MARSEL SALIMOV: “TO SERVE THE PEOPLE — THIS, I BELIEVE, IS THE TRUE PURPOSE OF MY CREATIVE WORK”

OCA Magazine: Please tell us the most important things about yourself and your creative work. What is your creative and life credo and motivation for your creativity?

Marsel Salimov: I am by no means an important, remarkable, or golden person — I am simply the author of satirical books titled “Important Person”, “Remarkable Man”, and “Golden Man”.
Ever since I was eight, when I wrote my first satirical poem about a social evil like drunkenness, I understood that a satirical writer must be far better than his characters. Otherwise, how can he criticize others, fight successfully for truth, and seek justice in this rather unjust world?

Always keeping this in mind, I write satirical works not because life is bad, but because I want it to become better. Though I am a stern satirist, I am inspired only by good, never by evil. These are by no means grandiose words or sweet lies, but bitter truths — fortunately for me.

OCA: How did you choose your path and who is your role model in the creative field or in life?

MS: I did not choose a special, soft, or comfortable path for an easy life — fate itself decreed that I would become a satirist.

Back in my youth, older brothers in the craft used to say to me, “You’re a satirist by God’s will” or “by nature.” Even my literary pseudonym, Mar. Salim, which I adopted during my school years, translates from Old Turkic as “healthy devastation.”

My name first appeared in print when I was twelve, and even then I knew I would inevitably become a satirical writer, a humourous poet, and a journalistic feuilletonist. My parents realised this too — especially my father, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, a fighter for justice, and a rural correspondent unafraid to write feuilletons about the leaders of his collective farm and district.

I spent my entire career at the editorial office of the Bashkir satirical magazine Khënek (“The Pitchfork”), where my first feuilleton was published when I was just fourteen. I started as a literary contributor and section editor, and then served as editor-in-chief for thirty years.

To work in just one place is like living your life with one wife. A beloved job is like a beloved woman — you can never have too much of it!