Georgian Literature

[Eric]

In the same way that any threads on Chinese literature are pure coincidence and have nothing whatsoever to do with current events, I thought I would, quite at random, put the spotlight on Georgian literature.

I've never read any, presumably because very little is translated into English. I have also heard that the Georgians are not a particularly literary nation.

To find out about Georgian literature requires a bit of detective work. The Wiki, as usual, gives a long list of names. Most are in red, implying no one in the West knows anything about them.

The Wiki article focusing a bit isn't very helpful:

Category:Georgian literature - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Knight in Pather's Skin is the only thing I've heard of, and that was written centuries ago.

However, Georgia does have a good film industry. I have seen a few very good Georgian films.

There is a review of one book about Georgian literature at:

The Literature of Georgia: A History. By D R . Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1994. xvi + 360 pp. £35.00. reviewed by: Kevin Tuite

and

Georgia: Novelist-Philosopher Wins Prestigious German Award - RADIO FREE EUROPE / RADIO LIBERTY

and

Georgian literature :: Independence and beyond -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia

and

Books About the Caucusus: Guides and Novels for or About Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan

But it's all terribly fragmentary.

[Eric]

Despite the present hostilities, at a cultural level, some Russians have made an effort to bring Georgian culture to Russia.

For instance, the major Russian poet Arseny Tarkovksy, father of the famous film-maker, translated poetry by several Georgian authors into Russian. In a book of his own poems and of his translations, you can find poetry by Grigol Orbeliani, Rafael Eristavi, Ilya Chavchavadze, Vazha Pshavela, Galaktion Tabidze, Georgi Leonidze, Simon Chikovani, Karlo Kaladze, Irakli Abashidze, Revaz Margiani, Yosif Noneshvili and Mikhael Kvlividze.

No, I'd neither heard of these poets before (bar one), and haven't read Tarkovsky's translations as my Russian isn't really good enough. But it shows that there is a whole range of 19th and 20th century Georgian poets whose work we in the West know nothing about.

This German article gives an overview of Georgian literature as a whole:

Georgische Literatur

And a book of 20th century stories:

Amazon.de: Georgische Erzählungen des 20. Jahrhunderts: Naira Gelaschwili: Bücher

One author:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilia_Chavchavadze

(Oh, and please don't bring up the sickly fact that Simon Sebag Montefiore has written about Stalin the poet. Minor poet, major mass-murderer. Hitler painted the odd picture. Both did their bit for culture.)

[Eric]

Strange language, Georgian. I had a little look at it yesterday, as well as the literature.

First of all, it is written in an alphabet used nowhere else in the world. It's not that difficult, though totally foreign to people who use the Roman, Cyrillic or Greek alphabets. There are several consonants where you pronounce a glottal stop at the same time as the consonant. So there are two "t"s, two "k"s, etc.

Then the vocabulary has some intriguing features. The word for father is... "mama". Mother is "deda". The word for heart is... (taking some liberaties with the transliteration) "goolie". And the "-shvili" on the end of a lot of Georgian surnames simply means "child of".

The system of numbers means you say "twenty-ten", "twenty-eleven", etc., instead of 30, 31. (But even French and Danish have some odd features when counting.)

That's all I've learnt so far. Still found no more about their literature since about 1850.

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by Eric

First of all, it is written in an alphabet used nowhere else in the world.

Georgian alphabet (Mkhedruli)

[Eric]

Thanks, Stewart. I had a stab at learning it yesterday, mostly when sitting outside the pub. The Belgian Westmalle Tripel beer stimulates the brain - up to a point.

I've got the hang of most of the letters by now, but with that doubling of "k"s and "t"s, it's still a pretty confusing business. Glad they got rid of a few - fewer to learn.

I think it's the ones with the apostrophe after them in the transliteration that are those funny ones with the simultaneous glottal stop. The one for a "ts" sound looks like an ice-cream cornet to me. Those curly letters remind you of the alphabet Tolkien invented in Lord of the Rings.

What they do that is odd is stack up a whole load of consonants at the beginning of a word, ones we wouldn't think of shoving together. You can already see that in the name "Mkhedruli" and "Tskhinvali". Today is "dghes", with the "gh" representing something resembling a French "r" sound. And of course "Tbilisi", the spelling of which the media are having nightmares with. Used to be called "Tiflis", but that rhymes with "syph'lis".

I actually managed to read the word "Gori" on TV in their alphabet.

[Eric]

Nothing like learning useful words when you first look at a language primer. The Georgian primer I have is Russian, published in Tbilisi in what was then the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1984 (good year, eh?).

It was issued in an impressive edition of 150,000 copies. It was all "druzhba narodov" (friendship between nations) in those days. Alas, things are not quite as friendly, as I write.

