La symbolique de la mer dans la poésie populaire géorgienne
Sea symbolism in Georgian popular poetry

Author(s): Mzagho Dokhtourichvili
Subject(s): Anthropology, Social Sciences, Language and Literature Studies, Customs / Folklore, Studies of Literature, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Georgian literature
Published by: Сдружение „Транспонтика“
Keywords: sea; popular poetry; symbolism; metaphorisation; hyperbolism
Summary/Abstract: As the Georgian researcher Zurab K’ik’nadze rightly points out, the Georgian can be characterised by a Carl Schmittean formulation: “the Georgian is a man of the land. […] He stands and moves on the solid surface of the earth. This is his position and his ground [...] this determines his impressions and world perception” (kiknaże 2010: 136). K’ik’nadze also mentions that the history of Georgia, even if of a state previously stretching between two seas, has no memory either of significant relations with the sea or, a fortiori, any maritime battles. As a result, since Georgia’s military and economic activities were not linked to the sea, the latter was considered a natural phenomenon imbued with the sense of disaster or cataclysm that was totally opposed to the land, thus demarcating a limit beyond which any trace of human dominance is lost. Though the sea is mentioned several times in the ‘The man in the panther’s skin’ by Shota Rustaveli, where the kingdom of the seas under the name of Gulansharo is represented, the presence of sea is just an acquisition of the literary work and it remains there (kiknaże 2010: 137). As for the co-eval contributor to the Georgian medieval historical compendium ‘The life of Georgia’, the so-called Historian of King Tamar, the sea carries a metaphorical sense – it is a means to extoll, one more time, the force and the authority of the King: “She is just about to absorb the whole sea into herself, like a cloud of soft rain for everyone” (k̕art̕̕lis c̕xovreba 1959: 148; cited by kiknaże 2010: 138). We were able to find this metaphor under different variants in popular poems that are analysed in the present article. Georgian mythology, which feeds popular poetry, creates the mythologem of an opposition, of a deadly fight between the sea (the Black Sea) and the earth. “Georgian folk poetry is a boundless sea”, can be read in the introduction to the collection ‘Verse, you won’t get lost’ (činčarauli 1985: 3). This hyperbolic use of the sea declares the richness of popular Georgian poetry, where the sea in its symbolical uses occupies a considerable place, as, hopefully, proven here above. In the present article, we ask questions about the representation of sea in popular Georgian poetry, about sea symbolism as carried out through metaphors, comparisons and, in particular, hyperbolas.

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