CC BY
1IRSTI 17.82 UDC 821.353.1
DOI:10.56032/2523-4684.2023.3.7.П7
T. Sumbadze1, N. Vakhania2 1 2 Sokhumi State University (Tbilisi, Georgia)
ILIA CHAVCHAVADZE WITH THE WORLDVIEW OF SIMON CHIKOVANI
Annotation
One of the important parts of the literary legacy of the famous Georgian poet, Simon Chikovani, is the essay writings that refer to the work of the classics of Georgian poetry. The present article analyzes Simon Chikovani's views on Ilia Chavchavadze's poetry. Several issues are discussed - the poem "Ghost" and the poetic icon of the glacier; "A few pictures... " and "The hermit"; Lyrical poems of Ilia Chavchavadze; Ilia Chavchavadze and Grigol Orbeliani; Ilia Chavchavadze and the development of the Georgian literary language. S. Chikovani substantiates the influence of Ilia Chavchavadze as a writer in the public arena. Emphasizes the lyricist's innovation due to his interest in social problems. Special attention is paid to the poetic icon of the glacier by Ilia Chavchavadze. Ilya's critical attitude towards the literary language and his poetry's closeness to the folk soil are analyzed.
Key words: Ilia Chavchavadze; Georgian literary language, Lyrical poems; folkloric nature of author's works
Т. Сумбадзе1, Н. Вахания2 12 Сухум мемлекетт1куниверситет'1 (Тбилиси, Грузия)
ИЛЬЯ ЧАВЧАВАДЗЕ СИМОН ЧИКОВАНИДЩ ДУНИЕТАН ЫМДЫК Т¥ЖЫ РЫМДАМАСЫНДА
Аннотация
Атакты грузин акыны Симон Чикованид'1н, эдеби мурасынын манызды бэлiктерiнiн 6ipi - грузин поэзиясынын классиктерiнiн шь^армашыль^ына сiлтеме жасайтын очерктер. Бул макалада Симон Чикованидiн Илья Чавчавадзенiн поэзиясына кэзкарасы талданады. Бiрнеше сурактар талкыланады - "елес" поэмасы жэне муздыктын поэтикалык белгiшесi; " бiрнеше картиналар..."жэне " гермит"; Илья Чавчавадзенiн лирикалык элендерi; Илья Чавчавадзе жэне Григол Орбелиани; Илья Чавчавадзе жэне грузин эдеби тiлiнiн дамуы. С. Чиковани Илья Чавчавадзенiн жазушы
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рет'1ндеп коFамдык аренаFа эсер'1н непздейд'1. Онын элеуметт'1к мэселелерге деген кызыгушыль^ына байланысты лириканын жанашылдь^ын атап керсетед'!. Ильянын эдеби тлге деген сыни кезкарасы жэне онын поэзиясынын халыктык топыракка жакынды^ы талданады.
ТYЙ¡нд¡ сездер: Илья Чавчавадзе; грузин эдеби тiлi, лирикалык елендер; авторлык шы^армалардын фольклорлык сипаты
Т. Сумбадзе1, Н. Вахания2 Сухумский государственный университет (Тбилиси, Грузия)
ИЛЬЯ ЧАВЧАВАДЗЕ В МИРОВОЗЗРЕНЧЕСКОЙ КОНЦЕПЦИИ СИМОНА ЧИКОВАНИ
Аннотация
Важной частью литературного наследия знаменитого грузинского поэта Симона Чиковани являются эссе, отсылающие к творчеству классиков грузинской поэзии. В настоящей статье анализируются взгляды Симона Чиковани на поэзию Ильи Чавчавадзе. В статье обсуждается несколько вопросов: поэма "Призрак" и поэтическая икона ледника; "Несколько картин..." и "Отшельник"; лирические стихи Ильи Чавчавадзе; Илья Чавчавадзе и Григол Орбелиани; Илья Чавчавадзе и развитие грузинского литературного языка. С. Чиковани обосновывает влияние Ильи Чавчавадзе как писателя на общественное настроение. Подчеркивает новаторство лирика, обусловленное его интересом к социальным проблемам. Особое внимание уделяется поэтической иконе ледника Ильи Чавчавадзе. Анализируется критическое отношение Ильи к литературному языку и близость его поэзии к народной почве.
