27652940

Masks of the Poet, Myths of the People: The Performance of Individuality and Nationhood in
Georgian and Russian Modernism

Author(s): Harsha Ram
Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Fall, 2008), pp. 567-590
Published by: Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27652940
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Masks of the Poet, Myths of the People:

The Performance
and
of Individuality
in Georgian
Nationhood
and Russian Modernism
Harsha
Ram
Much
has been made

of the fissures
and crises that typified Russian
sym
none more
of ideology
and of age,
bolist
vivid than the divide,
culture,
that separated
the second generation
from the first.
of Russian
symbolists
a
of
of
received
The
has
fact
these
become
story
literary his
cleavages
was
to
from
and
central
the
movement's
tory
self-representation
arguably
as a constitutive
in the aesthetic
of
contradiction
its inception,
ideology
fact that Georgian
the symbol
but largely unnoted
itself.1 It is a curious
that arose within
its
mirrored
the tensions
and contradictions
symbolism
a
the
and
in
that
reversed
Russian
albeit
way
counterpart,
generational
above. While
seek
of Russian
noted
ideological
symbolism,
progression
overcome
to
of
the
the
Russian
cultural
literary strategies
hegemony,
ing
a
critical
with
the
reveal
modernists
yet
engagement
Georgian
profound
as
inherited
Even
work of their Russian
they reproduced
contemporaries.
some of their
the Georgians
Russian
blur and collapse
would
paradigms,
echoes
others.
The
distinctions
while
resulting
operative
exaggerating
serve as a
to the rich if
ambivalent
index
and inversions
fascinating
deeply
at a time
modernists
and Georgian
that arose between
Russian
dialogue
felt
for
national
with
the
need
influences
when
collided
cultural
foreign
to popular
life. This dialogue
and a deeper
differentiation
connectedness
to the Silver
Eurasian
dimension
and specifically
reveals a cross-cultural
or
not
been
has
that
acknowledged
widely
adequately
Age
explored.2
to Robert
Anna
thanks
Tamar Mirianashvili,
Muza,
Bird,
My sincere
Ilya Kliger,
and help.
for their
insights
Steiner,
vo Frantsii,"
1. In "Poety
115-43,
1892),
VestnikEvropy
(September
simvolisty
in sensory-subjectivist
had already
the symbol
defined
ambiguously,
Vengerova
terms.
Dmitrii
Merezhkovskii,
sovremennoi
in his programmatic
russkoi
literatury"
religious-transcendental
i o novykh
techeniiakh
chinakh
upadka
simvolizma
1:47,
ed., Kritika
2002),
(Moscow,
russkogo
Bogomolov,
as
modernism
content,
symbols,
inclusively
"mystical
by defining
artistic
receptivity."
of differentiation,
as
in Viacheslav
For
symbolism's
in terms
whether
Ivanov's
"Dve
stikhii
this
generation,
two distinct
of delineating
second
v sovremennom
and
simvolizme"
Lina
Zinaida
as well
article
as
"O pri
in N. A.
(1893),
this ambiguity
reaffirms
ambiguity
currents
and
of
broadening
a means
became
the
within
symbolism,
in Bogomo
(1908),
inter
contradictions
or as a set of dialectical
simvolizma,
1:31-73,
lov, ed., Kritika
russkogo
as in Aleksandr
simvolizma"
sostoianii
Blok's
"O sovremennom
nal to the poet,
russkogo
thesis
The
in Bogomolov,
1:236-46.
ed., Kritika
simvolizma,
(1910),
generational
russkogo
was canonized
literatura XX veka 1890-1910
cf. S. A. Vengerov,
ed., Russkaia
early:
quite
is
of these
debates
A useful
1914).
(Moscow,
summary
by Aage
provided
typological
Rannii
simvolizm
motivov.
simvolizm.
Sistema poeticheskikh
Russkii
Hansen-L?ve,
(St. Peters
13-19.
1999),
burg,
are
on the
two
works
2. The
Luigi Maga
dialogue
Russo-Georgian
primary
scholarly
a
and Giovanna
Studi,
Cesa,
eds.,
rotto, Marzio
Marzaduri,
Tiflis:
LAvanguardia
Pagani
Fantasticheskii
and Tat'iana
testimonianze
Nikol'skaia,
1982);
ricerche, cronache,
(Venice,
gorod:
of these works
Neither
zhizn' v Tbilisi
Russkaia
kul'turnaia
(Moscow,
2000).
(1917-1920)
Slavic
Review
67,
no.
(Fall 2008)
568
Slavic Review
movement
first self-styled modernist
early in 1915.
emerged
Georgia's
or Blue Horn
launched
The
poets,
twenty-year-old
Tsisperqants'elebi,
to
from
in Kutaisi,
their movement
second
eight
Georgia's
city. Waxing
as many
as thirteen,
were
the
led
P'aolo
Iashvili
(1892-1937),
they
by
intro
and public
and the more
effective
group's most
organizer
figure,
and
verted
theoretician
T'itsian
T'abidze
(1893-1937).
lyricist
superior
affiliated
with
them but some ten years their senior was the bril
Closely
liant and enigmatic
(1882-1962),
poet, novel
figure of Grigol Robakidze
ist and ma?tre ? penser, educated
in Leipzig
role in locally
and Tartu, whose
to hail
the modernist
the Blue Horn
poets
diffusing
sensibility
prompted
him as their immediate
their
and
of
the
"cardinal"
mentor,
precursor
order."3
"literary
so many
not
Like
the Blue Horn
poets were
literary movements,
an
sense of group
bound
Their
coherent
together
by
internally
ideology.4
arose from a shared commitment
to literary innovation
and by
solidarity
the convivial
of
cultural
life.
Shared
motifs,
synergies
Georgian
preferred
are
and unifying
in the work of the
discernible
genres,
concepts
certainly
Blue Horn
did not always have
elements
poets,
yet even these common
for every member
identical
valences
of the group. The most
significant
was not
to their collec
internal
however,
discrepancy,
strictly speaking
tive. It arose between
Robakidze.
the Blue Horn
poets and their mentor
a great deal in common
the
Robakidze's
of
with
culture
had
philosophy
of
Russian
Blue
Horn
redactions
Friedrich
while
the
Nietzsche,
symbolist
a view of art and
to fin-de-si?cle
far closer
deca
poets
history
adopted
a
dismissed
second
of
the
Russian
dence,
sensibility
by many
symbolists
as inimical
to the
of modernist
generation
potential
highest metaphysical
art. This
to
tensions
fundamental
and
the
divergence,
epistemological
not
evolution
historical
of Russian
become
nevertheless
did
symbolism,
the means
self-consciousness.
modernism
achieved
Georgian
by which
a
modernism
evolved
in
himself
termed
what
T'itsian
Instead, Georgian
in
which
decadent
sensibilities
coexisted
with
"zigzag path,"
high symbol
ist aspirations,
while borrowing
from the most
radical wing of the
elements
A dialectical
in which
model
of literary history,
European
avant-garde.5
was
arises
dur
and
renewed
change
through negation
replaced,
synthesis,
a
the
of
revolution
and
ing
dy
heady years
by
Georgian
independence,
context
namic
of synchronously
currents.
modernist
coexisting
aco
The encounter
between
Robakidze
and his ostensible
Georgian
the
echoed
between
the
of
first
and
second
Russian
gap
lytes
generation
it in evidence.
The crux of their commonalities
symbolists without
placing
comes
to
close
the Georgian
responses
exhausting
Paolo
Iashvili,
"Grigol Robakidzes,"
1:56-57.
(Tbilisi,
2004),
ts'ignad, 2 vols.
4. Accusations
of eclecticism,
derivativeness,
3.
P'aolo
to Russian
Iashvili
and European
saiubileo-saarkivo
debates.
and
internal
have
inconsistency
cf. Lali Asatiani,
'Kartuli
poets:
"Tsisperqants'elebi:
bolizmis'
Lit'erat'uruli
In my
ts'erilebi
54-70.
shesakheb,"
(Tbilisi,
1992),
opinion
to be read
"flaws" need
rather
than
evaluatively.
symptomatically
been
at
leveled
5. T'itsian
emy
the Blue
T'abidze,
(St. Petersburg,
1995),
Horn
"Iz
Avtobiografii"
22.
(1936),
Avtoportret:
Izbrannye
or
gamomtsema
stikhotvoreniia
long
sim
these
ipo
Masks
of thePoet, Myths
of thePeople
569
revolved
around
the figure of the poet and the lyric
to
For
nation.
the inher
the
the Blue Horn
poets,
subject's
relationship
no
of poetic personality
The
ited paradigms
obtained.
nineteenth
longer
of the Georgian
venerable
century
gentry
poet, heir to Georgia's
figure
marked
aristocratic
and courtly
traditions
but
by Eu
literary
profoundly
model
Romanticism
Russian
and
the
later
(Nekrasovian)
ropean
populist
The Blue Horn
of the poet-citizen,
outdated.
poets
appeared
hopelessly
and civic con
dismissed
the established
ideals of mimetic
transparency
and
subtle
divergences
in favor of theatrical metaphors

that insisted on the specificity?
science
art.
and opacity?of
is the figure of
in the work of the Blue Horn
poets
persistent
Strikingly
onto wider
context
and transposed
the mask. Adapted
from its theatrical
connect
to
and
art
served
of
the
mask
both
and
life,
organize
spheres
the
Silver Age:
the Eurasian
of what might
be called
several dimensions
Blue
the
to
between
internal
muted
modernism,
differences,
Georgian
the polemical
Robakidze;
acutely
dialogue,
poets and their mentor
to a wider
side but still largely unknown
the Georgian
audience,
the attempts,
and finally,
and Georgian
Russian
between
modernism;
the perceived
of Russians
and Georgians
characteristic
alike, to overcome
as an ?lite cultural
forma
modernism
and
culture
between
gap
popular
the
as articulated
of
the
tion. To trace these correlations,
mask,
by
figure
Horn
felt on
is the goal of this article.

