The Literature of Georgia: A History

320 Pages·2000·6.379 MB·English

by  Donald Rayfield

THE LITERATURE
OF GEORGIA
CAUCASUS WORLD
SERIES EDITOR NICHOLAS AWDE
www.caucasusworld.co.uk
Other hooks in the series include:
The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus y E Baddeley., with a new Preface by Moshe Gammer
Small Nations & Great Powers: A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus Svante Cornell
Storm Over the Caucasus: In the Wake of Independence Charles van der Leeuw
Oil & Gas in the Caucasus & Caspian: A History Charles van der Leeuw
After Atheism: Religion & Ethnicity in Russia & Central Asia David C. Lewis
Daghestan: Tradition & Survival Robert Chenciner
Madder Red: A History of Luxury & Trade Robert Chenciner
Azerbaijan: Quest for Identity — A Short History Charles van der Leeuw
The Georgian-Abkhaz War Viacheslav A. Chirikba
Georgia: In the Mountains of Poetry (also available in paperback) Peter Nasmyth
The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left: Social Democracy in Modem Iran Cosroe Chagüen
Society, Politics & Economics in Mazadaran, Iran: 1848—1914 M. A. Kazembeyki (Royal Asiatic Society)
The Armenian Kingdom in Cilicia during the Crusades: The Integration of Cilician Armenians
with the Latins, 1080-139$ Jacob G. Ghazarian
The Kingdom of Armenia: A History M. Chahin
A Bibliography of Articles on Armenian Studies in Western Journals, 1869-1995 K N. Nersessian
Armenian Perspectives edited by Nicholas Awde
Armenian Sacred & Folk Music Komitas (Soghomon Soghomonian), translated by Edward Gulbekian
The Armenian Neume System of Notation R. A. At ay an, translated by K N. Nersessian
Ancient Christianity in the Caucasus (Ibérica Caucásica vol. 1) edited by Tamila Mgaloblishvili
The Cross & the Crescent: Early Christianity & Islam in the Caucasus (Ibérica Caucásica vol. 2)
edited by Tamila Mgaloblishvili
Monasticism in the Christian East and West (Ibérica Caucásica vol. 3) edited by Tamila Mgaloblishvili
Pilgrimage: Timothy Gabashvili’s Travels to Mount Athos, Constantinople & Jerusalem, 1755-1759
edited by Mzia Ebanoidze & John Wilkinson
Also available for first time in paperback: The Man in the Panther’s Skin Shofha Rust’haveli (Shota
Rustaveli), translated by Marjory Scott Wardrop (Royal Asiatic Society)
PEOPLES OF THE CAUCASUS &.THE BLACK SEA
i. The Armenians 15. The Mingrelians & Svans
2. The Georgians 16. The Ubykh
3. The Azerbaijanis 17. The Displaced Peoples of the Caucasus in
4. The Chechens Soviet Times
5. The Abkhazians 18. The Caucasus in Diaspora
6. The Circassians 19. The Hemshin
7. The Peoples of Daghestan 20. The Kalmyks
8. The Ossetes 21. The Cossacks
9. The Ingush 22. The Ancient Peoples of the Caucasus
10. The Turkic Peoples of the Caucasus 23. The Crimean Tatars
11. The Iranian Peoples of the Caucasus 24. The Gagauz
12. The Mountain Jews 25. The Karaim
13. The Georgian Jews 26. The Pontic Greeks
14. The Laz
CAUCASUS LANGUAGES
Chechen Dictionary & Phrasebook Nicholas Awde & Muhammad Galaev
Georgian Dictionary & Phrasebook Nicholas Awde & Thea Khitarishvili
Armenian Dictionary & Phrasebook Nicholas Awde, V. Nersessian & L. Nersessian
Azerbaijani Dictionary & Phrasebook Nicholas Awde & Famil Ismailov
The Languages of the Caucasus edited by Alice Harris Rieks Smeets (forthcoming)
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THE LITERATURE