Ключевые слова: Илья Чавчавадзе; грузинский литературный язык, лирические стихотворения; фольклорный характер авторских произведений
Introduction. Among the literary essays of Simon Chikovani, an extensive study is worth mentioning -"The Poetic Legacy of Ilia Chavchavadze." The work aims to characterize the main trends of Ilia Chavchavadze's work as a whole, to show us the genesis and typology of Ilia's poetic and prose works, and the path of the writer's creative evolution. The essay consists of the following chapters: the poem
"Ghost" and the poetic icon of the glacier; "A few pictures... " and "The hermit"; Lyrical poems of Ilia Chavchavadze; Ilia Chavchavadze and Grigol Orbeliani; Ilia Chavchavadze and the development of the Georgian literary language.
Simon Chikovani first characterizes the socio-cultural situation of modern Georgia. It rightly points out that, before Ilia's appearance on the literary scene, the real impact of writing on public consciousness was rather weak, and insignificant. Literature had turned into a "domestic affair", there was no person gifted with the qualities of a leader who would take the lead in the task of modernization of writing.
Methods. There are methods of biographical, historical and contextual analysis in the article.
Literature Review. The work is based on comparative studies of the worldviews and creativity of Ilya Chavchavadze and Simon Chikovani. First of all, the author examines the creativity of Ilya Chavchavadze [1]. And explores the books and articles of those authors who studied the letters, poems and other works of Ilya Chavchavadze. There are I. Gigineishvili [2], A.Bakradze [3], P.Ingoroqva [4], V.Kotetishvili [5], L.Minashvili [6], G.Kikodze [7], G.Asatiani [8] among them.
Main discussion. Simon Chikovani begins discussing the features of Ilia Chavchavadze's work by characterizing the poet's lyrics. He notes that Ilia's innovation as a lyricist is primarily due to his interest in social problems. Ilia Chavchavadze made public consciousness the main subject of his lyrical poetry: "First of all, Ilia made the daily life of the Georgian people the subject of his lyrical monologue and submitted his personal spiritual biography to the mentioned task" [1, p.134].
Simon Chikovani's opinion is noteworthy, according to which, although the stormy river in Ilia Chavchavadze's "Traveler's Letters" was fascinating like Byron, Ilia's works by their nature and analytical poetic thinking are completely unrelated to Byron's poetic nature [1, p.173]. Ilia Chavchavadze is restrained even when expressing his personal feelings, moreover,
even in his love poems, he shares his feelings with us in a dignified way. It is not typical for Ilia to express his feelings spontaneously.
Simon Chikovani also talks about the folkloric nature of Ilia Chavchavadze's lyrics. According to his opinion, a folk character is manifested in Ilia's poetry not so much by the assimilation of folk artistic forms and types, as by the frequent use of folk wisdom, proverbs, and aphorisms, in which the spirit of the people is most clearly seen. In general, the necessity of folk writing was substantiated by Ilia. However, Simon Chikovani points out that Ilia does not use the so-called In poetic form of folklore - "the external forms of his poem bear a more European appearance" [1, p.179].
The sub-chapter "Poem Ghost and the Poetic Icon of the Glacier" refers to one of Ilia's main program works - "Ghost". Simon Chikovani's opinion is interesting that Ilia's poem seems to be an ideological continuation of Baratashvili's "Fate of Kartli" in a new situation, even though these works are less similar to each other in terms of plot structure and poetic narrative style. Simon Chikovani sees the condition of the inner closeness of works in the following circumstances: Both in Baratashvili's poem and in the poem "ghost" the fate of Kartli became the subject of poetic thought and discussion. The twists and turns of the fate of the Georgian people, their present and their future are revealed in both poems through a great, powerful poetic thought. In both poems, the national issue is discussed in the background of the dynamic development of history. Davit Guramishvili's "Plague of Kartli", Nikoloz Baratashvili's "Fate of Kartli" and Ilia Chavchavadze's "Ghost" seem to be a continuation of one another and complement each other [1, p.135].
