Landscape Re-Envisioned

Abstract

One of the more complex developments in the post-revolutionary period was in the Mongolian people’s understanding of their traditional, intimate relationship with the landscape. Mongolian nomadic life has always been linked inextricably with the cycle of the seasons, with the weather, and with the topographical features, which function as both waymarks and as ancestral presence. Despite its impulse towards industrialization and urbanization, Mongolian socialism acknowledged such links, and writers drew on their own connection with their homeland (nutag) to enhance and promote the new revolutionary society through a literature that celebrated the interaction of humans, livestock and the steppe. A competition based upon the theme of the revolutionary response to ‘homeland’ (nutag) resulted in a greater interest in this dynamic, as shown in D. Natsagdorj’s 1933 poem ‘My Homeland’ (Minii Nutag).