The useful words I've learnt in Georgian are "Leningradidan" (from Leningrad) and "amkhanagi" (comrade). Really useful stuff, anno 2008...

Who was it that was born in Gori, by the way? Must have been some real pathological criminal, because the Russians are bombing it. Probably wrote a few poems, then slaughtered millions. But that sounds like prejudice. Best ask Simon Sebag Montefiore.

[Eric]

Talking of books, there is a grammar book available for Georgian, Georgian, an Essential Grammar, by George Hewitt, and published by the not unknown British publishing house, Routledge. The only problem is that it seems to be written by a Westerner. Here's what a Georgian native-speaker has to say about the book:

By Professor Dodona Kiziria (Georgia)

Professor George Hewitt obviously did not condescend to have his manuscript checked by a native speaker. probably having assumed his knowledge of Georgian is flawless. BUT GEORGIANS DO NOT SPEAK THE WAY MR. HEWITT ASSUMES THEY DO! Besides numerous grammatical mistakes, many syntactically clumsy sentences can be understood only if they are translated verbatim back into English. The author constantly mixes different speech styles, polite formulas with rude or substandard expressions. Here is a piece of "friendly" conversation among two students: "Oh dear, what are those boils (that have) popped out on your face?!", asked one student. "There are no pimples (on my face), you good for nothing", retaliates the latter. The Georgian equivalent of "good for nothing" is far more insulting and far less expected to be used among friends than in English.


The book also contains a number of thoroughly politicized dialogues that refer to extremely complex and sensitive political and ethnic problems plaguing contemporary Georgia. The author, however, has no problem finding the "right" answers and never hesitates to offer (through the mouth of his fictional characters) "wise" advise to Georgians, who are invariably presented as obnoxious, servile, and vulgar. On page 172, a Georgian congratulates his British acquaintance who "has guessed the Georgians' boastfulness. In another dialogue a speaker asks his friend: "Was it our obnoxious character that caused the mistakes we made?" (page 334) A certain Paata is telling his interlocutor (his boss or someone his senior) that he, just like every Georgian, "doesn't give a damn" what the words on his T-shirt mean, as long as it is foreign made (page 191) The Georgian equivalent of the expression "don't give a damn" (literally "it's hanging on my legs") is much ruder than the English, and nobody would use it while speaking to his superior, unless one would want to be intentionally rude.

In order to demonstrate a certain type of verb conjugation, Professor Hewitt found it admissible to use the obscenities "you pee" and "you take a crap", which he translates as "you urinate" and "you defecate" respectively (page 52). One can imagine how embarrassed a person would find himself if he were to use these words in a conversation with a doctor, for instance. Professor Hewitt must have decide to "improve" even Georgian folklore and has transformed a humorous tongue twister: " A frog is croaking in the water" into " A frog is croaking in the putrid water" (page 5). An English speaker would certainly be surprised to read something like: " Peter Piper Picked a peck of putrid peppers". Professor Hewitt is known as a talented linguist and it is a pity that he has disgraced himself by writing a textbook which is insulting and humiliating the people whose language he is supposed to be teaching to unsuspecting students. Furthermore, Georgian a Learner's Grammar should be subtitled "Hate the Georgians!" Such a title would best reflect the sense of venom which permeates the entire book.

Sincerely, Professor Dodona Kiziria Indiana University

Oh dear. I'm waiting for Kiziria's own primer, which will be out in November.

Source of the above is, surprisingly, Amazon's own website, where you usually expect eulogies, as they want to sell their books:

Amazon.com: Georgian: An Essential Grammar (Routledge Grammars): George Hewitt: Books

[Eric]

Brief review:

The Literature of Georgia - A History
Donald Rayfield
Clarendon Press
Oxford
1994
360 pages.

This is a hardback history of Georgian literature from its origins. As I haven't actually read it, my comments are limited to saying what it contains. I only managed to borrow it yesterday from the library.

It is divided into two sections. The first 62 pages are of more interest to the specialist that the lay reader, and deal with the early texts that are mostly religious ones.

But the chapter from pages 73-86 deals with the first major work of Georgian literature, Shota Rustaveli's epic poem The Knight in the Panther Skin from around the beginning of the 13th century. Then page 122 onwards moves through the 18th century to the poets of the 19th century.Then the Romantic Poets, then the birth of modern literature from page 162 onwards. Personally, that's when it begins interesting for me.

Georgian literature kept having to start all over again, as the history of Georgia is a troubled one, as we have seen yet again this past week. Rayfield follows literature up to about 1940-1950s in detail, with some things tacked on the end describing decades after that.

One of the worst epochs for Georgian literature was when the notorious Lavrenty Beria (see Wiki article at: Lavrentiy Beria - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) was in power. Beria was born near Sukhumi in Abkhazia and is nearly as notorious as Stalin for his mass murder. During the Stalinist purges of the 1930s controlled literature and several Georgian writers were arrested, murdered or sent to labour camps. The Communist Party all but wiped out the Georgian literature of the period.