Simon Chikovani will pay special attention to the poetic icon of the glacier in the poem "Ghost" and, in general, in the work of Ilia. He is interested in the issue - why did Ilia put the ghost of the old man on the glacier anyway? Is it a coincidence or the manifestation of a certain poetic regularity? According to Simon Chikovani, the face of the glacier "has been
bothering the author for a long time". Although in "Traveler's Letters" Ilia expresses a negative attitude towards the glacier as a cold and untouchable creature, according to the critic, this face still fascinated Ilia and the poet's inspiration revolved around this peak for a long time.
Simon Chikovani rejects the superficial opinion expressed in Soviet criticism that the glacier can represent the frozen face of feudal Georgia or the Russian monarchy. The critic draws attention to the fact that "the features of the glacier and the old man are related" - both of them are characterized by magnificence, grandeur, and sublimity. Chikovani concludes that the glacier in the "ghost" is more attractive and close, it is a pillar of the historical spirit of ancient Georgia and its symbol [1, p.139].
According to the critic, the poem "Ghost" is an important work of Ilia from the point of view that the motifs and artistic forms of Ilia's work appeared in it, which developed in different ways in other works of the writer: The impression remains as if the mentioned faces emerged from the whole world of "ghost" and their artistic roots were first conceived in this poem -not only the poetic works listed above but also his unique stories - "The story of a beggar", "Otaraant's Widow" and "s a man a human?!", the beginnings of many of his brilliant journalistic letters are given in his programmatic poem [1, p.149].
In terms of further processing of the artistic forms and motifs found in the poem "Ghost", the researcher examines Ilia's "several pictures..." and "the hermit." According to Chikovani, "Several Pictures..." is a realistic work colored with folk romance, and the characters are heroes from the heart of the people. We consider Simon Chikovani's observation about the language of "several pictures..." to be noteworthy. Although much of "The Ghost" and "A Few Pictures..." are written in the same meter, the rhyming system is similar, "A few pictures...", in terms of intonation and vocabulary, is quite different from the poem "Ghost" -the lexical base of "Ghost" is more scribe-Georgian.
The influence of Georgian religious writing on the poem is also visible1. According to the researcher, the tangible influence of ancient Georgian religious writing can be felt in the verbal fabric of "Ghost", it was no coincidence that the first version of "Ghost" had the words of King David the Psalmist written as an epigraph. The scribal-archaic look of the vocabulary and syntax of the poem is dictated by the quality of the poetic material in the poem "Ghost". Such an archaic artistic arrangement was needed by the poet so that the revelation of the old man on the glacier would have a biblical appearance and his patriotic chant would look like the preaching of the prophet [1, p.139]. In contrast, the vocabulary of "a few pictures..." is close to the vernacular. To strengthen this closeness, Ilya uses stylistic figures, idioms, proverbs, and folk sayings established in folk speech.
Simon Chikovani refers to the crown of Ilya's epic poetry - "The Hermits." In his opinion, this poem shows the tragedy of a person who rejected life and apostatized from life. The critic asks an important question: why did the author place The hermit on the glacier? Why are descriptions of nature images so similar in "Ghost" and "The Hermit"? The researcher does not rule out that "Gandegil", in addition to the literal one, may also have a symbolic plan. Chikovani recalls Marjorie Wardrop's opinion that "The Hermit" is a symbolic expression of the historical path of Georgia. In his opinion, it is possible that there is a grain of truth in this application, and the writer allegorically explains the idea of the clash of the past and new forces.
Simon Chikovani sees the archetype of the artistic face of the shepherdess in "Traveler's Letters" -according to him, this character is "a branch of the Therg or the Therg itself" [1, p.157], she is the bearer of life force. We cannot fully agree with the researcher
1 It is significant that the truth of this opinion of Chikovani was confirmed by Revaz Siradze, a prominent researcher of ancient Georgian writing. In the work "Spirit speaking through deeds", the scientist clarified with specific facts the closeness of "ghost" to the ancient Georgian historical and religious writings and biblical facial expressions (see Siradze 2008).