OF GEORGIA
A HISTORY
Second, revised edition
Donald Rayfield
CURZON
CAUCASUS WORLD
CAUCASUS WORLD
First published in 1994
by Clarendon Press
Second, revised edition published in the UK in 2000
by Curzon Press
15 The Quadrant, Richmond
Surrey TW9 IBP
England
© Donald Rayfield 2000
Typeset and designed by Nicholas Awde/DesertV Hearts
Covers & maps by Nick Awde
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Bookcraft, Midsomer Norton, Avon
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 7007 1163 5
Contents
Map of historical regions of Georgia 8
Prrface 9
Preface to the Second Edition 14
Transliteration of the Georgian alphabet 15
PART I
THE MAKING OF THE CLASSICAL AGE
THE FIFTH TO THE ELEVENTH CENTURIES: ASCETICISM & BYZANTIUM
1. Laying the foundation 19
2. Lyrical poetry: hymnography 27
3. Original prose: from homilies to hagiography 40
4. The Lives of the Fathers: Serapion Zarzmeli, Grigol Khandzteli 50
5. Chronicles: the ‘Conversion’ and ‘Life’ of Georgia 56
6. The dawn of secular literature: Balahvar and lodasap 63
PART II
THE GOLDEN AGE, THE FALL & THE RESURRECTION
THE TWELFTH TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES: COURT & COURTLY LOVE
A
7. Prose romance: Rustaveli’s precursors 69
8. Rustaveli and The Knight in the Panther Skin 76
9. Religious literature of the Golden Age 87
10. The later chronicles 91
11. Rebuilding on a tabula rasa 96
12. The authorial persona: King Teimuraz I 102
13. Kings and enlightenment 107
14. Three great poets: Guramishvili, Sayat-Nova and Besiki 115
15. The last gasps of the eighteenth century ' 126
PART III
ROMANTIC & CIVIC LITERATURE
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: RUSSIAN TUTELAGE.
16. Exiled royalty: the Bagration writers
17. Romantic poets: Chavchavadze, the Orbelianis, Baratashvili
18. The birth of modern prose and drama
19. The luminaries: Ilia Chavchavadze and Akaki Tsereteli
20. Lesser luminaries: populists and pedagogues
21. Melodrama, revolt and commercial literature
PART IV
THE REDISCOVERY OF ROOTS
1880-1914: VAZHA'PSHAVELA & HEROIC FOLK POETRY
22. Vazha-Pshavela
23. Folk poetry and its relevance to literature
PART V
THE AGE OF INTERNATIONALISM
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: THE DASHING OF HOPE
24. Two theatres: the political arena and drama
25. Narrative prose and Mikheil Javakhishvili
26. Dreaming poets: Grishashvili, Robakidze and the Blue Horns
27. Mythmakers under Socialism: Shanshiashvili, Konstantine Gamsakhurdia
28. The poetry of Galaktion Tabidze, Giorgi Leonidze and Simon Chikovani
29. Beria’s Holocaust
30. Literature after the Great Terror
31. From thaw to deluge
Notes
Bibliography
Index
6
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Preface
he importance of Georgian literature is out of all proportion to the number
T
of speakers of the language. Between the high and the ‘little’ Caucasus,
from the Black Sea to a point half-way to the Caspian Sea, is a triangle of
land with its maximum dimensions no more than 250 miles north to south or west
to east; here live 4,000,000 speakers of Georgian, a language that, like most of the
many Caucasian languages, is not related (at least not closely or demonstrably) to
any on earth. Georgian is akin only to its own tiny group, Kartvelian (which apart
from Georgian comprises the generally unwritten Svan, Mingrelian and Laz
languages).
