![Black Sea as literary and cultural space (II) [Third part] Cover Image](/api/image/getbookcoverimage?id=document_cover-page-image_1438000.JPG)
La mer Noire comme espace littéraire et culturel (II) [Troisième partie]
Black Sea as literary and cultural space (II) [Third part]
Author(s): Nassima TERKI, Yordan Ljuckanov, Khatuna Beridze, Atinati Mamatsashvili, Alexis Nuselovici
Contributor(s): Yordan Ljuckanov (Editor), Eyüp Özveren (Editor), Mzagho Dokhtourichvili (Editor), Alexis Nuselovici (Editor)
Subject(s): Anthropology, Social Sciences, Language and Literature Studies, Customs / Folklore, Studies of Literature, Bulgarian Literature, Russian Literature, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Translation Studies, Georgian literature
ISSN: 2815-5424
Published by: Сдружение „Транспонтика“
Keywords: Kurdish folklore; Kabyle folklore; Bulgarian literature; Georgian literature; Georgian literature in Russian translation; Galaktion Tabidze; the literature - politics nexus
Summary/Abstract: Three comparative approaches to the region's art of wording are offered (an inter-regional, an intra-regional, and one combining comparison and contactology). They are appended by two different - in terms of pragmatics - attitudes of literature toward politics in the region, from an internal (Georgian) and an external (general cosmopolitan) perspective.
Series: Transponticae
- E-ISBN-13: 978-954-354-009-9
- Page Count: 168
- Publication Year: 2023
- Language: English, French
‘Spirits of the place’: sea in the Kabyle and Kurdish imaginary
‘Spirits of the place’: sea in the Kabyle and Kurdish imaginary
(‘Spirits of the place’: sea in the Kabyle and Kurdish imaginary)
- Author(s):Nassima TERKI
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Anthropology, Social Sciences, Customs / Folklore, Geography, Regional studies, Human Geography, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology
- Page Range:291-318
- No. of Pages:28
- Keywords:Kabylia; Kurdistan; the sea; the mother; transformation
- Summary/Abstract:The Black and the Mediterranean Seas are two geographical and cultural spaces where different cultures meet and strive to co-exist. This research looks at two famous minority groups; the Kurdish population to the south of the Black Sea and in the Middle East and Kabylia in Algeria. These two distinct cultures share a fight for the recognition of their respective cultures and traditions. Looking at their oral tradition, both communities celebrate a diverse and rich heritage. Their oral tradition is an example of a primary national literature that records the history of the region and constitutes a major ingredient in the formation of their ‘imagined communities’ and the shaping of their respective identities. By investigating the representation of the sea and its images, this article engages into a novel discussion into the hermeneutic of the said oral tradition. Carl O. Sauer’s “The Morphology of Landscape” (1925) explains the way geography and landscape are significant active factors that shape and determine the vision of the world. The sea and other elements referring to sea imagery, like the seahorse or the birds, etc., in the Kabyle/Amazigh and the Kurdish oral tradition are often associated with the image of the nourishing mother. In other instances, it represents danger, the open frontier, the impossibility, or the fact of not being able, to perceive what is beyond. It is also the energy of transformation and the symbol of the mysterious that cannot be reached and the open space that represents the unknown that must be feared.
The image of (Black?) Sea in two (pre-/post-)symbolisms: Valerian Gaprindashvili and Peiu Iavorov
The image of (Black?) Sea in two (pre-/post-)symbolisms: Valerian Gaprindashvili and Peiu Iavorov
(The image of (Black?) Sea in two (pre-/post-)symbolisms: Valerian Gaprindashvili and Peiu Iavorov)
- Author(s):Yordan Ljuckanov
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Bulgarian Literature, Georgian literature
- Page Range:319-355
- No. of Pages:37
- Keywords:Bulgarian (proto)symbolism in poetry; Georgian (post)symbolism in poetry; marine imagery; marine sensibility
- Summary/Abstract:This article is a possible starting point for comparative motive/ thematic exploration of two (proto-, post-)symbolisms. Peiu Iavorov belongs to the emblematic interpersonal alliance within Bulgarian modernism (of its protosymbolist phase), ‘Thought’; Valerian Gaprindashvili – to the emblematic one within Georgian modernism (of its symbolist phase), the so translated “Blue horns”. It is assumed that any motives and themes appear unevenly throughout an oeuvre, and this unevenness invites scholars to recognise its different patterns from author to author. Analysis of marine imagery is focused on but not limited to a couple of poems under the revealing titles ‘(The) sea’, ‘To the sea’ and ‘At the sea’ in the oeuvre of Iavorov and Gaprindashvili: it might turn that the potential supratextual entities composed by all works containing marine motives within an oeuvre have unexpected centres of gravity. In the analyses, the following distinctions are applied: (1) the respective poetic text reveals/suggests a “spectacle” vs. a “symphony” vs. a “drama” “of Nature”; (2) marine imagery is introduced with vs. without reference to embeddedness in ‘real’ (memorised and bodily) experiences of the implicit or explicit author; (3) marine imagery reproduces ancient topoi vs. brings out current experience; (4) it refers to Black Sea vs. to a sea. Some attention is paid to the proximity (‘synonymisation’ and distinction) between marine imagery (in particular, the motive of sailing) and imagery of homelessness.