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when he points out that the shepherdess represents the working class. We think that Ilia's goal was not to discuss the opinion in such a narrow context. We cannot agree with S. Chikovani's opinion, as if the poem is directed against asceticism. It seems that the writer made such an assumption considering the context of the era.
Based on Simon Chikovani's poem "The Hermit", he points to the innovative role of Ilia. The poet-researcher relies on the opinion of Kita Abashidze and suggests that Ilia Chavchavadze used the so-called opening method in "The Hermit" and completely rejected the oriental descriptive imagery. The poet painted only pictures of nature in a descriptive manner.
In Simon Chikovani's essay, a separate subchapter is devoted to the issue of creative relationship between Ilia Chavchavadze and Grigol Orbeliani.
The issue of the personal, public, and literary relationship between Ilia Chavchavadze and Grigol Orbeliani is faced by the historians of Georgian literature of the 19th century. According to Simon Chikovani's correct assessment, "a comparison of the artistic qualities of these two poets sheds light on some issues of the development of Georgian poetry that have been vaguely explained to date" [1, p.179]. It is true that when recalling the so-called "Battle of Fathers and Sons", the first thing everyone remembers is the confrontation between Ilia Chavchavadze and Grigol Orbeliani, but there is no doubt that Ilia was a great appreciator of Grigol Orbeliani's work. Ilia Chavchavadze called Grigol Orbelian the autocraft and priest of the Georgian language. As Simon Chikovani observes, "In the earlier poems of Ilia Chavchavadze, the influence of Grigol Orbeliani's poetry can be observed, it seems that in his youth, Ilia was fascinated by Orbelian's sublime poetic descriptions, vocabulary, syntactic structure, but for Ilia, this inclination was not organic, and his relationship with Grigol Orbeliani became transient and accidental. Their closeness is mainly external, and these two creators have different,
opposite qualities. Their poetic beliefs are directed against each other" [1, p.180].
It is significant that, according to Simon Chikovani's observation, poetic syntax, elevated style and frequent use of rhetorical figures bring Ilia closer to Grigol Orbeliani's poetry. However, according to the critic's remark, Ilia is more of a practicing poet, for whom effective measures are more important than passive belles-lettres rhetoric.
Comparing Grigol Orbeliani's "Toast" and Ilia Chavchavadze's "Ghost", the researcher concludes that both works are patriotic in spirit, but there is a big difference between them: for Ilia, the heroic past is not a praiseworthy event, it is more a subject of analysis and judgment. For Ilia, the past is a helping force for the present, and in "Toast" poetic images of the heroic past are created, and the poetic thought is more literary.
It must be said that the easter dialect seems to have been inherited by the writers of the 19th century. Georgian poetic energy breathed through Persian poetry and it was considered a natural flow. Ilia Chavchavadze, with his special attitude, made folk poetry an important nourishing source of creativity. Simon Chikovani notes that Ilia Chavchavadze established the word folk as a concept denoting the majority of the nation in Georgian writing.
In the opinion of Simon Chikovani, Grigol Orbeliani's and Ilia Chavchavadze's desire for being peoplehood was reflected differently. As it is known, Grigol Orbelian was very fond of semi-folk poetry created by Tbilisi artisans, and the creator of this poetry was the poet Sayatnova. Simon Chikovani sheds light on the distinguishing features of Ilia Chavchavadze's and Grigol Orbeliani's creative approaches to folk poetry. According to his opinion, democracy manifests itself in a different form with Ilia, and he is unfamiliar to the "Karachoghluri (Tbilisi street hawker)" dialect of Grigol Orbeliani's poetry. Ilia set himself the goal, on the one hand, to
strengthen the national spirit in Georgian poetry, and on the other hand, to expel the poetics of Eastern "Mukhambazes" (rhyming quintuplets of five feet), "Kathais", "Mustazades", "Majams", Bayats, and to Europeanize Georgian poetry.