Both came from
The figure of the mask had two distinct
genealogies.
mod
of
the
in
work
the
somewhat
abroad,
Georgian
awkwardly
coexisting
the
second
was essentially
while
ernists. The first paradigm
Nietzschean,
were
Both paradigms
dell'arte.
of the commedia
drew from the traditions
theatrical
recent
Russian
and
in
filtered,
European
complex ways, through
even as they were domesticated
and theoretical
debate,
experimentation
the concerns
a question?onto
remains
and projected?how
successfully
form that had flour
Italian theatrical
national
life. A popular
of Georgian
centu
to the eighteenth
the sixteenth
ished throughout
during
Europe
a
revival
wide
dell'arte
the
commedia
ries,
striking European
experienced
its
era. Its
been
had
in the modernist
repertoire
popular,
originally
style
a system of
charac
within
recognizable
improvisation
plot
emphasizing
modernist
commedia's
The
scenarios.
and
stock
conventional
masks,
ters,
of mi
for a critique
inherent
the mask's
redaction
underlined
capacity
from
the
commedia
while
metic
distancing
significantly
representation,
com
the
of
roots. The modernist
its popular
refashioning
carnivalesque
a model
of theatrical
to which we shall return later, would
media,
provide
Nietzsche.
the
from
distinct
by
reinterpreted
trag?die paradigm
ity
of
the traditions
had derived
In The Birth of Tragedy (1871) Nietzsche
whose
the cult of the god Dionysus,
ancient Greek
orgiastic
tragedy from
and
of self-loss
a mystical
rites had celebrated
and sacrificial
experience
the
dismember
In reenacting
fusion with an "original Oneness."
god's
a
life force
cult reaffirmed
the Dionysian
ment
and rebirth,
primordial
claimed
individual.
of
the sufferings
Performance,
that transcended
any
to "see
the
ritual
from
archaic
had evolved
Nietzsche,
capacity
practice:
one
as
now
to
act
if
had
and
before
one's
transformed
oneself
very eyes
570
Slavic Review
"the
had been
into another
character"
body and another
fini
mortal
the
The
dramatic
tension
between
original
phenomenon."6
and self
tude of the individual
self and the capacity
for self-projection
was first
actors
convention
whose
dissolution
in
Attic
objectified
tragedy,
wore masks when
the dramatic
Nietzsche
derived
pathos
ally
performing.
The
of tragic individuation
from a more
tragic
experience.
primordial
hero was none other
could
than a "mask" through which
the god Dionysus
be seen as "an erring,
"In truth ... this hero
individual."
striving, suffering
in him
is the suffering Dionysus
of the mysteries,
that god experiencing
self the agonies
of individuation."7
In the dithyrambic
chorus, moreover,
an
the same phenomenon
of the "surrender
of the individual
through
an unfamiliar
a whole
felt
into
crowd
nature"
became
entering
"epidemic:
in this way."8
itself enchanted
really
entered
The Mask
and Myth
of Nationhood
in Nietzsche's
wake but insisting on a parallel
between
Following
Dionysus
and Christ,
the Russian
Ivanov
called for a new
Viacheslav
had
symbolist
theater
that would
of its subsequent
strip the tragic mask
psychological
its
"Before
accretions,
revealing
thereby
originary
mystical
significance:
our attention
had been
in the plasticity
absorbed
of seeing: now, as vi
sion has become
sees more
the universal
in
Secret
transparent,
clearly
.
.
.
us
in
its
dark
mirror.
Bewitched
us, reflecting
by the otherworldly
on the face of Horror,
mask placed
we, co-crucified
gaze of the prophetic
in spirit alongside
us
that looked upon
the mask's
everything
through
us in an ecstasy that redeems
that the artist heal and
eyes, demand
purify
and resolves
all things. One
we are
look from
this mask?and
already
drunk with
the Dionysian
of the eternal Victim."9
intoxication
The Dio
the reversal of later theatrical
such as
conventions,
nysian mask promised
the subject/object
actor and
in the divide between
embodied
dichotomy
and the corroboration
of the inner world of the hero
a stage
spectator,
by
that stood
in for a three-dimensional
no
saw:
The
viewer
reality.
longer
she was seen. The Dionysian
a
mask marked
of
transformation
and
point
dissolution
of subject and object
into a primordial
Oneness.
The
of the mask
was
advanced
Robakidze
interpretation
by
deeply
to Nietzsche
indebted
both
and to Nietzsche's
Russian
Ro
reception.10
bakidze
two kinds
a
of masks:
mask"
behind
distinguished
"quotidian
which
human
conceal
themselves
and their imperfections,
and a
beings
If "in the first case, we
"mythic mask"
through which
they are transformed.
hide behind
the guise of the 'other,' while
to remain
the 'same,'
desiring
6.
7.
Friedrich
Nietzsche,
The Birth
of Tragedy,
8. Ibid., 50.
9. Viacheslav
O.
Dechartes,
kogo simvolizma
10. On
tion," Nietzsche
trans.
Douglas
Smith
(New York,
50.
2000),
59.
Ibid.,
Ivanov,
(1904),
"Novye maski"
20 vols.
2:77-78.
(Brussels,
1974),
(Moscow,
the Russian
in Russia
Sobranie
See
also
ed. D. V Ivanov
sochinenii,
B. S.
Bugrov,
Dramaturgia
and
russ
1993).
response
(Princeton,
to Nietzsche,
1986),
see Bernice
3-48,
esp.
Glatzer
Rosenthal,
19-27.
"Introduc
Masks
of thePoet, Myths
571
of thePeople
case we take on the

to
then in the second
image of the 'other' and want
become
the 'other.' Here
the bearer of the mask
identifies with the figure
assumes:
com
whose
let us recall that the servants of Dionysus
image he
municated
with the god precisely
masks."11
by wearing
con
to archaic
In relating
the mask
both
ritual and to the alienated
of modern
its
ditions
Robakidze
relevance
life,
expanded
significantly
the realm of theater. As a constitutive
feature
of the individual
beyond
one of the
the mask
became
of his book Por
concepts
psyche,
defining
a
of
writers
select
Russia's
and
think
trety (Portraits),
greatest
gallery
ers
in
the
critic
de
Livre
des
French
Gourmont's
part by
inspired
Remy
an
Portraits
influential
Baedeker
of
decadence
masques:
symbolistes (1896),
in 1913, and in part
and symbolism
that came out in Russian
translation
cre
Maksimilian
Voloshin's
Liki
tvorchestva:
by
Kniga pervaia
(Visages of
an exer
ation: Book one, 1914) ,12An impressionistic
and
portrait
gallery
canon
cise in contemporary
de Gourmont's
book
formation,
seamlessly
on the artist's
combined
life and work,
reflections
and literary
personality
was
an illus
Each of its fifty-three
commentary.
accompanied
by
chapters
Termed
the
"mask"
of
deemed
each
author.
tration,
"physio-psychological
a later critic,
"masks" were
these
documents"
by
essentially
portrait
authored
the most
sketches,
delineating
by F?lix Vallotton,
prominent
contours
of
and features
of each author's
face, a belated
echo, perhaps,
in modern
Kas
times by Johann
the doctrine
of physiognomy,
formulated
from a taxonomy
of external
inferred moral
character
par Lavater, which
facial traits.13
was
Voloshin's
collection
of
bined
individual
portraits
in content.
It com
heterogeneous
on
reflections
French
authors with diverse
In one
Vo
and revolution.
section,
telling
for masks with what he saw as
predilection
far more
fashion,
theater,
aesthetics,
loshin contrasted
the French
for spiritual nakedness:
"What previously
seemed
the Russian
propensity
a human
to
turns
out
be
in
its
face, entirely
individuality,
merely
complete
... A face in Paris that is
a
one of the masks
of Paris.
formula,
general
sense of nakedness,
and it is by this
of a mask
elicits a bashful
devoid
11. Grigol
Robakidze,
Portrety:
Petr
Chaadaev,
(Tbilisi, 1919), 26. This book, of which more

and
critic
in 1922.
Sergei
Cf. also
Rafalovich
Luigi
(1875-1942),
valuable
Magarotto's
Literaturnaia
Lermontov,
Vasilii
later, was published
then
article
in Tbilisi,
residing
"Vliianie
Nitsshe
Rozanov,
Andrei
Belyi
by the influential poet

