სტილი - კულტურული მდგომარეობა (მეტაფრასტიკის მაგალითზე)
Style - Cultural Situation (on the example of Metaphrastics)

Summary/Abstract: Genre bears within itself the code of evolution and strives for change, renovation, development. The rewriting and embellishment of texts starts. Attention is paid to the form, language, style. Certain changes are made to the content too. The insertions done at different times are removed and new concepts are introduced, i.e. they remove interpolations in order to create extrapolations, i.e. transfer contemporary vision to the past. Social order is fulfilled. The society demands embellished story. The word should strengthen the perception, improve understanding of the ideal. Metaphrastics is a response to contemporary literary taste. Each text is written in a particular epoch, with the specific purpose and for a specific reader. Times change, cultural situation changes too, tastes and peculiarities of perception alter too. Style as a demand of the times, as the “modern”, as a perception of contemporaneity, as a response to the needs of the age. Genre is alive until it is consonant with the spirit of the times. Once this perception is lost, genre is dying. Metaphrastics is not just a style only; it is the spiritual situation which expresses public attitudes. Hence, metaphrastics sets new cultural situation. In Byzantine it began to take shape in the 9th century after the defeat of Iconoclasm and creation of a new cultural situation; and in Georgia its beginning coincides with the establishment of Georgian literary school on Mt.Athos at the end of the 10th century that is also signifies new intellectual activity. Metaphrastes brought the plainness, persuasiveness, organization in the old texts but they preserved style, manner and general attitude because there should not be created the impression as if they produced entirely new texts. Nevertheless, this did not prevent them to include their own thoughts in the composition. According to traditional view, metaphrastic text is distinguished with verbosity and elegance of style which is true but, at the same time, there are separate cases when Cymenian redaction describes some details more broadly, extensively, with verbosity and besides this, in more figurative, embellished style. For metaphrastes, the extension of a text is not an end in itself, sometimes nothing may be changed and transfer from the previous text just what is needed for the given context. The metaphrastic style is subordinated to the canons of rhetoric. The text should acquire more expressiveness and perfection in order to respond the needs of the times. Beauty requires sacrifice – the popularity of old ways of life is declined and more and more trendy become metaphrasis which appears in the church calendar tradition: Symeon initiates paraphrasing of saints’ vitae for autumn-winter (September-January) months, and Johannes Xiphilinos - the texts of the rest seven months. A close scrutiny of Symeon Metaphrastes compositions and the sources used by him make it clear that paraphrasing of cymenian text implies literary and aesthetic revision of a composition. While dealing with Symeon Metaphraste’s compositions, Karl Krumbacher singles out three categories. The first category is metaphrastes in which the older text is left unchanged as it was; the second category includes legends which experienced total stylistic revision; to the third category belong such redaction which actually represent new compositions. According to Hans-Georg Beck, Symeon, as a remarkable phenomenon of the tenth-century hagiography, joined historicism of hagiography and Greek hagiography. When the law of genre becomes outdated, the text loses vitality. At such time an angle of impact is changed. Metaphrastics changes the surface and goes into the depth. Noteworthy is the inscription on the “Martyrdom of St.Giorgi” translated by Ekvtime Mtastmindeli. Ekvtime writes that this text of Symeon Logothetes is read in many Greek churches, because “it is used for profundity”. In Georgian metaphrastics Theophile Kutsesmonazoni appears as authority. Georgian literature responds to the processes started in Byzantine literature, grasps the style of metaphrastic transformations, if you like, “embellishment”. The popularity and importance of metaphrastics in Georgian hagiography is also testified by the fact that the compositions of the second great Byzantine metaphraste Johannes Xyphiline are preserved only in Georgian translations for the history of literature. Style as a sign of the time, cultural state, social order. Genre dictates the game to the writer and to the genre – time. It is crucial to ask whether genre is the feature of a form or contents. The external form is so much pronounced that the contents compared with it, becomes a secondary phenomenon but in the end the form is subjected to metamorphose to render the content as much effectively as possible. Hence, genre is a feature of a form and content. In every historical epoch genre changes, something new enters its structure, but the novelty is not given in such dose and form as to change the content put in it. Therefore, the metaphrastic movement shows the unity of historically established form and content of hagiographic genre as a category. According to the analysis of the oeuvre of the founders of metaphrastics – Symeon Logothetes and Joannes Xiphilinus, the peculiarities of the Bysantine metaphrastics which were shared and mastered by Georgian hagiographers: 1. Stylistic revision of the old Cymenian texts; 2. Elimination of the traces of heresy; 3.Preservation of the rendering mode of the old author; 4. Correction of inaccuracies and inconsistencies; 5. Extension of old compositions; 6. Feeling of the text with actual material; 7. Introduction to the composition; 8. Description of miracles.

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