PDF Archili Charxebr mbrunavi
Sjani, 2021
Abstract
Poetic Games of Learned Men: Vanity and Circulation from the Book of Ecclesiastes in Archil’s ‘Verse Rotating Like Grinding Wheel’Literary heritage of Archil II Bagrationi (1647-1713) is extremely rich and diverse. The article is dedicated to the absolutely distinct by its form and content verse among poetic searches of Archil. This is a the ‘Verse Rotating Like Grinding Wheel’ introduced by the King-poet. Discussed verse is consisting of single line _ “This is based on a parable about Vanity” and in ten-strophe verse this one line is repeated 40 times with different order of the words in the line. Attention of the author of the present article was drawn by original inner structure of the verse and extremely witty combination with its content.
Complete collection of Archil’s works was published twice in the 20th century: two-volume edition in 1936-1937 and one-volume edition in 1999. The paper pays special attention to the fact that in the 1999 edition of Archil’s works the flaw of the previous edition was corrected, where two strophes of the ‘Verse Rotating Like Grinding Wheel’ were erroneously attributed to the work ‘Word on Baptism’. Editors proved that these strophes are the organic part of ‘grinding-wheel rotating’ verse and that in the edition of 1999 the verse was printed as a whole.
Archil’s ‘Verse Rotating Like Grinding Wheel’ conditionally consists of three parts: the first two strophes are kind of introduction and explanation of the verse; the rest ten strophes represent the I and II parts of the ‘Verse Rotating Like Grinding Wheel’ itself _ “This is based on a parable about Vanity“.
The author makes emphasis on the title of the verse and on periphrastic significance of the title with respect to the text. Semantics of the word “grinding wheel” as one of the key words is emphasized, which is associated with definite type movement, rotation and circulation. It seems that this connection between the transient life and its circulation, between permanent alterations turned out very attractive for Archil. The author of the article considers that inspiration of ‘Verse Rotating Like Grinding Wheel’ is a strophe by David Japaridze offered as an epigraph to Archil’s earlier work entitled the ‘Dispute between Man and the World’, (1684), where metaphor on changing ephemeral life is presented as a grinding wheel of the life, which circulates permanently and which laconically refers to the worldview of a Baroque man, his attitude to permanently changing life. It appears that this metaphor of David Japaridze made high impression on Archil and he saw tremendous opportunities in it that made him to use grinding wheel-like rotation as a principle of a verse construction and to associate it masterly with the verse essence. “This is based on parable about vanity”, i.e. an idea of this line is such: this verse is based on parable about vanity (comp. Archil’s ‘rotation of grinding wheels, interpretation of parables’ (To Be Interpreted As a Riddle, 61,4)). Vanity, as a code word plays the role of a bridge stretched between cognition of the author and the reader and is based on ecclesiastic ideas about vanity, which became an organic motif for Baroque worldview, because it responded adequately the spiritual mood and searches of a man of that period. The world circulation is unchanged while mysterious are the ways of the Lord. Exactly because of it in the perishable world “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity’ (Eccl. 1:2) became a motto of the Baroque epoch.
The author of the article states that in his verse Archil uses both the semantic significance of the grinding-wheel, which is associated with the circulation and rotation and its metaphoric significance – ‘grinding wheel of the world’, which refers to permanent changes of transient life.
The article shows how the verse “rotates” and it is pointed out that in both parts of the verse Archil bases the trajectory of words displacement on different principle and these principles differ from each other, which is rather vivid when we darken one word in the whole verse.
According to the opinion of the author we have to deal with the phenomenon such as relative movement category. Zigzag, which in Archil’s considered verse creates a trajectory of darkish words, is namely visual representation of this movement and this is Archil’s splendid find.
This extremely original verse of Archil required deep knowledge of Bible as well as tremendous imagination to implement finally the complex idea and to grant absolutely new, circulation dimension to the verse.
In the 1936 year’s edition of Archil’s works the ‘Verse Rotating Like Grinding Wheel’ is accompanied by an extremely important note, where we read that the lines of the first strophe of the ‘Verse Rotating Like Grinding Wheel’ in the manuscript are arranged in the form of a circle (grinding wheel) too, on the base of what we can conclude that we have to deal with the pattern poem. Pattern poems always were created in intellectual circles; their authors were not just poets, simultaneously they were deeply educated people and scholars. ‘Grinding wheel-like verse’ by Archil is namely a result of such intellectual game. In the rich pattern poetry of Baroque epoch author of the article couldn’t find ‘rotating’ (circulating) verse; but it turned out that verses of similar type, so called permutation poetry was created in the 20th century.
Aesthetics of Baroque is directed against all trivial; for its creators the most important is to incite surprise and amazement by its novelty. According to the author of the article right in the spirit of Gracián ’s Wit and the Art of Inventiveness and Tesauro’s wittiness is created Archil’s ‘Verse rotating like grinding wheel’, which uses metaphor of life – “grinding wheel-like rotation” in two meanings: as circulation from the Book of Ecclesiastes and as a technique for building a verse. Double meaning is characteristic for Baroque esthetics: Archil’s verse visually “rotates” as the transient life events in the Ecclesiastes and this double connection makes still more visible the exquisite originality of this brilliant specimen of Georgian Baroque and the scale of talent and ability of imagination of its creator.
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