who
na
to Paris
emigrated
rannee
tvorchestvo
148-60.
(1989):
Portraits
des masques:
(Paris,
1896) The
symbolistes
was
as
masok
book
edition
Russian
(St. Petersburg,
Kniga
published
the two separate
vol
and M. A. Kuzmin,
it combined
Translated
1913).
by E. M. Blinova
umes
and retained
into one book
of the original,
in 1896 and 1898, respectively,
published
Liki
See also Maksimilian
illustrations
the original
Voloshin,
by F?lix Vallotton.
fifty-three
and A. V Lavrov
V P. Kupchenko,
ed. V. A. Manuilov,
1988),
tvorchestva,
(Leningrad,
origi
as Liki
1988 edition
The
tvorchestva: Kniga
(St. Petersburg,
1914).
pervaia
nally published
himself.
of Liki
tvorchestva not published
volumes
contains
further
by Voloshin
to Charles
term documentation
Vallotton
13. The
belongs
Fedgal,
physio-psychologique
on
between
1775
and
28. Lavater's
1931),
(Paris,
mostly
composed
writings
physiognomy,
on
For the classical
and early
in his Essays
1778, can be found
1878).
(London,
Physiognomy
see Davide
The Face of Immortality:
of physiognomy,
traditions
modern
Stimuli,
Physiognomy
and Criticism
2004).
(Albany,
Grigola
12.
Robakidze,"
See Remy
de Gourmont,
of de Gourmont's
Gruziia9
Livre
572
Slavic Review
and es
that Parisians
foreigners,
recognize
provincials,
. . .The formation
a
moment
an
is
Russians.
of
mask
pecially
important
in the formation
is a sacred
of the human
face and personality.
The mask
its
Habeas
achievement
of
of
the
[zavoevanie]
Corpus,
individuality
spirit,
to
a
the right of our intimate
hidden
behind
formula,
general
feelings,
remain
inviolable."14
was in fact
an id?e re?ue whose most
Voloshin
vivid expres
echoing
sion can be found
in the controversial
Lettres philosophiques
(1829) by the
The
first and
Russian
Petr
Chaadaev.
nineteenth-century
philosopher
most
the "ani
famous
of Chaadaev's
contrasted
letters had negatively
the
mated"
and "expressive
with
of
southern
Europeans
physiognomies"
be
and
air"
of
Like
"mute
Russian
Chaadaev
faces.15
"strange vagueness"
fore him, Voloshin
indi
that Russia's
believed
of bourgeois
experience
was
dif
viduation
and physiognomic
hence
the
delineation
incomplete:
a Russian
to
not the
if
of
of
masks
book
ficulty,
comparable
impossibility,
facial
de
nakedness
Gourmont's.
in Russian
Published
under
administration
the Georgian
Menshevik
even as it defied
in 1919, Robakidze's
confirmed
thesis
Voloshin's
Portrety
the conclusion
from its French
drew. Portrety differed
Voloshin
implicitly
a narrative
at
two
in
least
De
book
lacked
Gourmont's
precursor
respects.
structure
to any
and did not seek to correlate
the lives of its selected
authors
or the
France
Robakidze's
world.
larger questions
facing
French-speaking
was
a
nation
of the Russian
book, by contrast,
essentially
Geistesgeschichte
and reflected
the powerful
ambivalence
with which
its author
regarded
was unwaver
at a time when Robakidze
the Russian
tradition.
Released
of the "Russian tragedy" and in his commitment
ing in his condemnation
to Georgia's
national
the book nonetheless
separate
destiny,
began with
a
to
dedication
"in
the distant
whose
boundless
Russia,
"loving"
steppes
can be heard." Robakidze
of the horses
thunder
of Apocalypse
limited
to a discussion
seen to embody
himself
of just four representative
figures,
the recent history of the Russian
the ro
Chaadaev,
spirit: the philosopher
mantic
Mikhail
Vasilii
Rozanov
the
fin-de-si?cle
thinker
Lermontov,
poet
and his own modernist
Andrei
list was far from
contemporary
Belyi. This
as the first thinker
The book opened
random.
"to have
with Chaadaev
. . . the first to
a lucid and
the
in
'Russian
posed
problem'
rigorous way,
in the Russian
have discerned
soul some kind of primordial
chaos."16
deep
successors
Chaadaev's
and Belyi had elaborated
Rozanov,
Lermontov,
for
14. Voloshin,
first
time
the
Liki
in this
122. In a fragment
tvorchestva,
states
1988 edition,
Voloshin
from
the
explicitly
Our
faces
same
that
period,
"Russia
published
is a country
[obnazhen
to
is harder
in which
are more
the culture
of masks
is poorly
bared
developed.
less self-conscious
too
But for that reason
nee] and
individuality
[soznatel'ny].
read. Everything
is muddled,
to class. For
still not distributed
undifferentiated,
according
a
a Russian
that reason
to make
it is difficult
sketch
of
that
its
face
would
convey
quick
character"
(404).
15. P. la. Chaadaev,
in
"Lettre
? une dame,
Lettres philosophiques
adress?es
premi?re,"
Polnoe
sobranie
sochinenii
16. Robakidze,
i izbrannye
pis'ma
9, 16.
(Moscow,
1991),
1:195.
Portrety,
Masks
of the Poet, Myths
of thePeople
573
an
different
Russian
of the same problem,
aspects
experience
essentially
of historical
cosmic
and
cultural
belatedness,
homelessness,
disharmony.
As if to test Chaadaev's
the fea
and Voloshin's
hypothesis
concerning
narra
his
of the Russian
Robakidze
tureless
"nakedness"
face,
grounded
on an
tive account
of the "Russian problem"
of
the
which
mask,
ontology
or de Gourmont.
more
he theorized
than had either Voloshin
complexly
The mask,
the metaphys
he claimed,
marked
the bifurcation
"between
or
As
it
ical and the historical
such,
implicitly
explicitly,
personality."17
as the
as well as
served
be
of
reconciliation
separation
Utopian
point
tween Robakidze's
such as body
and soul,
pairs,
operative
conceptual
the individual
and the nation.
The
self and other,
between
the
struggle
of
soul's desire
and the evident
for perfection
its
imperfections
empiri
was
in the unstable
cal embodiment
relationship
structurally
reproduced
of illustrations
between
the artist's "mask" and his "face." In the absence
to
first
the
book's
Vallotton's,
very
page began
illustratively,
comparable
of Chaadaev's
face: "Tall. Thin.
with a detailed
physiognomic
description
A shaven face: dry, pale, burnt out. The steely gaze of grey-blue
Slender.
stern line of the upper
of the lower: in
The
eyes.
lip, and the softness
a sovereign
skull:
intellect."
A
bare
irony.
combination?sharp
granite
a
one
was
to
"wear
his
moreover,
mask,"
Chaadaev,
by
ability
distinguished
account
In
of "inhuman
Robakidze's
individualism"
and demonic
pride.
a
the
the mask: both proved
physiognomy
complemented
sharply etched
a
nature
with
who
seemed
non-Russian
of
Chaadaev,
"foreigner
essentially
was to discard
a Russian
the alien mask
name." His true destiny,
however,
took a step in the other direction
of European
individuation:
"Chaadaev
. . .Chaadaev's
new face [litso] ap
into chaos
from solitude
and escaped
an
internal
within
the
face
."18
From a Dionysian
[v litse]
[lik]
pears:
visage
more
was
than
the
fleshly embodiment
nothing
perspective,
physiognomy
of the quotidian
mask: both had to give way to the true visage.
whose
in the case of Lermontov,
This became
apparent
dramatically
to find true embodiment.
In him the
had
failed
metaphysical
personality
his tragic mask
mask had remained
allowing
underdeveloped,
quotidian
to reveal
surface form. Polemiciz

itself, unchecked
by any countervailing
as
Lermontov's
had
identified
with
Vladimir
who
Solov'ev,
personality
ing
a
saw
as
Lermontov
who
and
Dmitrii
with
Merezhkovskii,
demonic,
spirit
Ler
identified
between
good and evil, Robakidze
vacillating
perpetually
as the Russian
mask
and
face
between
montov
in
the
distance
whom
figure
to an almost unendurable
minimum.
Here
the limited
had been reduced
to a more
truth. The romantic
essential
yielded
insights of physiognomy
a long
of
revealed
his
demonic
nature,
revolt,
spirit
poet's misanthropic
nature
an
incar
awareness
of
transient
of
the
all
for
transparency,
ing
was a tragic rather
than a demonic
nate form.19 In this sense Lermontov
one
"Lermontov
out of step with his time and place:
profoundly
figure,
17.
Ibid.,
18.
Ibid.,
27.
5-6.
19.
Ibid.,
21-28.
574
Slavic Review
that
into the world but found himself
outside world history?and
to
outside
is why his empirical
have
been
persona
completed
appeared
the growth of
history."20
was
notorious
denunciation
Robakidze
Chaadaev's
essentially
echoing
as an ahistorical
to
a
of Russia
he sought
and formless
entity,
premise
an
nation
he
the
Russian
discerned
between
strengthen
through
analogy
had
and its artists?including
Chaadaev
himself.
"Every artist," Robakidze
in "Eris suli da shemokmedeba"
written
soul
and
national
creation,
(The
act of creation
"is an organic
the
1913),
part of the nation's
body." In the
artist overcomes
the "empirical
of his "individuality,"
confines"
thereby
over into the soul of the nation."21
a constitutive?
"crossing
By asserting
es
and national
between
artistic personality
synecdochal?relationship
was able to invoke
the work and inner life of Russia's
sence, Robakidze
as a mirror
to the vicissitudes
his
writers
and intellectuals
of the Russian
rushed
torical
and
Lermontov's
Rozanov,
life, like those of Chaadaev,
experience.
an
becomes
in
"Russian
illustration
of
miniature
the
Belyi,
problem."
In this sense,
of
the mask
could be read as the artistic
individuation
as
the national
In
the
in
mask
the
artist
the
the
nation,
quest.
exposed
In the
and historical
embodiment.
gap between
metaphysical
potential
same article of 1913 we read: "If the nation
if it has
is no longer healthy,
was
lost its unity," the artist could produce
Georgia
only "sickly creations."
was "no
itself a "terrifying
of
this
malaise.
Since
example"
longer
Georgia
as a
whole"
and did not "exist in Georgians
the relation
living essence,"
had been
"Parts have remained
reversed:
part and whole
ship between
that themselves
seek to be the whole."
This was the national
equivalent
of the quotidian
to be Georgia,
mask:
felt himself
instead
every Georgian
essence.
of submerging
in the national
himself
In so far as they "had not
as one great whole,"
even the
felt Georgia
giants of nineteenth-century
to
literature
had
been
unable
Their
works of genius.
Georgian
produce
to
the
in
ideal
had
resulted
"disembodied
attempts
approximate
Georgian
at a time when
than "materialized
alle
rather
allegories"
symbols."22 Yet
was
to
to
the
the
and
mask
the
gory
giving way
symbol
mythic,
quotidian
now fell upon
the task of fulfilling
the national
the tragic artist.
destiny
an
The Georgians
here discovered
point of commonality
unexpected
as
seen
with the Russians.
had
its
national
subsumed
Just
Georgia
identity
so
too
the
Russian
had
the
Russians
established
their
by
empire,
empire
before
articulated
their own national
they had successfully
identity. How
ever
their historical
remain, Russia
divergent
paths had been and would
and Georgia
nevertheless
shared a recent
of
destiny
tragic incomplete
ness. The fundamental
difference
between
Russia and Georgia
lay in the
nature
an
of
their
national
In
influential
article
of 1915,
gendered
psyche.
the Russian
most
Nikolai
had
Berdiaev
that
Russia's
philosopher
argued
was its "lack of masculine
flaw"
that
of
character,
"dangerous
tempering
20.
Ibid.,
21.
Grigol
32.
Robakidze,
870, republished
22.
Robakidze,
"Eris suli da
shemokmedeba,"
Sakhalkho
in Sherisgulni (Tbilisi, 1994), 313.

