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Shota Rustaveli |
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Of Shota
Rustaveli (c.1172 - c.1216) the author of the Georgian
national epic, The
Knight in the Panther's Skin, very little
is known for sure. According to legend, he was orphaned
as a child and was brought up by an uncle, who was a monk.
The early introduction to religion is reflected in his later
poems, which are often religious and philosophical. There
are many legends about Rustaveli’s varied education, and
his later travels in Arabia, Byzantium and Greece. Some
say he went to Jerusalem when he grew old and died in a
Georgian monastery. Others that he wrote a series of odes
to the Queen
Tamara, who ruled during the twelfth century, when Georgia
achieved her greatest power and influence. As a reward,
the queen appointed Rustaveli treasurer of the court, and
he duly fell in love with her. What is sure is the greatness
of The Knight in the Panther's Skin, an epic
of adventure, friendship, and courtly love, which helped
create the Georgian literary language.
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Rustaveli's
poetry |
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The
Knight in the Panther's Skin tells of a young prince
seeking a friend's beloved, who has been captured by devils.
Shota Rustaveli used ideas from Chinese, Persian,
and ancient Greek philosophy, and in describing the questing
adventures of three hero-knights the poem includes rich
philosophical musings that have become proverbs in Georgia.
As in most epics, the characters are larger
than life: brave, generous, fair-minded and constantly
battling the powers of evil. The poem is not concerned with
everyday events but with the romantic constants of literature.
Rustaveli himself considered poetry one of the oldest branches
of wisdom, and saw it as the poet's duty to evoke strong
emotions and 'inflame the heart'. The 1576 quatrains of
Vepkhis-tqarsani are written in a
particularly difficult form, the shairi
( 4-line stanza with monorhyme and long lines of 15 or 16
syllables), but the poem is one of the masterpieces of medieval
European literature and has been translated into many languages.
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Georgian
poetry |
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Georgia
is not
well known in the west, but developed and kept its remarkable
individual literature despite invasions by Arabs, Turks,
Mongols, Persians and Russians. The poetry
began with liturgical psalms and hymns translated from the
Greek, but reached maturity in the twelfth century with
Chakhrukhadze, Shavteli and Rustaveli. Several of Georgia's
16th-17th century kings were graceful poets, strongly influenced
by Persian models. More radical work came with the love
poetry of Guramishvili
(1705-92) and Besiki
(1740-91), the first in language closer to the everyday
and the second remarkably sonorous and elegant. Georgia
was annexed by Russia in the early 19th century, and in
the poetry of Chavchavadze and Orbeliani there are melancholy
reflections on past greatness. Nikoloz Baratashvili (1817-45)
brought in Romanticism and new metrical forms, but the poetry
of the second half of the century was sharper, with much
criticism of czarist policies. Ilia
Chavchavadze
(1837-1907) wrote lyrical and narrative with strong didactic
overtones. Akaki
Tsereteli
(1840-1915) was popular and Vazha Pshavela
(1861-1915) wrote in the vernacular of his native Pshavi.
The early twentieth century saw many poetry movements inspired
by western influences: Symbolists ( Tabidze, Iashvili, Mitsishvili),
Modernists (Gamsakhurdia,
Grishashvili, Leonidze,
Makashvili), Futurists (Shengelaia, Chikovani, Gogoberidze)
and poets belonging to no particular school. Georgia enjoyed
independence after the Socialist revolution of 1917, but
the Red Army installed a Bolshevik government in 1921, and
censorship increased under Stalin. Titian Tabidze
was executed in the great purge of 1937, and Glaktion
Tabidze
committed suicide in 1959. Ideological restraints were relaxed
when Khrushchev came to power, and Georgian poetry is again
rich and varied and contemporary.
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Reading the Georgian |
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Georgian
is
a distinct
Caucasian
language,
belonging neither to the Indo-European group nor the Turkic,
and uses its own
script.
The language is not an easy one to learn, particularly its
verbs, though there exists help in the form of language
exchanges, cassettes,
CDs,
textbooks,
phrasebooks,
summer
schools, and the
Internet,
sometimes free,
and online dictionaries.
Georgian texts can be found at sakartvel
and literatura.
The
Knight in the Panther's Skin has seen many translations:
Wardrop, Beridze, Levan
Chaganava, Stevenson,
Urushadze,
and Kapanadze,
and online versions are free at Bouatchidzé
(in french) and Leonidze
(in russian). Much of the critical literature is in Georgian
or Russian, but recommended studies include J. Karst's Littérature
gorgienne chrétienne (1934), A. Endler's Georgische
Poesie aus acht Jahrhunderten (1971), M. Kvesselava's
, Anthology of Georgian Poetry (1958), A. G. Baramidze
and D. M. Gamezardashvili's Georgian Literature (tr.
1968) and S. Dangulov's The Literature and Art of Soviet
Georgia (1987). Georgian poetry is also available on e-books.
As ever, The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and
Poetics (1993) provides useful summaries and references.
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