"Can you rely on love? Rely on the Party!". What is "My First Love" actually about?

“Can one lean on love? Lean on the party!” What is “My First Love” actually about?

If a person loses their way – they lean on love,

If a person sinks into sorrow – they lean on love,

If a person is left helpless – they lean on love…

During a major gathering where the poem “My First Love” was being discussed, one of the writers analyzing the above lines took the podium and said, “One must lean on the party, not on love.” Because this individual was such an ignorant and foolish person, Abdulla Oripov did not even take offense at him.

Although more than 55 years have passed since the creation of this song, which is known by heart by Uzbeks young and old, and which fans never failed to demand wherever Sherali Joʻrayev set foot, the yearning of love-thirsty hearts for it has not waned.

In the early 1970s, the song “My First Love” resounded continuously from the open windows of the student campus in Tashkent. The entire student campus knew that the author of the poem was a student from Qashqadaryo, Abdulla Oripov, and that the song was composed by a student from Andijan, Sherali Joʻrayev.

On the other side of the campus, students from Karakalpakstan and Khorezm listened to the song “My First Love” performed by Otajon Xudoyshukurov. Resounding from “Vesna” compact cassette tape recorders, “My First Love” sounded like an anthem of love uniting the youth and lovers of all Uzbekistan.

Regarding the history of this song, People's Artist of Uzbekistan Sherali Joʻrayev, who composed the melody and performed it for the first time, narrates:

“I took this poem from Abdulla Oripov's book when I came to Tashkent to study in 1966–1967. Later, I heard its history. A young man fell in love with the daughter of a prominent figure. But he could not express his love to that girl. He would go to the institute, walk past her, and return. He would watch from afar. He would go and return again. Thus, unable to say a word, he just kept watching her. That girl later married someone else, and the young man married another girl. That was when this poem was born. I turned it into a song, feeling the pain of all lovers.”

Of course, the fact that Sherali Joʻrayev set this poem to music did not please everyone equally. In an issue of the “Yosh leninchi” (Young Leninist) newspaper at the time, a feuilleton dedicated to this “act” of the singer was even published. Because in those times, ghazals were sung, and poems like this were not set to music.

Yesterday evening when the moon turned pale and set in the sky,

When the star Venus glimmered, casting a dim smile,

When a sadness, a stillness awoke in my soul,

I remembered you, my first love,

I fell into memories and thoughts, my first love.

People's Poet of Uzbekistan, Hero of Uzbekistan Abdulla Oripov, in one of the programs dedicated to “My First Love,” recalls that at that time there were some peculiar attacks on this poem of his. He mentions that some stanzas of the poem were even omitted.

At a major party meeting held in the Navoi Theater building, a young writer stood up and said that in the poem “My First Love” there is “mysticism, escaping from the world, a mood implying that everything else is in vain, and everything we see is worthless, and so on.” He analyzed the poem in the manner of: “The poet says, ‘On whom shall I lean, my first love?’ How strange, does one lean on love? Here, lean on the party, lean on the state!”

“I was not offended by him, because he was such an ignorant, such a foolish person that demanding something else from a poem is a sign of ignorance... If a person loses their way, they lean on love. This means I had lost my way at that time. If a person sinks into sorrow, they lean on love. This means I had sunk into sorrow at that time. If a person is left helpless, they lean on love. I was left helpless. On whom shall I lean? My first love, I will only burn with memories, my first love. That is why it came about; when I said on whom shall I lean, the words ‘lean on the party, lean on the state’ came up back then. This means, of course, that the feeling of love is not written in the sense of a person planning it out, saying, let me put a cup of tea next to me, sit quietly, and remember my first love,” Abdulla Oripov himself said.

The poet does not believe that love belongs only to youth. Love does not stop as one grows older. The gates of love do not shut tight after a certain age. For example, Goethe wrote his most brilliant poems on the theme of love in Karlovy Vary after he was 80 years old. In Eastern poetry, when “beloved” (yor) is mentioned, the beauty of Allah is understood.

Ashraqat min aksi shamsil-ka’si anvorul-hudo,

“Yor aksin mayda koʻr” deb, jomdin chiqti sado.

(Meaning: The lights of guidance shone from the reflection of the sun of the cup, a voice came from the goblet saying, “See the reflection of the Beloved in the wine.”)

To understand the literal meaning of the couplet, first of all, if we imagine the image of the sun just beginning to rise from the east, the half-risen sun looks like a cup filled halfway with wine, that is, light. It is not an ordinary cup, but a goblet full of wine — the lights of guidance. The goblet is the sun, the wine is its rays. In addition, this couplet also has an esoteric meaning.

“What does a person see when looking into a goblet? They see their own reflection. This means the beloved is in your heart, that is, Allah is in your heart. In Eastern philosophy, this is called ‘wahdat al-wujud’ (unity of existence). In Western, Kantian philosophy, it is called ‘thing-in-itself’. This is an expression of Tasawwuf, Sufism, of great philosophy. That is, God Almighty has scattered His beauty. Therefore, there are sayings that the beauty of Allah is visible to a certain extent in each beloved,” says Abdulla Oripov.

The poet also cites an example from Mashrab:

What is the need to go to Mecca without the beloved and without wine?

What shall I do with that old shop left by Abraham?!

“For this, Mashrab could have been hanged a million times. But its interpretation is completely different. The beloved here is beauty, the beauty of Allah. Wine is the love for Him. If you do not have the feeling of the beloved, of Allah, in your heart, if you do not have love for Him, what will you do by going to Mecca, he says... Love stands wider than just the concept of getting married...”, the people's poet explains.

Give a call, where are you, I listened for your whisper,

Seeing mysterious dreams, I forgot the whole world,

Rising at dawn, I wrote this poem to your name,

My sigh in the heart, my first love,

My only God, my first love.

People's Artist of Uzbekistan Sherali Joʻrayev, in one of his interviews, emphasizes that love is a divine light instilled into the human heart from its very creation. According to the artist, a person first loves their parents, feels first love upon growing up, and later this feeling transfers to their children. Over time, a person realizes the true essence of love and comes to understand that its source is Allah.

Joʻrayev noted that he did not arrive at this view suddenly. “If they had asked me about this 10–15 years ago, I would not have been able to give the current answer,” he says. Because he reached this conclusion after experiencing various life events over many years. The singer said that over time, he understood that many feelings and events that previously seemed important became secondary after realizing the ultimate truth.

Tajik literary scholar Munavvara Oymatova says that as long as the fire of love is in the human heart, as long as blood flows in the veins, both this poem and this song will not be forgotten.

“I have witnessed some prosecutors, when this song played, forgetting their status, forgetting who they were, and singing along to this song. That is why I think this is a poem written from the deepest part of a human being. A poem imbued with human pain never dies. The lifespan of poems written about joy and happiness is very short... Not many people in Uzbek poetry have been able to reach the height that Abdulla Oripov reached,” says the scholar.