"Eris
suli da
shemokmedeba,"
Sherisgulni,
314,
gazeti
(12 April
316-17.
1913),
bib
Masks of thePoet,Myths of thePeople
. . .
in the west.
that the traditions
of chivalry had fostered
personality
to
descend
Dio
The god Apollo,
has
the god of masculine
form,
upon
yet
is barbarian
than Hellenic."
rather
Dionysianism
nysian Russia. Russian
liberate
At the same time, no "transfusion
of western
could
elements"
diffuse
Russians
from their "slavery to elemental
ancestral
their
nature,"
to the feminine
soil. Berdiaev
called for
of the native
attachment
energies
of a "masculine,
within
formative
the discovery
individuated,
principle"
but also polemicizing
with him, Ro
Berdiaev
Russia
itself."23 Paraphrasing
a counterbalanc
feminine:
concurred
that Russia was essentially
bakidze
come
one
from abroad.
had
masculine
where
existed,
element,
always
ing
a sacrificial
for
lacked
the
basis
Russia
Yet for Robakidze
fundamentally
a
was
inter
of
and
masculine
thus
productive
"incapable
spirit
changing";
Robakidze's
of opposites
inconceivable.24
thus seemed
nal sexual coupling
a vivid evocation
of the sexless
sterility of the Russian
Portrety ends with
most
in
novel Petersburg,
cultural
Belyi's
registered
powerfully
synthesis,
to
crisis:
racial
"Andrei
and
its plot of familial
with
Belyi sought
collapse
to
it
like
the
the
the
sun,
Earth?but,
strength
fructify
lacking
approach
to throw out astral abortions."25
turned away from it and began
tradi
with the Russian
show a deep engagement
Robakidze's
writings
as
an
as
to
and
self
the
self-reflexive
well
tion,
uncanny
ability
deploy
Russia
itself.
of Russian
elements
critical
against
thought
philosophical
that Georgia
of these elements
could also be positively
It was by means
was of Russian
and
Yet however
critical Robakidze
contrasted.
imperialism
as
was not so much
its legacy, his vision for Georgia
"Diony
decolonizing
illustrated
is vividly
latter point
sian." The
interpretation
by Robakidze's
to have
event widely
considered
of a watershed
Georgia's
inaugurated
renaissance
The
of
the
twentieth
began,
century.
Georgian
experience
nationalist
and Christian
when
the liberal aristocrat
claimed
Robakidze,
and pub
writer
influential
Ilia Ch'avch'avadze,
Georgian
by far the most
informal
the nation's
of the day and widely
considered
lic figure
leader,
on 30
his
was assassinated
1907.26 The circumstances
surrounding
August
remain obscure. While we may never know at what organizational
murder
23. N. Berdiaev, Dusha Rossii (1915), republished
i natsional'nosti
voiny
24.
lished
(Moscow,
Robakidze,
Grigol
in Sherisgulni,
321?22.
1918),
"Rusetis
The
6,
in Sud'ba Rossii: Opyty po psikhologii
16.
Sakartvelo
t'ragedia,"
article
is essentially
832
(21 October
a critical
summary
1917),
repub
of Berdiaev's
theses.
25.
26.
57.
Robakidze,
Portrety,
See Aleksandre
Shushanashvili,
Lit'erat'uruli
mimokhilva,"
two of
fact four assassins,
Sakartvelo
them
"Ilia Ch'avch'avadzis
(23 February-1
who were
Bolsheviks,
March
tried
mk'vleloba:
Dok'ument'ebis
There
16-23.
1996):
to death
and sentenced
were
in
in 1909.
to Iran,
in 1919. Although
Berbich'ashvili,
resurfacing
escaped
of power
after
he was offered
in the assassination,
role
positions
veteran.
fate
as a Bolshevik
Berbich'ashvili's
a pension
and drew
the Bolshevik
takeover
role
reassessment
of Ch'avch'avadze's
the official
with
reversed
ideological
dramatically
to death
in 1941; during
the trial his links to the
and sentenced
in 1936. He was arrested
of the time
material
The
obscured.
Bolshevik
sought
published
party were
deliberately
see P'aat'a
mk'vleloba:
Ilia Ch'avch'avadzis
secret
service:
to
the tsarist
Gugushvili,
implicate
I. Odishvili,
Ts'its'amuris
masalebi
30; and
(Tbilisi,
1938),
(Tbilisi,
t'ragedia
Sagamomdzieblo
Another
he
never
1953),
assassin,
concealed
Gigla
his
34-35.
576
Slavic Review
was conceived,
the Bol
level the murder
evidence
implicates
convincingly
rival
to gain from the death of its moderate
shevik Left, which
had more
in the
to be viewed
than the tsarist police.
In any event the tragedy needs
internal Georgian
which
politics
light of the 1905 Revolution,
polarized
even as it hardened
between
the social democrats
and the nationalists
op
to the tsarist order. Robakidze's
of Ch'avch'avadze's
position
interpretation
own bloodied
was
not
murder
if
at
his
hand,"
original.
"Gazing
nothing
... A Geor
saw the face of Georgia.
he wrote
in 1917, the "murderer
renaissance
and from that feeling
the Georgian
began."
gian felt Georgia
the
elided
Robakidze's
of
assassination
Ch'avch'avadze's
mythic
reading
two most
to
Russian
forces
the
nationalism:
powerful
Georgian
opposed
the
movement.
For Robakidze,
and the local social democratic
empire
fratricidal
nationalists
social
conflict
between
and
democrats,
Georgian
was
over the national
divided
differences
by their profound
question,
resolved
the
in
inherent
Ch'avch'avadze's
"mystical
through
symbolism"
came
to identify with his victim on
death. The murderer,
he suggested,
we might
the basis of their shared nationality.
At that moment,
say, the
hid
had
of
mask
assassin
behind
the
which
quotidian
grievances
political
be
den was transformed
into a mythic
which
its
bearer
mask
through
came one with his victim.
was that victim
"Ilia Ch'avch'avadze
inexplicably
sacrificed
for the sake of a vision of Georgia's
desired
face."27 Nietzsche's
of the ritual basis of Greek
refracted
reading
through
tragedy,
perhaps
a
of
for
became
of Georgian
model
the generation
Christ,
Judas's betrayal
national
and
consciousness:
"Our martyrdom
is the passion
of Dionysus,
fire is the genius
of our life."28
was
if not consistent
in his application
of this model.
Robakidze
nothing
In a sonnet,
Ro
also of 1917, entitled
"Avt'omedalioni"
(Self-medallion),
amor
to be "a son of Hellas,
to [the
bakidze
claimed
faithful
of]
principle
"coat of arms contains
in
the medallion
of Dionysus
/ written
fatis," whose
as her sunny
fire" and whom
contrast
awaits
with
the
The
"Beauty
groom."
a heroic mas
"sterile" Russian
Belyi could not be clearer. For Robakidze,
to
in
the
traditions
of
gentry
culinity, grounded
Georgian
chivalry proper
as the
Russia
traditions
culture,
lacked, functioned
poet's
conspicuously
of authority.
mask
Yet the chivalrous
mask was itself only the
quotidian
outer face of a
transformation.
The final lines of the son
deeper mythic
net read: "Head
am a mirror
I
to
raised:
all eyes / and my mask
is
proudly
as
the
rind
of
metamor
For
Robakidze
the
for
Ivanov,
merely
change."29
of art into myth
the medium
of tragic sacrifice was fun
phosis
through
Without
damental.
would
remain an elitist pursuit,
unable
it, modernism
to perform
the task of imagining
and forging
the national
community.30
27.
Grigol
in
lished
28.
lished
Evrop'a
Grigol
in
Evrop'a
Robakidze,
tu azia?
Robakidze,
tu azia?
"Kartuli
renesansi,"
266.
(Tbilisi,
1997),
"Kartvel mts'erlebs,"
originally
originally
in Sakartvelo
257
in Sakartvelo
(1917),
(1917),
repub
repub
265.
29.
13 sonet'i (Tbilisi,
"Avt'omedalioni"
6.
Robakidze,
1999),
(1917),
Grigol
The
mask
of nationhood
in Robakidze
resembles
Ivanov's
Dionysian
closely
as the "national
of theater
see Ivanov,
of a collective
festive
advocacy
mysterium"
spirit:
"O veselom
i umnom
remesle
veselii"
Sobranie
3:68-69.
sochinenii,
(1907),
30.
Masks
of thePoet, Myths
The Name
bll
of thePeople
as Mask
was im
Robakidze's
the younger
modernists
among
authority
Georgian
mense.
Yet it is equally
Blue Horn
clear that the younger
poets attributed
an
to the
different
of
masks
and
the making
of
entirely
meaning
wearing
to
of
their
is
be
myths. The most
complete
expression
viewpoint
divergent
in the poet Valerian
found
article of 1922 "Dek'laratsia:
Gaprindashvili's
Akhali mitologia"
The new mythology),
which
summarized
(A declaration:
several years of shared poetic
practice.
"Today," declared
Gaprindashvili,
"the place of the Greek
If poetry
had
gods has been occupied
by poets.
once been
once Medusa
it is now Goethe's;
where
and the Gor
Apollo's,
Chant
[Allan Poe] and [Lautr?amont's
gons held sway, we now find Edgar
. . . Thus a new
is created,
de] Maldoror,
syphilis and bohemia.
mythology
are no
whose
heroes
created
longer gods but poets and the mannequins
No
less
them."31
than the displacement
of the gods by poets
is
by
striking
the ontological
to authors
accorded
and their protagonists.
equivalence
are
as "invented,"
Both
both
share one attribute?they
have
perceived
names.
For Gaprindashvili,
the granting
and owning
of names were
the
act:
use
to
essential
desires
of
"Modern
make
the poet's
poetry
mythic
and his magical
is the mirror
of
and equivalent
name, which
biography
. . . The
use of all names
must
his creation.
rev
make
that
induce
lyric
erie: historical,
and literary names,
the names
of cities and
geographical,
a
new
create
from
and
them
stones,
precious
mythology."
Gaprindashvili
as
all "nameless,
authorless
in
rejected
poetry"
"primitive." His authority
this regard was Th?ophile
Gautier
and the French
poets of the ?cole par
he prized not for their sculptural
of vision but
nassienne, whom
plasticity
to invoke the
their
for
distant and the geographically
capacity
historically
remote.
over
In their work
like chimeras,
stand watch
names,
"legendary
poetry."32
in many ways
the name
inverted
and Robakidze.
Ivanov had be
of
Gaprindashvili's
mythologization
the poetics
of myth
Ivanov
advocated
by
lieved that new myths
ought not to differ,
of the past: all myths,
old and new,
myths
transcendence
of authorship
and their
on the part of the
identification
spectator
of the modern
conceived
contrast,
myth
at best,
would,
spare
the
external
forms
from the
ontologically
speaking,
derived
their power from their
to induce
capacity
impersonal
or reader.33
by
Gaprindashvili,
as a rupture with
that
antiquity,
of
the
classical
world
while
empty
content.
If ancient myths
had arisen from the
ing them of their symbolic
narrative elaboration
of symbols,
then Gaprindashvili
derived
the basis of
was to
modern
from
the
of
itself.
This
semiotic
process
myth
symbolization
a
name.
In
be achieved
semiosis
of
the
its
proper
through
specific
simple
a
or fictional
the name denoted
indexical
per
given historical
capacity,
in the texts of Georgian
of names
The accumulation
sonage or location.
31.
Valerian
Gaprindashvili,
"Deklaratsia:
7 (November 1922): 10.

