 to 1934 he studied at the social faculty of the Tashkent Pedagogical Institute, then continued as a postgraduate until 1937.

He began working as a school teacher and in newspapers: in 1931 he was executive secretary of the paper “Batrak”, and his critical articles had been appearing in print since the early 1930s. From 1937 to 1942 he was deputy director of the Institute of Language and Literature.

During and after the war he held government posts: deputy chairman of the Uzbek SSR State Committee for Radio Broadcasting (1942–1943), director of the Tashkent film studio, Uzbekfilm (1943–1945), and deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Uzbek SSR for cultural affairs (1945–1948). He defended his candidate’s dissertation on Navoi’s “Mezon ul-avzon” in 1946 and his doctoral dissertation in 1955.

He directed the Institute of Language and Literature in 1948–1951, taught at Moscow State University in 1950–1953 and from 1955 headed the institute’s sector of literary theory. In 1956–1963 he was a secretary of the board of the Writers’ Union of the Uzbek SSR.

As a playwright he wrote “The Flight of the Eagle” (staged in the early 1940s, about M. V. Frunze’s work in Turkestan), the historical drama “Alisher Navoi” together with Uygun, and the plays “Imon” (“People of Faith”, 1960) and “The Unknown” (1963). He was one of the screenwriters of the film “Alisher Navoi”; the picture, directed by Kamil Yarmatov, received a Stalin Prize, second class, in 1948. He also wrote the libretto of the opera “The Poet’s Heart”, set to music by M. Ashrafi.

In literary scholarship his school textbook “Theory of Literature” (1939) and the university textbook (1980; second edition 1986) were widely used. His most important scholarly book is “Navoi’s Notebook of the Heart” (1969), about the life and work of Alisher Navoi. In 1994 he wrote a monograph on Bahouddin Naqshband and took part in the collective works “History of Uzbek Soviet Literature” and “History of Uzbek Soviet Criticism”.

He was named Honoured Art Worker of the Uzbek SSR in 1964 and Honoured Science Worker of the Uzbek SSR in 1981; he became a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in 1966 and an academician in 1995. In 1970 he received the Beruni State Prize of the Uzbek SSR for his part in the collective work “History of Uzbek Soviet Literature”, and in 1992 he was awarded the “Shuhrat” medal.

Izzat Sulton died in Tashkent on 29 July 2001 and was buried at the Chigatay cemetery.