Luckily, there has been room for poetry and prose in Georgia. This looks to be a good introduction, if you choose the parts that interest you and skip the rest.

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by Eric

The Literature of Georgia - A History
Donald Rayfield
Clarendon Press
Oxford
1994
360 pages.

Your man Donald Rayfield prepared a Georgian-English dictionary with Garnett Press.

This dictionary aims, as far as possible, to give an English equivalent for the entire lexical corpus of the Georgian language, ancient, classical and modern, as well as literary, colloquial and dialectal.

Another of their titles was Rivers Of Babylon by Slovakian author, Peter Pist'anek, which made the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist earlier this year.

[Eric]

There is an inherent tragedy when too few Westerners can be bothered with a particular literature. This means that a very small number of people, some with quirks, dominate and filter all the information that gets through a broader public about a small literature. I am, of course, very much aware of this danger, given the language I translate out of most.

So both Rayfield and Hewitt are perhaps experts in something else, and strayed into Georgian when encouraged by some prof to do a minor subject at university. The antidote is someone like Dodona Kiziria, who may also have her preferences, but is at least a native-speaker and thus prevents a bunch of foreign amateurs from monopolising a whole literature.

Why I always grumble about lists, lists, nothing but lists is because these amateurs can maintain a stranglehold over the reputation, in the English-speaking world, of a particular literature for decades.

[Eric]

Wonder how the sales of bestselling author and editor of Japanese literature Grigori Chkhartishvili are being affected by recent events?

[Eric]

Here's the answer to my own question from my previous posting:

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[Eric]

I found the following on the Gerorgian Daily website. It is dated July 11th, implying that there is life in Georgian literature, although outside of the country, virtually no one (including myself) knows a thing about it:

Best Georgian writers recognized at SABA Awards July 11, 2008

Vato Mchedlishvili, Georgia Today

On July 5, the Georgian literature awards ‘SABA 2008’ were held at TBC Bank Head Office. Authors were awarded in eight categories: Best Prose Collection, Best Novel, Best Poetry Collection, Best Translation, Best Debut, Best Piece, Best Criticism, Essayistic and Documentary Prose, and the Premium For Developing Georgian Literature.

The jury had the difficult task of deciding on eight winners out of 38 deserving nominees.

Aka Morchiladze’s “Maid in Tiflis” won the prize for Best Novel of the year, while the prize for the Best Prose Collection went to Davit Kartvelishvili’s “Four Tales.” Maia Sarishvili triumphed with her best poetical collection of the year “Microscope.”

Unexpectedly, Giorgi Lobjanidze’s “Koran” in Georgian became the best translation of the year. The best debut prize went to Bacho Kvirtia’s “Before the Train Arrives,” and the Dato Turashvili won Best Piece for his work “Black Sneakers.” The winners of the first seven categories won their share of the 36,000 GEL total prizemoney, giving each 4,000 GEL.

The prize for developing Georgian literature went to Vakhushti Kotetishvili, who walked away with 8,000 GEL for his efforts.

The SABA Awards are the most coveted in Georgian literature. They were established in 2003 by TBC Bank, television channel Rustavi 2 and the Georgian Pen Club.

Source: georgiandaily.com - Best Georgian writers recognized at SABA Awards

[Stewart]

Two things of interest to you, Eric, and both related;

The third edition of The Literature Of Georgia by Donald Rayfield will be out next year. Perhaps not necessary if you already have a previous edition. But, from the same press:

Avelum, Otar Chiladze (the fifth novel by Georgia’s greatest living novelist)

[lionel]

Many thanks for bringing all this to our attention, Eric. I can make no comment on George Hewitt's book, although I'd have thought that it was very, er, unprofessional of Professor Dodona Kiziria to address a fellow professor as 'MR.' in such a 'Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' fashion, in an entire upper case sentence with the obligatory exclamation mark at the end.

[SergeyM]

Originally Posted by Eric

Wonder how the sales of bestselling author and editor of Japanese literature Grigori Chkhartishvili are being affected by recent events?

Dear Eric:

As far as I understand, Mr. Akunin wasn't affected by the recent events in the least.