32.
S3.
i umnom
11.
Ibid.,
turn out to be kin
"Old myths
naturally
Sobranie
3:68.
veselii"
sochinenii,
(1907),
Akhali
mitolog?a,"
to the new."
Ivanov,
Meotsnebe
"O veselom
niamorebi
remesle
578
Slavic Review
as accre
also served a further
connotative function,
modernism,
however,
tive symbols of time and place, culture and history. The positive
aspect of
the name's
function was pedagogical:
it acquainted
connotative
Georgian
to which
readers with a range of historical
and aesthetic
they
experiences
had had no prior access.
Georgian
Simply put, the goal of broadening
name
cultural
horizons
and educating
its public was achieved
through
to
Yet
the
name's
from
indexical
denotation
passage
dropping.
symbolic
connotation
of meaning.
did not simply involve a quantitative
enrichment
an earlier article of 1921,
In "Sakhelebis
of names),
(The magic
magia"
a
name
wrote:
but it gradu
has
the
real content,
Gaprindashvili
"Initially,
own
of
and
becomes
its
itself
value
[sakutar ghirsebulad
ally purifies
reality
is today
from its original
iktseva]. Removed
soil, all of Greek mythology
to be found
own
in
in the magic
of names.
crucible
has
its
Today poetry
to tend its fire and takes
which
of
from
aim
The
principal
nothing
reality.
or
is to affirm and strengthen
invented
names."34
poetry
existing
Here we reach the heart of the Blue Horn
of lan
poets'
philosophy
a
to
To
func
become
had
abandon
its
denotative
the
guage.
symbol,
sign
or
context
tion by shedding
its original
and dematerializing
the object
to
"aris
In
which
it
had
the
referred.
this
names,
person
process,
proper
or
tocrats" of language,
of place. As the most
enjoyed
"magical"
pride
evocative
of words,
the names
suited
of people
and places were uniquely
as pure
to function
or historical
of cultural prestige
signifiers
import. One
a
of the most
act
of
Blue
invoked
Horn
the
of
tropes,
frequent
naming
sense of tradition,
as a
as a
less
continuum
than
envisaged
gal
temporal
to use
favorite word?in
lery of phantoms?"chimeras,"
Gaprindashvili's
names
to which
which
the historical
individuals
metonymically
displaced
referred
and
became
of
abstract
and
aesthetic
they
sensibility
metaphors
cultural
authority.
thesis curiously
echoes
the words of the great Russian
Gaprindashvili's
an
in
earlier
that
Mandel'shtam
article
poet Osip
expressed
published
same year: "Is the
master
is
the
of
The
word
word?
the
thing truly
Psyche.
as if
The
but freely chooses,
living word does not signify objects
seeking
a
to live, one or other
[veshchnost'],
place
objective
meaning,
thingliness
roams
dear body. And
the word
like the soul
the thing,
freely around
around
the body
it has abandoned
but not forgotten."35
This premise
34. Valerian
6
"Sakhelebis
Meotsnebe
niamorebi
(October
Gaprindashvili,
magia,"
and lu. M. Lotman
in
21. B. A. Uspenskii
that
"the
conscious
1921):
suggest
sign
mythic
ness
to the proper
names
is analogous
since
"it is precisely
in the sphere
of proper
name,"
so characteristic
that the identification
of the word
of mythic
and
the denoted
referent,
Izbrannye
Blue Horn
in which
the name
that
the bearer's
35.
B. A. Uspenskii
and
lu. M. Lotman,
in
"Mif?imia?kul'tura,"
istorii. Semiotika
300
1, Semiotika
(Moscow,
1994),
trudy, vol.
kul'tury
of the name might
be read as an extreme
form of this semiosis,
poetics
occurs."
representations,
Uspenskii,
301. The
no
refers
to its bearer
longer
are erased.
attributes
"Slovo
i kul'tura,"
but
becomes
Sochineniia
the bearer,
but
in such
v dvukh
a way
tomakh (Moscow,
1990),
in
then
1921,
published
May
repub
in Batumi,
lished
in June
in the newspaper
Iskusstvo.
1922
1920-1921,
Georgia,
During
Mandel'shtam
visited Georgia
twice: the Blue Horn
he subsequently
disowned,
group, whom
his acquaintance
mediated
with
culture.
Mandel'shtam's
heavily
Georgian
Concerning
2:171.
Osip Mandel'shtam,
was first
The
article
in the
almanac
Drakon
579
is enacted
in many
in Mandershtam's
Tris
of the finest poems
volume
which
the
senseless
celebrate
identified
"blessed
tia,
word,"
frequently
with
the proper
and Gaprindash
name.36
By 1921 both Mandel'shtam
a
to have evolved
vili appear
of
the
detached
and
floating
signi
theory
in fact visited Georgia
fier based on a poetics
of the name. Mandel'shtam
in the summer
of that year, fraternizing
the Blue Horn
and
with
poets
The
their
work,
Georgian
translating
poet's
including
Gaprindashvili's.
with Mandel'shtam's
article, or at least the views expressed
acquaintance
thus seems more
than likely. At the same time, it seems probable
therein,
of thought
rather
than a
that we are dealing
here with a convergence
was primarily
internal
dictated
the
article
by
quotation:
Gaprindashvili's
evolution
of Blue Horn
had motivated
moreover,
poetics. Mandel'shtam,
as a response
to the revolutionary
his trope of the word-as-soul
upheav
to counterbalance
als of the day, whose
chaos he sought
symbolically
a return
to Greek myth,
the Orphic
rite of kataba
through
specifically
name
as a break
the
sis. Gaprindashvili,
signifying
by contrast,
perceived
a
of
To
kind
cultural
eclecticism.
that permitted
with antiquity
liberating
revolt
it
Mandel'shtam's
acmeist
celebrated
the
put
differently,
despite
was ul
of language
his philosophy
otherworldliness,
symbolism's
against
more
to Ivanov
the
than
indebted
"symbolist" Gaprindashvili's
timately
was to Robakidze.
if ungenerous
article of
later, in a brilliant
Just months
for their
Horn
the
Blue
denounced
Mandel'shtam
1922,
poets
January
is
second
what
of French modernism,
"servile adulation
more,
received,
not
Mandel'shtam's
Russian
via
While
translations."37
inaccurate,
hand,
to expose what
the Blue
in that it sought
missed
the point,
observation
as
Could
the
cultural
mission.
Horn
their
flaunted
had
great
poets
always
erstwhile
friends
have
his
with which Mandel'shtam
vehemence
rejected
at the partial convergence
of their
also been due to the poet's discomfort
vision?
poetic
v
v Gruzii
o
see Aleksandr
Mandel'shtama
"Zametki
Parnis,
prebyvanii
Georgia,
a
P. M.
and Cesa,
in Magarotto,
211-26;
eds., LAvanguardia
Marzaduri,
Tiflis,
iGruziia,"
in Osip Mandel'shtam,
Tiflis
snitsia: Osip Mandel'shtam
gorbatyi
and P. M. Nerler
(Tbilisi,
ocherki,
stat'i, ed. G. G. Margvelashvili
Stikhotvoreniia,
perevody,
Vtoraia
N. la. Mandel'shtam,
Fantasticheskii
173-76;
Nikol'skaia,
376-86;
1990),
kniga
gorod,
135-36.
76-84
and Trena
(Paris,
1987),
1983),
(Paris,
kniga
snova"
soidemsia
"V Peterburge
36. See Osip Mandel'shtam,
Sochineniia,
(1920),
my
to the
dedicated
"Solominka"
and Mandel'shtam's
1:110-11,
Sochineniia,
1:132,
(1916),
visits
to
1921
godu,"
"Mne
Nerler,
a sui
of
incantation
which
contains
Salom?
Andronikashvili,
generis
beauty
we
mention
names
Mandel'shtam's
called
"blessed
words."
interest,
Finally,
might
proper
na Afone"
such as "I ponyne
in the poems
of his first collection
manifested
(1915),
Kamen',
believed
that the
who
in the heresy
of the imiabozhtsy
Sochineniia,
1:102,
(God-namers),
as a
name
the imiabozhtsy
of God was
divine.
Irina Paperno
heresy
plays down
inherently
on Mandel'shtam.
of the Word:
"On the Nature
influence
Theological
Paperno,
positive
Irina
in Robert
P. Hughes
and
with
the Symbolists,"
of Mandelshtam's
Sources
Dialogue
the Eastern
Slavs
vol. 2 of Christianity
and
in Modern
Russian
Culture
ed.,
Times,
Paperno,
of "Tristia"
the poems
their philosophical
Whatever
287-310.
1994),
origins,
(Berkeley,
in the work
found
the process
a dematerialization
that echoes
of the word
enact
frequently
of the Blue Horn
poets.
o
iskusstve"
"Koe-chto
37. Mandel'shtam,
Sochineniia,
1922),
(January
gruzinskom
2:263.
Georgian
580
Slavic Review
the mask
For Gaprindashvili,
the name
could do to its referent,
what
did to the personality
of its bearer:
"The [actor's] goal consists of negating
to give
his own personality,
it the background
and soil upon which
making
to another
is
if
he
Macbeth
T
is
birth
The
scattered:
actor's
personality.
The
Faust the day after, ad infinitum."
today, he must be Lear tomorrow,
sense of self, be
more
even
an
if
elastic
endowed
with
was,
poet
anything,
terms, both a "director" and "actor" of selves, the creator
ing, in theatrical
"The
a universal
The
and his creation.
theater
thus became
paradigm:
life too is finally a
Our
life
and
is
theater was produced
life's
by
analogue.
As a peren
theater and each of us an actor. The theater
is a masquerade.
the truth as a symbol.
nial mask,
the actor in his creative work embodies
in
The philosophy
of symbolism
of the theater
is akin to the philosophy
sofar as every symbol
is a mask of the truth."38 Although
Gaprindashvili's
seem to echo the ideas of the Russian
Evre
words
theater director Nikolai
whereas
shared
both
Robakidze
drew
his
from
Nietzsche,
inov,
inspiration
a desire
to project
the modalities
of theater onto life itself. For Robakidze,
on nationhood,
of which
life was founded
the poet was a tragic?and
sense of
hence
and T'itsian's
impersonal?embodiment.
Gaprindashvili
a
was
that was
the nation,
mediated
individual
cult
of
the
contrast,
by
by
in turn inflected
and
clan.
the
communal
solidarities
of
group
by
as Harlequinade
History
is a trope of artifice as well as of mystery;

it suggests both surface
It
and
hidden
and
concealment
yet also
play
depth.
implies
deception,
in and through
allows a truth to be discerned
the sensuous
image. The
a
as
to
Blue Horn
invented
and
celebrated
but
mask
be
poets
personhood,
discarded.
rite but
of artistic activity was not the sacrificial
Their paradigm
the masquerade.
the masquerade
Both
and the ritual of sacrifice viewed
a
the individual
did
within
collective
body, but the former
participatory
not impose a shared
on a cathartic
of
be
based
transformation
meaning
or
not
The
affect
but
its
did
ing.
masquerade
preclude
suffering,
physical
sense of
risked
and
the
distinction
surface
between
play
depth,
eroding
artifice
is a
and authenticity.
The masquerade,
Efrat Tse?lon,
suggests
"statement
the wearer,"
its case. It is
about
about whom
it "overstates"
thus "a caricature"
the relationship
"essence
and
that questions
between
as
with
The
appearance,"
"certainty
masquerade
replacing
reflexivity."39
sumes a
a
rather
between
than
radical
convergence,
provisional
identity,
the mask
and its wearer.
was the Blue Horn
The Italian commedia
dell'arte
poets' ' chief prece
den t and model.
The extraordinary
revival of commedia
dell arte in Russian
The mask
38.
1919),
1990),
Valerian
republished
485-86.
"Msakhiobi,"
Gaprindashvili,
in Leksebi,
p'oema,
targmanebi,
in Khelovneba
2
(November
originally
arkividan
esseebi, ts'erilebi, mts'erlis
(Tbilisi,
39. Efrat Tse?lon,

