Gennady Aygi is the major Chuvash poet of our times, now in his early seventies & in need of help because of failing health. The email below from PEN Berlin was forwarded to me by Ammiel Alcalay. Your help will be much appreciated. Below the appeal I'll paste two small texts by & a bio-note on Aygi I put together a few years back for a special issue on poetics of Boundary2.
Please help the poet Gennadji Ajgi in Moscow!
Gennadij Ajgi born in 1934 in Schajmursino (at the time part of the Autonomous Chuvash Soviet Republic), is a great European Poet. The Chuvashian lyricist has been writing since 1960 in the Russian language (following the advice of Boris Pasternak) and has received a numerous amount of awards amongst others the German Petraca price and the price of the Académie Française. In 1992/93 Ajgi was fellow in Berlin as part of the artists program of the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service). During this time period he published “Aus Feldern Russland“ (From Russian Fields) together with his translator Felix Philipp Ingold and has enchanted many listeners and readers.
We have received a cry for help from Moscow. Gennagij Ajgi who recently accepted to take part at the P.E.N. congress in Berlin in May has fallen ill and lies in a Moscow clinic. The hospital costs are large and exceed the modest amount covered by the families insurance. P.E.N. in Germany has set up a donation account to help Ajgis family with the hospital bill.
Commerzbank of Darmstadt; Germany
IBAN: DE 3750 8400 050 - 130808907
BIC: COBADEFFXXX
Please help with a donation and please help soon. The reserve assets and donations of his friends and family in Moscow have already been used. Every Euro Counts! Please pass this call for help to your friends and family.
Berlin, January 2006
Nina Hartl, DAAD
Ursulla Setzer and Herbert Wiesner, PEN-Zentrum, Germany
Ulrich Schreiber, internationales literaturfestival berlin
(...this is terrible news...Gennady's reading at The Poetry Center @ SFSU stands as one of the three best readings i've ever attended...and he read last (after a 3 1/2 hour marathon of international poets!)...i was lucky enough to have drinks with Gennady and his translator Peter France at a local pub in the Tenderloin after the reading...Peter kindly translating my English for Gennady, vise versa...
before leaving i told Gennady that i was sorry we couldn't communicate without a translator...Gennady took a napkin and wrote something in Russian which Peter quickly translated..."John, we communicate through the air...")
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