Black Sea, trilingual reflections. Georgian and Russian literature
Black Sea, trilingual reflections. Georgian and Russian literature
(Black Sea, trilingual reflections. Georgian and Russian literature)
- Author(s):Khatuna Beridze
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Russian Literature, Translation Studies, Georgian literature
- Page Range:356-422
- No. of Pages:67
- Keywords:translation; Black Sea; Georgia; Russian (language); English (language)
- Summary/Abstract:The article follows the Black Sea reflections in the Georgian and Russian poetry and their Russian and/or English translations. The article explores how the authors and translators personalise, interpret and/or reconfigure Black Sea. Cohabitation of nature, love and politics in the Black Sea poetry is paradigmatic, but how loyally do the translations follow the set rules of cohabitation? How devalued is the intention of the author, or the original imagery? Were the transformations in the target language text premeditated or not? Black Sea is used in poetry to express political ambitions, as in the poem by F. Tyutchev ‘Black Sea’; the fidelity of its English translation by F. Jude is studied closely. ‘Thought at the seaside’ by Galak’tʼion Tʼabidze implicates the poet’s political hopes. The poem expresses remorse for the peaceful sea and the poet’s lust for the next wave, symbolising the harbinger of his homeland’s freedom. The Russian translation by O. Ivinskaia transforms the idea and changes the original topos, shifting the Black Sea ‘far’ from Georgia. An allegory of the lost route to Europe after the 1917 revolution, the poet’s lament over the postrevolutionary political turbulence and annexation of Georgia is also misinterpreted. ‘Sentimental travel’ by Tʼitsian Tʼabidze in its Russian translation by I. Mel’nikova reveals how just a subtle difference might distort the original image and build a politically favourable one. Tʼitsian devoted his poem to the Black Sea and the city of Batumi. The translation manifests conceptual antagonism between the target language and the source language depictions of the city and the sea. Mel’nikova presents the city as ‘tender’ and the sea as ‘tamed’, associated with fragility and political domestication, while the original images of the city and the sea are ‘beautiful’ and ‘calm’.
La mer Noire : espace littéraire versus espace politique
La mer Noire : espace littéraire versus espace politique
(The Black Sea: a literary versus a political space)
- Author(s):Atinati Mamatsashvili
- Language:French
- Subject(s):Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Georgian literature
- Page Range:425-442
- No. of Pages:18
- Keywords:Black Sea; Georgian literature; Soviet regime; ideology; René Magritte
- Summary/Abstract:In our study we are focusing on the texts (poetry and novels) of Georgian writers in which the Black Sea seems to appropriate its own historicity to the point of creating a literary space versus an ideologised political space. In this sense, this literary space, opposed to the really existent geographical one, becomes a place of resistance to the Soviet regime. A politically strategic place, a place of invasion and Bolshevik occupation, the Black Sea embodies an identity and national marker simultaneously. The sea is an integral part of the poetry of Galaktion Tabidze (1891-1959). Used sometimes in its metaphorical function, in most of texts composed in the 1930s and 1940s the poet does name the Black Sea, concretised by its geographical location in the Ajara region, which is also emphasised. In Nodar Dumbadze’s story, Hellados, the Black Sea is always a strong identity marker whose crossing can cause death. To traverse the Black Sea means to leave the homeland that appears as one true homeland to which everything is connected – home, friends, memory. It is in the Black Sea that the Greek protagonist – born and raised in Sokhoumi, a port city on the Black Sea, – will die. Thus, the action relating to the Black Sea is often, in literary texts, part of a struggle between the New and the Old World, between the Bolshevik occupation and resistance (individual or collective), between life and death. Hence, on the example of two authors – Dumbadze and G. Tabidze – we are going to inquire into the status of the Black Sea as a (national) literary space or, in other words, a space of resistance to the ideology of Soviet domination. A pictorial analysis of the Magrittian painting The Human Condition (1935), which plays on the illusion between the “real” sea and the sea-image at the same time integrated in and detached from this reality, will allow us to establish a parallel between the really existing Black Sea and the one which is created within the literary space.
Portrait de la mer Noire en « belle sauvage »
Portrait de la mer Noire en « belle sauvage »
(A portrait of the Black Sea as a “beautiful savage”)
- Author(s):Alexis Nuselovici
- Language:French
- Subject(s):Language and Literature Studies, Geography, Regional studies, Human Geography, Theory of Literature
- Page Range:444-450
- No. of Pages:7
- Keywords:Medea; sea; limitlessness; maternity; creativity
- Summary/Abstract:It is easy to draw up the notion of literary space when one has in mind a land area. But how can we grasp the sea, which is in constant motion, and use it as a framework for a typology of this kind? The sea has never been inhabited, never been habitable, existing only in itself. In this respect, it exceeds human measurement, hence the fear and determination of Ulysses in the Mediterranean, of Jason in the Black Sea. The sea teaches us to accept an uncertain spatiality, which will carry both threat and promise. A sea of passage and neighbourhood, open (by the Greeks) or closed (by the Ottomans), the Black Sea perfectly illustrates such ambivalence that literature does not fear, accustomed as it is to travel through virtual worlds and following imaginary lives, no less real for the reader than the environment that surrounds him/her. As for Medea the magician, the wild and sovereign Princess of Colchis, she will embody through various literary versions of the myth the tension between conflict and concord that defines all literary space.