BTW, if it is legal to speak of politics here (I have to confess I hadn't read the regulations all that well), I would use the chance. (And if I am wrong, I am sure Stuart will get things right again).
So. I do not want to say that Putin & Medvedev are angels. And I do not want to say that our armed forces are angels as well. But what happened in Georgia this Summer originated in Tbilisi much more, than it had in Moscow.
Of course, from abroad it looked very much like Chechnya before that: Russia invaded a small and proud contry. And it WAS like Chechnya, but this time in Russian's place was Georgia, and South Ossetia was instead of Chechen Republic. Historically Ossetia joined Russia before Georgia (they had done so to find an ally against Ottomans, if I remember right). The South Ossetia came under the same general-gouvernor as Georgia under the Tsar, but only because there were not enough high level administrators available. Then Mr. Stalin, being a Georgian, joined South Ossetia and Abkhazia with Georgia, to much dislike in both regions. Mr. Stalin started moving Georgian families from main Georgia to Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Ossetins and Abkhazians liked that even less. (I have spent a lot of time in Abkhazia, having had a property there, so I can tell you how HOT it always had been there: if you said a toast for Georgia at an Abkhazian table, you would have become a pariah immediately).
So, Ossetins and Abkhazians detested Georgians more than anything. And Tbilisi decided to amend that by military force. Of course, Russia could have tried to prevent that by polilical ways, but Putin wanted Saakashwili to make that slip too much to try to prevent that, one or two thousand people killed - never mind...

So, it was Georgia who started killing innocent people in South Ossetia. And to discuss who is right and who is wrong we have to start here: Saakashwili started that, nevermind how bad and undemocratic Russia is.

[Eric]

I posted the following, on 22nd October, on the thread devoted to Boris Akunin. I'm not going to get involved here in the politics of Georgia versus Russia, as the situation dates back to 1995 or so, but Mr Akunin appears to have gone on a prison visit recently:

Not read any much more about Fandorin on the book pages, but this curious information was in the International Herald Tribune on October 20th:

Curiouser and curiouser. Maybe a case for Fandorin to sort out in Akunin's new crime novel called "The Oligarch Who Missed Sewing Classes".

[SergeyM]

Oh, I heard about Akunin interviewing Khodorkovsky, but missed news about his going to jail for that.

But, you see, this is a very different story, which hardly has anything to do with the Ossetin conflict: Mr. Khodorkovsky attempted a strike at the holiest of Mr. Putin's personal belongings - political power. Of course he had to be stricken back, and as fast as possible, and everybody helping him will immediately become a personal enemy of Kremlin.
But I hadn't heard of any Georgian man, living in Russia, put in jail in any direct connection with the Ossetin conflict. Actually, a sufficient part of our elite is Georgian - they had money and power during USSR times, and almost all who had, are at the top or somewhere in between now... Of course, some Georgian thieves and casino holders had problems, as our militia feared to take bribes from them then, and went about their service with more responsibility than usually. But again: it is not Eden here. But they usually do not catch people on the street just for the fun of it these days, or because of their nationality. To be caught one must has something interesting about him: personal wealth, political power, unusual knowledge of what goes on behind the scene... But I imagine it is not very much different about everywhere, eh?

[Eric]

Сергей, you say:

Actually, a sufficient part of our elite is Georgian...

Yes, I had heard of immigrant dictator Yosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili...

[SergeyM]

Believe it or not, I do not think Russians think that of Stalin - "immigrant dictator". Actually, some of us took that to the heart - that "there will be no Hellene or Israelite", and, for example, in my family, there was never made a distinction between a Russian Russian, or a Russian Jew... Georgians or, for example, Tajiks, were different, but not DIFFERENT, you know. In respect of different nationalties USSR, I think, was not worse that EU is now, or maybe better. We had a war won together, you know, the war in which all Europe had lost...
Among friends, who had usually visited us on occasions such as birthday parties, were people from different regions of USSR, and of different nationalties. And that was the same with many, maybe most, Russian families.
But in Georgia, it was different. Our family had a house on the shore of the Black Sea (some of my ancestors fled from Russia after the October revolution, wound up in Czech Republic, Columbia and Abkhazia). So I had the chance to see it all from inside. The Caukazian peoples had it always very stressful among them: Abkhazians detested Georgians and Mengrels, Georgians detested Abkhazians and Ossetins... Of course, if you had friends in the Caukasus, you could be very happy with them, as hospitality has always has been something of a cult there. But, for example, when we wisited some Abkhazian friends back in 1991, and went home after the party our Abkhazian friends made for us, I had two companies of local young people (Georgians, Abkhazians, or others - it is very difficult to understand who is who among them, if you are not a Caukazian yourself) about to assault me - I was with my young and beautiful wife... and with a baby-daughter in a stroller... And the only reasons had been my European looks and Moscovite speach... And the beautiful woman beside me, of course.
So... Georgia is a very beautiful place. The nature there is fabulous. Some say it is next to Heaven... But I will never choose to live there. And I am happy we have sold our property there, nevermind we have sold it for next to nothing. But other Russians, who hoped that the situation there will get better sometimes, lost everything they had there, without much hope.

Sorry, I do not think I have spoken on Georgian literature here... Just Georgian reminiscences.