When talking about Ilia Chavchavadze and Grigol Orbeliani, their attitude toward the issue of literary language should be considered. According to Simon Chikovani, it is true that Ilia was against the representatives of the so-called "father's generation" deliberately and artificially using the archaic style in lyrical poetry, but nevertheless, it was not unusual for him to use archaic forms in his own poetry.
At the same time, even for Grigol Orbeliani, the inconsistency of folk poetry was unacceptable. Simon Chikovani convincingly clarifies that there was no irreconcilable difference in positions between Grigol Orbelian and Ilia Chavchavadze in matters of poetic language. However, Grigol Orbeliani, in a way, with the intonation noticed in the conversation of the bohemian circle, created the impression of folk in his poetry. Ilia Chavchavadze made a change in the literary language by introducing new lexical material from rural, folk speech into the foundation of the literary language.
Simon Chikovani's undoubted merit is the fact that he presented several observations on the literary relationship between Ilia Chavchavadze and Grigol Orbeliani, which may later become an impetus for a deeper study of the issue.
In his essay, Simon Chikovani has raised the issue of "Ilia Chavchavadze and the development of the Georgian literary language" as a separate issue.
The critic points out that at the time when Ilia Chavchavadze appeared on the literary scene, the modernization of the Georgian literary language was already a necessary requirement. Despite the fact that at the end of the 50s of the nineteenth century, there were several talented authors working in the field of Georgian literature, due to the proliferation of
epigones of romanticists, the flexibility of the literary language was gradually lost.
According to Chikovani, the first great reformer of the Georgian poetic language was Rustveli, whose merits are quite visible when we consider the literary legacy of his predecessors. Rustveli had an amazing ability to convey the complex poetic world in a language understandable to a wide readership.
Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani and Davit Guramishvili continued the path of Rustveli during the revival period. As for Besik, one of the prominent representatives of the same era, according to the right observation of Simon Chikovani, his desire for virtuosity and language refinement cut off his poetry from folk, lively speech. In this opinion, Besik is a continuation of Chakhrukhadze's line in Georgian poetry. This flow is characterized by the influence of sacred, scribe poetry, and peculiar exoticism, at the same time, it is distanced from living, colloquial speech.
As for Ilia's poetic language, the critic's observant eye notices that Ilia Chavchavadze's literary language in poetic works is more literary than in artistic prose. In the stories of Ilia Chavchavadze, there is more poetic grace, more folk sayings, and more soaring lines. Literary language in Ilia's poetry has a more archaic expression [1, p.203].
Conclusion. According to Simon Chikovani, in the early stages of his work, Ilia Chavchavadze experienced the influence of the archaic language of religious and church writing.
As we can see, a large part of the opinions expressed by Simon Chikovani about Ilia Chavchavadze's work are quite significant for literary researchers. It clearly shows the analytical talent of the critic, and the ability to access and characterize the creative features of the writer.
References:
1. Chikovani S. Letters, vol. 3. - Tbilisi: Merani, 1983. (In Georg).
2. Gigineishvili I. Ilia Chavchavadze and the New Georgian Literary Language. Vol. 1. - Tbilisi: National Center for Examinations, 2009. (In Georg).
3. Bakradze A. Ilia and Akaki. - Tbilisi: Georgia, 1992. (In Georg).
4. Ingoroqva P. Founders of new Georgian literature: Nikoloz Baratashvili, Ilia Chavchavadze, Akaki Tsereteli. - Tbilisi: Merani, 1983. (In Georg).
5. Kotetishvili V. Selected writings. - Tbilisi: Soviet Georgia, 1965. (In Georg).
6. Minashvili L. Lyric of Ilia Chavchavadze. - Tbilisi: University Publishing House, 1977. (In Georg).
7. Kikodze G. Letters, essays. - Tbilisi: Merani, 1985. (In Georg).
8. Asatiani G. Poets of the Century. - Tbilisi: Meran, 1988. (In Georg).