"Introduction:
and Identities,"
in Efrat Tse?lon,
ed.,
Masquerade
on Gender,
and Identities:
and
(New York,
2001),
Masquerade
Essays
Sexuality
Marginality
A historical
account
of the origins
to
2-3.
of the modern
its relationship
carnival
and
can be found
British
fiction
in Terry
and Civiliza
Castle's
eighteenth-century
Masquerade
tion: The
in Eighteenth-Century
Culture
and Fiction
(Stanford,
1986).
Carnivalesque
Masks
of the Poet, Myths
581
of thePeople
and European
circles iswell known.40 The characters,
modernist
traces in
structures
left deep
and
of the commedia
masks,
plot
set de
and
Russian
ballet,
theater,
poetry,
turn-of-the-century
painting,
numerous
were
a
source
currents
for
artistic
that
of
sign. They
inspiration
were
in themselves
of
the
the
from
refined
aesthetes
World
quite diverse,
a
in charting
of Art to the figures who were
instrumental
sym
path beyond
as
and Evreinov.
such
the
theater
Vsevolod
directors
Meierkhol'd
bolism,
symbolist
costumes,
a popular
of this revival was that it transformed
fairground
paradox
into a
and
its stock characters,
art, with
action,
buffoonery,
improvised
its
naturalism?with
rarefied
but pointed
of
theatrical
underly
critique
and human
individuation?
about realist representation
ing assumptions
as well as into a subtler corrective
to symbolism?with
its preference
for
as a form of arti
was
The
and
commedia
myth
archetype.
appropriated
ironize metaphysical
illu
could
when
fice, which,
parodically
deployed,
a sense of
to
their
loss
still
sions and sentimental
while
ascribing
hopes,
in the emotional
affect it engendered.
less tragic than brittle
pathos
out Alek
of 1916, T'itsian
himself
In his first manifesto
singled
The
booth),
(The little fairground
by
staged
play Balaganchik
"Sonnet boiteux"
in 1906, along with Paul Verlaine's
poem
as
urban
sensi
of a contemporary
reflections
(Lame sonnet),
exemplary
nature
and
the
truths
become
in
"artist
and
have
which
separated"
bility
as the
no longer
For Blok,
convince.41
culture"
of "the old patriarchal
the
seriousness
of
his
first
high
poetic
visionary
phase dissolved,
insights
of lyric,
of symbolist metaphysics
gave way to a grotesque
juxtaposition
of
the
In
his
comic
strains.
related
and
poems
by
period
inspired
tragic,
"V chas, kogda
the commedia
dell'arte?"Dvoinik"
1903),
(The double,
the narcissi
become
drunk,
1904),
(In the hour when
nartsissy"
p'ianeiut
and
booth,
1906)?Blok
(1905),
"Balag?n" (The fairground
"Balaganchik"
the
the zanni or valet-buffoons,
with
would
particularly
identify himself
dreamer
broken-hearted
his
the
naive
rival
while
quick-witted
Harlequin,
had
became
hero of Blok's play. Symbolist
the primary
Pierrot,
allegory
meta
not
shift
the
the
from
but
and
mystery
rapid
ambiguity
permitted
In his
this possible.
to the comic.
mask made
commedic
The
physical
on Balaganchik,
that the "magical
thus asserted
own writings
Meierkhol'd
to reveal an "enormous
of the mask"
diversity
lay in its capacity
power
sandr Blok's
Meierkhord
in the modernist
imagination,
The Com
The Triumph
of Pierrot:
For the Russian
mod
87-95.
media delVarte and
1986),
(New York,
Imagination
Commedia
in Petrograd:
Pierrot
see
informative
ernist
context,
Clayton's
richly
J. Douglas
and Drama
Russian
Theatre
in Twentieth-Century
1994).
(Montreal,
Olga
dell'arte/Balag?n
on the Russian
dell'Arte
the
Italian
Commedia
of
Masks:
The
Partan,
Impact
"Recurring
us that the commedia
informs
Artistic
2004)
(PhD diss., Brown
University,
Imagination"
as a
Anna
and was fostered
in the eighteenth
Russia
dell'arte
entered
by Empress
century
a
and acquired
local forms
It fused with
entertainment.
form of courtly
valency
popular
in the modern
once more
into an elite form
and was elevated
in the nineteenth
century
in nineteenth-century
theater
of carnivalized
forms
of popular
For the history
ist period.
Theatre
The Russian
Carnival
see Catriona
Petrushka:
Russia,
(Cambridge,
Puppet
Kelly,
Eng.,
a broad
For
40.
see Martin
Green
1990).
41. Titsian
rcheuli
leksebi,
history
and John
theModern
Tabidze,
esse (Tbilisi,
of
the
Swan's
role
of
somewhat
Qants'ebit
"Tsisperi
82-83.
1999),
the
commedia
diffuse
[I],"
book
in Tamar
Barbakadze,
ed.,
Sonet'ebi,
582
Slavic Review
was a "foolish buffoon,

of character."
a
servant who
Harlequin
roguish
seems
wear
a
to
is hidden
What
cheerful
But
look
closer!
always
grin.
the mask? Harlequin
behind
enchanter
and
the all-powerful
the
wizard,
. . .This chame
the
infernal
of
the
powers.
magician;
Harlequin
emissary
of
leonic power,
concealed
the expressionless
beneath
[lichinoi]
visage
the comedian,"
but animated
movement
and
"en
the
actor's
gesture,
by
dows theater with
the enchanting
Is it not the mask
play of chiaroscuro.
the spectator
that helps
fly away to the land of make-believe?"42
Although
Meierkhol'd
had insisted on the importance
in "creatively
of the spectator
out
the hints provided
filling
[dorisovyvat']
by the stage,"43 the modern
ist redaction
of the commedia
nonetheless
lacked what Mikhail
Bakhtin
as the
would
have recognized
and
collective
properly
regenerative
phe
nomenon
of carnivalized
In its absence
the link between
the
laughter.44
crowd and the actor was weakened,
and the stock figures of the commedia
resonate
as in Verlaine's
either as lonely emblems
of modern
alienation,
or
as
an
as in
"Pierrot"
voices
of
ironic
(1881),
engagement,
Jules
worldly
's
1885).
Laforgue
Complaintes
(Complaints,
Unlike
of his own to overcome.
Blok, T'itsian had no symbolist dogmas
His poetics was one of open citation
and radical assimilation,
chief
whose
a
of
strat
the
become
would
itself
influence,
consequence,
anxiety
poetic
was
His
the
directed
Russian
egy.
agonistic
struggle
against
symbolists,
whom
he read avidly but also critiqued,
rather than against Robakidze.
Al
not
sen
did
T'itsian
Robakidze's
call
for
his
though
reject
myth-creation,
was
In his poetry,
decadent
rather than high-symbolist.
sibility
essentially
the masked
of
to
the
not
did
commedia
function
unmask
figures
prior
a
illusions
but to compliment
that was itself disenchanted.
Char
myth
for the Blue Horn
this myth was tribal. It concerned
poets,
acteristically
a
the ancient
Semitic
who
ruled Babylonia
until
the
Chaldeans,
people
sixth century BCE. In his Kartveli
eris ist'oria (History of the
peo
Georgian
Ivane Javakhishvili
historian
that the
ple, 1913), the prominent
speculated
names
of some Georgian
tribal communities,
the Svans,
among
especially
were
to the
related
never
"khalde."45
etymologically
ethnonym
Although
a his
the
Chaldean
advanced
corroborated,
subsequently
hypothesis,
by
torian of immense
coincided
with
and
the rise of nationalism
influence,
42.
Vsevolod
Meierkhol'd,
1917 (Moscow, 1968), 218-19.
"Balag?n,"
Stat'i,
pis'ma,
43. Meierkhol'd,
"O teatre,"
Stat'i, pis'ma,
rechi,
on
discusses
views
Ivanov's
theater
sympathetically
them for his own notion
of theatrical
artifice.
44.
mantic
Bakhtin
literature
of
that the reappearance

argues
is in fact a "new form
for
of
the
rechi,
besedy.
Chast'
pervaia.
1891
besedy, 141. In this article Meierkhol'd

