Muhammad Salih - Early Life

Early Life

Muhammad Salih was born in the Urgench District of the Khorezm region of Uzbekistan on December 20, 1949. He is a descendant of the well-known aristocratic family Khorezm Beks. He was named after his birth as Muhammad Salih as consonant to his father's name, Muhammad Amin (Madamin). In 1977, he published his first collected poems which brought him instantaneous fame as a poet of avant-gardism. After he was warned by Laziz Kayumov, the main ideologist of the Republic and Chief Editor of the newspaper “Sovet Uzbekistoni”, about the “Baneful influence of the West in poetry”, the first period of his destiny was to be rejected by socialist society. Henceforth and till the 90s he was called a “westernizer in poetry, distant from national traditions”. Salih's early creative activity characterized by the concord of western avant-gardism (especially surrealism) with the complicative Sufi philosophy (especially the school of Djalal ad-Din Rumi) and metaphorics linked to its mystical foundation. He translated the prose of Franz Kafka and French poets of 20th century. His poems were translated into many languages. Hundreds of articles and books have been written about him. His poems were first translated to Russian by Victor Sosnora and later by Alexey Parshikov.