The Georgian language at the greatest period of Georgian history and culture
(the twelfth century AD) probably had the same number of speakers and readers and
the same prestige among its neighbours, as the English language in the time of
Shakespeare. It certainly had a longer history and drew on resources just as rich as
those of English. The language of today is recognizably the same as the language first
recorded in AD 430. Like English, which derives its vigour from being a hybrid of
Germanic and Romance elements, Georgian has, over the centuries, absorbed the
vocabulary of its invaders and neighbours — Greeks, Persians, Armenians, Arabs,
Turks, Russians. Over fifteen hundred years the literary language has been shaped
by the syntax of classical authors and by the Greek Bible and Orthodox liturgy. It
has also been extended by the lexical wealth of its many dialects. Georgian resembles
English in its enormous range of synonyms and in the rich phonetic resources the
language offers to its poets. Like English, too, Georgian has an alternative folk­
culture on which it^draws as a counterpart to the cultural influences of its
neighbours.
The arguments for a comprehensive history of Georgian literature are based on
more than the length of the literary language’s history and the depth of its resources.
Simply, we cannot ignore a literature that can give rise to such extraordinary works as
Rustaveli’s Knight in the Panther Skin, to poets of such genius and originality as the
anonymous hymnographers of Byzantine times, or, in modern times, Vazha-Pshavela
or Galaktion Tabidze. This is the literature which inspired the theatre and cinema for
which Georgia is today famous. The audience of a film such as Invocation is deprived
of half the enjoyment if they have no access to the poetry of Vazha-Pshavela: one
might as well watch Laurence Olivier as Richard III and never have read Shakespeare.
9
The literature of Georgia
Even a casual perusal of this book may move the reader to believe that our ignorance
of Georgian literature is deplorable, almost criminal. Yet how many Georgian authors
are to be found in Encyclopaedia Britannica or Brockhausï
Secondly, Georgian literature has been for fifteen hundred years a bridge
between neighbouring cultures, disciplines and religions. That bridge has often been
demolished by Arab, Persian, Mongol, Turkish, or Russian invaders sometimes
for as long as two centuries — only to be rebuilt again. Georgian culture for its first
thousand years linked Hellenic and Byzantine Christianity to pagan and Islamic
Persia; it then, at desperate cost to itself, united the whole of Orthodoxy and even
the western Christian and humanist worlds, to the Orient. In the last 200 years,
under Russian domination, it has linked north and south as much as east and west.
Many texts from Byzantine Greek, Syriac, Persian, Turkish, Russian and even
German literatures can be fully understood only through their Georgian reflections
(and sometimes sources). In some cases Georgian has preserved works whose original
versions (especially Greek) are otherwise completely lost to us.
Ignorance of Georgian literature is thus a handicap for the Byzantinologist, for
the historians of the ‘Christian Orient’, for Iranologists, for students of what used to
be called Soviet Studies. But in many other fields, from archaeology to ethnology,
from musicology to critical theory, from linguistics to theology, Georgian has
literary texts of great interest.
This study was born of a series of encyclopaedia-style entries I was
commissioned to write for Robert Pynsent’s Everyman Companion to East European
Literatures (Dent, 1992). Eight times as long as the sum of those entries, this book
attempts to make a long-term contribution to filling a yawning gap in western
knowledge. It is by no means the first venture in English: nearly a hundred years ago
Oliver and Marjory Wardrop began their selfless work of translation from and
advocacy of, the literature of a country where they had been made so welcome. Ten
years ago Katharine Vivian translated from the French Kalistrat Salia’s patriotic
survey of Georgian literature. In my bibliography I have tried to list every significant
bibliography or survey in English and European languages of Georgian writing.
Nevertheless, foreign studies are more hors d'œuvres than entrées', for want of any
better-qualified scholar’s undertaking such a task, this study will have to satisfy the
appetite of the non-specialist reader.
As the bibliography shows, my sources are many. Georgian scholars have in the
last hundred years produced an authoritative, comprehensive and well-written
history of their literature up to the end of the eighteenth century. The result is to be
found in the first two volumes of Komeli Kekelidze’s History,1 which evolved over
sixty years. I have based much of my approach in Parts I and II on Kekelidze, and
find his judgements on dating, authenticity and literary value generally convincing.
There are, however, cases where I have preferred other views, sometimes just my
own, and since the last edition of his work (1980) new texts and better editions have
surfaced. For Georgian literature in the nineteenth century no satisfactory
continuous monograph has been written, even in Georgian. The most objective
io