to
but essentially
seeks
appropriate
the grotesque
expression
of
in pre-Romantic
an individual,
and Ro
subjective
of the world
far from
the
quite
popular-carnivalesque
perception
in past centuries."
Mikhail
Tvorchestvo
Fransua
Rabie
i narodnaia
Bakhtin,
kul'tura
i renessansa
srednevekov'ia
One
40-43.
that
Conn.,
1986),
argue
(Orange,
might
the modernist
revival
of the commedia
a new
is a later stage of the same process,
whereby
means
to express
a once
individuation
is abstracted
from
form.
subjective
popular
Ivane Javakhishvili,
45.
Kartveli
eris ist'oria:
5th ed.
412.
(Tbilisi,
1960),
Ts'igni p'irveli,
Cf. also R. Chkheidze,
a survey of the Chaldean
Kaldeas
monat'reba
in
(Tbilisi,
2002),
myth
literature.
Georgian
perception
that had
the world
existed
583
as elsewhere,
in Georgia.
In Georgia
modernism
aesthetic
modernism
was not
a vehicle
of
modernization:
cultural
it
involved
merely
reimagin
of multiple
historical
the intersection
ing and managing
temporalities,
to the archaic. As such, the Chaldean
from the contemporary
hypothesis
attractive
and Robakidze.
both to T'itsian
proved
immensely
as
The Chaldeans
in
had been renowned
steeped
priests and scholars
In
and
unfinished
but
T'itsian's
astronomy
important
lyric cycle
astrology.
a Chaldean
"Kaldeas kalakebi"
the poet claimed
(The cities of Chaldea),
for his own family of hereditary
Imeretian
pro
priests,
lineage
thereby
an
Christian
back
into
pagan past: "O
jecting
infinitely
receding
Georgia
. . . / And
shadows of my ancestors,
I shall not disappoint
if I cannot
you
a
once
utter a liturgy / to myself
I
At
shall
least
/
/ to the
perform
requiem
for T'itsian was continuity
of stock rather than of
world."46 What mattered
a
that would
be broken
values,
ultimately
by T'itsian
continuity
religious
a "belated acolyte,"
the last in his line.
himself,
and fusing philological
specu
family and national
Collapsing
history
lation with
the fin-de-si?cle
of
claimed
for
T'itsian
topos
degeneration,
a venerable
a
marked
imitation
and
and
decline.47
past
present
by
Georgia
Far from being
with nationalism,
was, for
incompatible
literary decadence
The
its
the Blue Horn
and
aesthetic
deca
historical
group,
precondition.
an
dent poet,
burdened
self-aware,
ironically
by history,
epigone
flaunting
a
of influence,
became
instead of concealing
his own anxieties
metaphor
own belated
to modern
In a num
for Georgia's
nationhood.
aspirations
events
historic
im
ber of T'itsian's
the
of
1917-18,
poems
penned
during
a
effects
of
from
transformation
the
commedia
dell'arte
agery
grotesque
itself is called
"another
the
the Chaldean
national myth: Georgia
theater,"
a
becomes
astrologer-mage
"juggler of stars" and "king of the fairground
a
sea of wise mages,
see coming
"I
booth
/ A
ghostly
[balaganis mepe]":
a caravan of actors. / I do not fear losing my soul
and
mummer,
juggler
I perform
the old play once more."
Let
/ And
along with my dear brothers
of Queen
T'itsian
the "annalists
chronicle
the deeds
Tamar,"
concluded,
the
"Columbine's
while he wept over his beloved
torment."48 Throughout
never
lose
its
would
Menshevik
T'itsian's
grotesquely
patriotism
period,
If in "2 April,"
the fateful day in 1918 when
the Turks
commedic
edge.
Pierrot briefly dons "Garibaldi's
red hat,"
the port city of Batumi,
to disease
and dis
is not to resist but to mourn
and succumb
coincided
with
of
the
Chaldean
last
T'itsian's
poems
cycle
integration.49
the
takeover. While
T'itsian
1921, the year of the Bolshevik
acknowledges
to "weep," his tragic presentiment
and self-sacrifice
of apocalypse
desire
a lucid strain of Laforguian
is counterbalanced
po
irony, in which
by
overtook
his call
46. T'itsian
T'abidze,
"Magi
ts'inap'ari"
(1916),
Leksebi,
p'oemebi,
proza,
ts'erilebi
(Tbilisi,
1985), 75.
47.
Nordau's
The
formulation
clearest
Degeneration
Decadent
Imagination
48. T'itsian
T'abidze,
p'oemebi,
49.
proza,
T'itsian
of fin-de-si?cle
Neb.,
(1892; Lincoln,
in Russia's
Fin de Si?cle
2006).
(Madison,
is of
degeneration
See also Olga
theory
Matich,
2005).
and "Kaldeas
balagani"
(1917)
"Balaganis
mepe"
83.
80-81,
"Ori ap'rili,"
T'abidze,
Leksebi, p'oemebi,
Erotic
course
(1918),
ts'erilebi,
proza,
ts'erilebi,
Max
Utopia:
83.
The
Leksebi,
584
Slavic Review
with a patchwork
its violence
the blows of history, deflecting
etry parries
emotions.
and
second-hand
of received
inherited
gestures,
quotations,
an
entire
In an important
of 1923, summing
article
up
literary epoch
would
altered
but not yet shattered
positively
by Soviet power, T'itsian
was
contrast
jus
"poetry's ultimate
irony with cynicism.
Irony, he claimed,
of French
the "national justification"
tification,"
poetry. Russia,
certainly
had "responded
of its mystical
impulse,
by the "formlessness"
prompted
to French
of
Russian
The
with
cynicism
supreme
example
irony
cynicism."
most
radical
was zaum', or trans-sense
poetry,
by futurism's
represented
and
Il'ia
"41Q"
led
Aleksei
the
Zdanevich,
group
Kruchenykh,
wing,
by
dis
the
in
had
resided
under
all
of
Tbilisi
whom
recently
Igor' Terent'ev,
not elaborate
the distinction
T'itsian
did
solved Menshevik
government.50
to
the French
content
in theoretical
terms, remaining
align himself with
and
Tristan
Arthur
tradition
of Charles
Corbi?re,
Baudelaire,
Rimbaud,
retain
to the Russian.
in opposition
de Lautr?amont
Comte
Defiantly
two years after the advent
orientation
European
ing his cosmopolitan
avant
to
in Georgia,
T'itsian
continued
of Soviet power
play the typical
the
Yet
of
supreme
irony,
one-upmanship.
perhaps
gardist game
partisan
was the gap between
trends on the
and Russian
for T'itsian,
European
one hand,
"The absence
of a literary
and Georgian
reality on the other.
nature
even the
narrow field of our
the
imported
activity,"
background,
as
had
from
it
did
of the revolution
mail
itself, arriving
Petrograd,"
"by
to
and
don
masks
elsewhere
Horn
made
the
Blue
already
poets
propelled
worn
out
Masked
from
use.51
Nation,
Sociability:
and Cultural
Gender,
Importation
of the commedic
mask was not just
The Blue Horn
poets'
adaptation
a kind of aesthetic
to filter
the extraordinary
It
them
allowed
solipsism.
a theatricalized
life itself. By na
of
vision
of
the
time
through
upheavals
ture the
the literary text and
distinction
blurred
the
between
masquerade
a fluid continuum
in creating
artistic behavior.
The role of performance
art and life had been widely
in symbolist
and postsym
between
debated
in Russia.
Iurii M. Lotman
bolist circles
has shown that even in the early
life had granted
models
of everyday
as a "historical
and
of existing
person"
in civic and military
affairs in ways that
of the state.52 In the modernist
period,
nineteenth
theatricalized
century,
nobleman
the possibility
to intervene
the agency
wielding
the
encroached
upon
monopoly
Russian
50.
"Iron?a da
T'abidze,
9 (January
niamorebi
1923),
In fact
28-31.
(St. Petersburg,
2002),
on
collaborated
with
the "41?" group
tsinizmi:
T'itsian
Meotsnebe
Problema
10. Cf.
also
memartskheneobis
T. L. Nikol'skaia,
Avangard
Horn
coexisted
had earlier
poets
the Blue
p'oeziashi,"
i okresnosti
and
even
a rup
terms. This
reflects
article
amicable
relatively
ture
futurist
that
and by the emergence
of a Georgian
group
provoked
largely by Terent'ev,
scene.
was
domination
of the Georgian
the Blue Horn
literary
challenging
poets'
niamorebi
10 (Decem
51. T'itsian
"Dadaizmi
da tsisperi
Meotsnebe
T'abidze,
qants'ebi,"
ber 1923), 14.

52.
lu.
M.
Lotman,
Nineteenth-Century
sian Culture,
ed. Ann
Culture,"
Shukman
"The
Theatre
in lu. M.
as
of Early
Theatricality
Components
The Semiotics
and B. A. Uspenskij,
of Rus
1984),160.
and
Lotman
(Ann Arbor,
585
to the narrower
became
confined
field of an artistic
agency
as
even
a
to
it
continued
claim
wider
As
coterie,
symbolic
significance.
in
the
first
time
for
world
poetry
Gaprindashvili
poets
argued,
"perhaps
...
a fable out of their own
to make
desired
personal
friendships.
Intimacy
a
is the trait which
in world
endows
the Blue Horn
poets
special place
theatrical
poetry."53
mean
did Gaprindashvili
What
for him
(int'imoba), which
by "intimacy"
of Georgian
For the Blue Horn
defined
the uniqueness
modernism?
poets,
out of a group dynamic,
itself emerged
in which both erotic desire
selfhood
were
and a male
homosocial
cult of poetic
communicated
comradeship
a
or
even
not
series
of
masks.
through
Intimacy
belonged
only,
primar
to a
in the
world.
On
the
it
externalization,
contrary,
ily,
private
required
form of signs?names,
gestures,
poems
reciprocal
quotations,
dedicatory
was intersubjective?as
and masks?whose
part of a group
significance
or even scan
to provoke
social?in
its capacity
code?and
reaction
public
dal. Identity was interactive,
and
marked,
semiotically
poetically
charged.
The most paradoxical
of scandalous
intimacy was the poetry
example
Between
in the
of Elene Dariani.
1915 and 1924 fourteen
poems
appeared
name.
all
of
under
her
Dariani's
press
po
Practically
Georgian
periodical
ems
own journals,
in the Blue Horn
six in the
including
appeared
poets'
name
two almanacs
of 1916 that launched
the movement:
Dariani's
thus
and
became
associated
with
the
its
collective
group
program.
inextricably
never
the public:
her poems were
Dariani
herself
before
read,
appeared
and with verve, by Iashvili. Georgian
literature
had known
consistently
so
none
no major women
with female
poets,
overtly concerned
certainly
verse
Her
traversed
the vast
and sensuous
desire
miraculously
longing.
on a young woman
from
distance
between
the social constraints
imposed
world
of
Euro
the Georgian
and
the
unfettered
cosmopolitan
provinces
her feminine
Dariani's
honor, while
pean bohemia:
invisibility vouchsafed
as to her identity and
life.
Her verse
intense
speculation
private
provoking
was thus doubly
candor
of
Akhmatova
the
erotic
Anna
novel,
combining
a Russian
woman
the enigma
of Cherubina
de Gabriak,
with
poet who
an assumed
name and persona,
under
intense
specula
causing
published
of 1909 as to her iden
the autumn
tion in Russian
literary circles during
extent
than de Gabriak,
To an even greater
appearance.
tity and physical
a
to
it
turned
had written
hoax:
Iashvili
Dariani
be
out,
himself,
(as
proved
her verse.54
well as promoted)
shifts
of a female
The appearance
lyric voice has often marked
epochal
the po
In early nineteenth-century
in sensibility
and sociability.
Russia,
had signaled
the emer
Pavlova and Zinaida Volkonskaia
etry of Karolina
of
the early
salons
from
the
aristocratic
of women's
gence
literary
writing
an institution
to Nikolai
Karamzin's
nineteenth
central
program
century,
10-11.
"Dek'laratsia,
states that the deception
until
remained
1924 and re
unexposed
a woman
in 1909,
invented
calls the figure
Lalanne,
poet
Apollinaire
by Guillaume
e teoria
as another
"Storia
for Dariani.
dell'avanguardia
Magarotto,
precedent
possible
a
in Magarotto,
and Cesa,
eds., L'Avanguardia
Marzaduri,
(1915-1924),"
Tiflis,
georgiana
XX sauk'unis
kartuli mts'erloba
288-89.
Nik'oleishvili,
60, Cf. also Avtandil
2002),
(Kutaisi,
53.
Gaprindashvili,
54.
Luigi
Magarotto
of Louise
586
Slavic Review
strove for a literary norm

