ქართული პოეტური მოდერნიზმის ინტერტექსტი
The Intertext of Georgian Modernist Poetry

Summary/Abstract: The article is devoted to the peculiarities of citation, allusion and intertext of Georgian modernist poetry. Its early or proto-modernist stage between the end of the XIX century and the first decade of the XX century which has not yet acquired a distinct style features occupies an intermediate position between two cultural periods. The character of itspoetics marked by a tendency of changing the traditional intersexual field and intensification of the quantity and scale of borrowings, citations of alien texts is expressed mainly bymeans of poèmes en prose. Among the dominant new concepts of proto-modernist prosepoems should be first all mentioned a symbolist motif of transcendental invisible that laterwas much exploited in different ways by modernist poets. Unlike a stylistic complexity and ambivalence and intonational polyphonism of the New Poetry which manifested itself in 1916 the poetry and small epic genres of proto-modernist stage is characterized by a stylistic clearness, high emotional passion and melancholic mood of Romantic elegies and their development in Decadence literature.In the second section of the article devoted to the analysis of Titsian Tabidze’s sonnet“Self-portrait” (1916) it is argued that a principle of the Romantic self-expression and monologism is replaced with an orientation of the poet’s ego in the system of cultural values.For this purpose the sonnet is woven from the citations, allusions and semantic codes especially actualized in the post-classic era. “[Oscar] Wilde’s profile” refers not only to Wilde’s Aestheticism but as well to Dante’s portrait by Giotto and to the following lines in Alexander Blok’s poem “Ravenna”: “And Dante with eagle-like profile / Sings me about New Life”. The line – ”In a mirror is hiding an infant” – alludes to “Las Meninas” of Velasqes.The mentioning of Massenet, a French composer, and Mallarme’s “Divagations”and “a tired dandy” prolongs the series of cultural codes. “The waves spread by hairs are burning me” echo the aesthetics of hairs of Art Nouveau. The final lines of the sonnet –“Life, I have in my hands your bridele, / To turn this hell into paradise” – refer again to intertext of Dante motive in Alexander Blok’s poem “Ravenna”.In the third section of the article is analized Galaction Tabidze’s poem “Again Ephemera” (1922). Like Titsian Tabidze’s sonnet “Self-portrait” the poetic discourse inGalaction Tabidze’s “Again Ephemera” does not follow a linear monologist movement of a thought; it is composed of heterogenous elements of different origin, by means of placing close together cultural codes and citations. The poem following the principle of montage finds its meaning in the wide intertextual space of Georgian and European poetry and culture. At the same time as a result of an assemblage of familiar forms we face not a repetition and restoration of the models of culture but a creation of a new whole permanently changing its subject and meaning. The number of images alluding Nikoloz Baratashvili’s poem “The platan” connected with the motive of loneliness and torture of the lover in the context of citations of Baudelaire’s le Démon acquire a new meaning alluding the theme of Les Poètes maudits. The myth of the birth of Aphrodite evoked by “Oh, love is a foam of seas” in G. Tabidze’s poem receives a new meaning returning the reader to the theme of a demonic woman in Baudelaire’s poems “La Déstruction” and “Bénédiction”.As a result of the technique of montage and actualized use of different cultural codes and citations is radically changed not only a subject matter, but as well a method of Romantic poetry. The principle of self-expression and autobiographism of Romanticism in the poetry of post-classic era is replaced by an adventure in discovery among the meanings of texts of culture.It is argued in the article that the anti rationalist trend of Modernist poetry defers much from the aesthetics of Romantic literature as far as “the anti rationalism of Romantic literature pertained to subject matter more than to method.Although the romantic was bent on expressing the complex mental content that escapes the net of logic, for the most part he did not challenge the essentially rationalistic metaphysics which left literature only two possibilities – expression and description”(Charles Fiedelson, Symbolism and American Literature, The University of Chicago Press,Chicago and London, 1970, p. 56). The analyses of Galaction Tabidze’s poem “Again Ephemera” leads to the conclusion that the linear development of a lyrical discourse is replaced with an alogical structure inviting the reader to the vision of reality through the prism of a wide range of cultural codes.The departure from the rationalist and linear development of the lyrical plot, focusing attention on the cultural aspects of reality and giving them a new and important status are the main characteristic features of Georgian modernist poetry.In the fourth section of the article it is argued that from the typological point ofview the poetry of Galaction Tabidze and his generation of the teens and twenties of the last century, with its ideas, principles, themes and creative methods finds much more similarities with the poetry of Baroque age than with Romanticism. The preoccupation of Georgian modernist poets with interrelations of appearance and reality, contingent and the transcendent which was central in Baroque sensibility, their fascination with of complex mannerist metaphors and exquisite poetic forms (sonnet, rondo, villanelle, etc.), strange and mysterious metaphors, the use of technique of strangeness, playing with verbal forms,the French title of Galation Tabidze’s book of poems Cräne aux fleurs artistique (1919),reminiscent a motif of Vanitas in still life painters of XVII century, belong to the features that allow us to talk about a certain isomorphism of Georgian modernist poetry and artistic heritage of the Baroque.Though the texts of behavior of the poets of Modern era, especially of Futurists and Dadaists with their voluntarism and anarchism are a continuation of the trend of Romantics,from the point of view of style and poetics unlike the Futurism poetry and art prevailed by straight lines Georgian modernist poetry having typological affinity with Baroque poetry and art and its analogies in Art Nouveau gives preference to bend lines,forms and trajectories.The wide use intertextual space, the structure of poetic texts by means of cultural codes, allusions and citations, the vision of reality trough the prism of texts of culture, departure from the aesthetics of Romanticism and rationalist liner development of discourse is one of the most characteristic features of the complex poems of Galaction Tabidze, Titsian Tabidze and other Georgian poets of their generation.

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