that approximated
reform, which
literary
cen
conversational
interaction
between
the sexes. In the early twentieth
the
of
of
before
Zinaida
and
her, had
Akhmatova,
tury
poetry
Gippius
the
identities
widened
of
and
erotic
range
radically
experience
gender
in verse. The Blue Horn
who recog
poets were modernizers
expressible
nized
the necessity
of these shifts as an essential marker
In the
of change.
of an enabling
absence
of
local context,
task
the
assumed
they
performing
a
to
the cultural
transformations
they wished
instigate. The mask became
of
figure
imported modernity.
a view of
The
commedic
masks
of the Blue Horn
poets
suggested
was
and
national
from
different
Robakidze's
that
gender
identity
clearly
mask was based on the wearer's
radical
identi
trag?die mask. Robakidze's
an
fication with a superior masculine
whose
with
force
coincided
potency
sense
of
national
the
commedic
masks
empowered
destiny.
By contrast,
or fluid
of the Blue Horn
poets were based on provisional
convergences
to the his
identities:
from the performative
of
Dariani-Iashvili
femininity
of
their
and consciously
of T'itsian,
enfeebled
torically belated
masculinity
a far more
sense of
masks
nationhood,
conveyed
precarious
Georgia's
at the price of importing
whose
and ma
identity could only be conceived
the
of
Russia.
and
nipulating
sign systems
Europe
Modernism,
Theatricality,
and Popular
Culture
In both Russia
and Georgia
of theatricality
and the accoutre
questions
ments
of performance
more
marked
than just the interface
between
the
native and the foreign.
also
addressed
the
between
cul
gap
They
popular
tural practice
and the abstract models
of nationhood
promoted
by the
modernist
?lites.
Ivanov's
revival
of
had
been
intended
literary
tragedy
to widen
narrow
social base and bridge
the acutely
precisely
symbolism's
so
characteristic
of
modern
Russian
between
the
perceived
gulf,
history,
a
move
and
the
Such
viewed
has
been
intelligentsia
people.55
skeptically
historian
Catriona
that the symbolists,
by the cultural
Kelly, who asserts
and their interest
in popular
dra
[their] democratic
"despite
posturing,
. . . tended
matic
in a passive
forms
to ignore
the genres which
had
sense,
collective
in
roman
Russia."
This
in
"their
resulted
appeal
contemporary
ticisation
of distant
forms of popular
to the
culture
and their blindness
near."56 The artistically
tension
the
the
between
and
productive
foreign
came
to obscure
native
the more
between
culture
gap
threatening
high
and popular
forms.
a similar
T'itsian's work betrays
set of anxieties.
Even as he freely ac
the
nature
of
simi
T'itsian
knowledged
imported
Georgian
symbolism,
had
in
a
back
1916
insisted
that
modernism
would
find
fertile
local
larly
soil in the widespread
for
"In
the
Georgian
propensity
acting:
Georgian
there lives an immortal
to be someone
actor's soul. It always wants
people
55.
See
Viacheslav
Ivanov,
"Vagner
i Dionisovo
Deistvo"
(1905),
Sobranie
2:84-85.
56.
Kelly,
Petrushka,
146-47.
sochinenii,
587
wear
woman
of life. Why does a Georgian
it loves the theatricalization
a
in
This
fashion.
has
is
not
the
It
after
all
fault
of
long history
makeup?
our country. The reason here is also the same: acting and the theatricaliza
about
intuition
based on a genuine
tion of life."57 This passage,
although
two
intertwines
implicit quotations
sociability,
characteristically
Georgian
Le peintre de la vie moderne
the first from Baudelaire's
from foreign
authors,
else,
from the Russian

theater
of modem
the second
life, 1863),
(The painter
as such,
in
Evreinov's
treatise Teatr kak takovoi (Theater
director
1913),
In a passage
life" was first advanced.
of "theatricalizing
the concept
which
as the tri
had praised makeup
Baudelaire
entitled
"Eloge du maquillage,"
the signs
ornament
"one
of
over nature,
of
artifice
and
finery
being
umph
as common
to the "savage" as
human
of
the
of the primitive
soul,"
nobility
an imme
to modern
somewhat
had spoken
similarly of
society.58 Evreinov
of nature."
the "appearances
"theatrical
instinct" for transforming
morial
was
in that its transfor
This
claimed
Evreinov,
instinct,
"pre-aesthetic,"
was "more
than the formalizing
accessible"
and
mative
primitive
impulse
sense
a
was distinguished
of art.59 Theatricality
by
spontaneous
impulse
to any
a random
will to become
but irrepressible
of artifice,
other, prior
to theater
or form. As such it was not confined
of beauty
considerations
the
If
traced
Nietzsche
of
life.
over
into
wider
but
alone,
spheres
spilled
it into
dissolved
then Evreinov
to Dionysian
of
back
theater
ritual,
origins
traits of early human
the diffuse
body
tattooing,
society:
anthropological
the popular
embraced
the like. Evreinov
and
facial
adornment,
piercing,
than high art and as histori
as more
and the primitive
vitally expressive
the impasse between
a means
of overcoming
to it, suggesting
cally prior
of life.
the pulsating
and
the artist's solipsistic
energies
subjectivity
1919 and
a year in Tbilisi
between
Evreinov
spent nearly
Although
with
his views on theater and life, T'itsian's
1920 propagating
acquaintance
Like Evreinov,
his visit to Georgia.60
theories
Evreinov's
clearly preceded
to invoke a spontaneously
however
T'itsian was also seeking,
tentatively,
and merry
of feasting,
its traditions
lifeworld. With
theatrical
toasting,
Horn
Blue
the
life
poet
certainly
provided
everyday
Georgian
making,
to embody
their own sense of group
in which
forms
the convivial
with
than any
It was surely these forms, more
interaction.
and poetic
sociability
to
neutral
Blue Horn
the
that
allowed
sense of cultural
poets
inferiority,
their
with
collaborate
and frequently
and coexist
differences
ize internal
were
aesthetic
whose
Russian
in
the
principles
avant-garde,
counterparts
the Menshevik
to their own, during
often antithetical
years. Yet the great
57.
58.
For
Baudelaire
between
aesthetic
shared
59.
cow,
Tabidze,
Charles
the
"Tsisperi Qants'ebit
Constantin
Baudelaire,
between
the distinction
civilized
and
in a way that would

antinaturalism.
Nikolai
Evreinov,
46.
43, 44,
2002),
60. Evreinov's
by Nikol'skaia,
activities
Fantasticheskii
the primitive.
have been
"Teatralizatsiia
[I]," 92.
de la vie moderne
Guys: Le peintre
transcended
and nature
artifice
Evreinov
alien
exalted
to Baudelaire.
zhizni:
in Georgia,
widely
166-70.
gorod,
Ex
1925),
in the
Demon
local
104.
opposition
the
dismissed
and
the primitive
ideas converge
Their
Cathedra,"
publicized
(Paris,
the
teatral'nosti
press,
in their
(Mos
are described
588
Slavic Review
was
est weakness
of the Blue Horn poets as well as their mentor
Robakidze
their resistance
to local traditions
refashioned
that could not be readily
into the twin polarities
of "commedic"
intimacy and "Dionysian" national
was
culture
far less marked
than the Russian
identity. Although
Georgian
a
common
between
mod
and
the
the
intellectuals
folk,
gap
by
Georgian
ernists'
abstract
formulations
nationhood
of self, group
and
solidarity,
had the effect of largely ignoring
of local
the richness
and heterogeneity
cultural practice.
to do with regionalism
The reasons for this had as much
as with class
or
and ethnicity
cultural
subordination
snobbery
Georgian
to Russia
and Europe.
from Kutaisi
in western Georgia,
of Geor
Transplants
long the bedrock
national
to
the
Blue
Horn
in 1918,
modernists
moved
Tbilisi
culture,
gian
when
the city became
the capital of independent
Unlike
the eth
Georgia.
more
had
Tbilisi
been
nically
homogeneous
countryside,
long
typified by
a
culture
that drew from multiple
traditions, Azeri and Armenian
popular
as much
as
rooted
in a kind of
Near Eastern
Georgian.
Locally
polyglot
were
its
the
and artisans
tradesmen
cosmopolitanism,
petty
protagonists
of the city's streets and
of speech,
whose
dress, patterns
marketplaces,
forms of merrymaking,
come
bardic
to
and
had
recitation,
dance,
song
define
the city's spirit as a whole.
These
cultural practices,
and
polyethnic
a threat to the
constituted
of the Georgian
subnational,
ideology
symbol
. . .
and national.
"Where
ists, which was at once modernizing,
European,
the oriental
is taken for a
bazaar
a
and
where
Bethlehem,
poetic
good
nose for
is cultivated
to the smell of kharcho [a
national
poetry
Georgian
declared
Blue Horn poet Nik'olo Mits'ishvili
in
soup of beef and walnuts],"
and understand
is
1920, "to recognize
genuine
poetry
impossible."61
as no
It comes
then, that Tbilisi's
culture,
surprise,
hybrid
although
in Evreinov's
theatrical
sense, was first recognized
supremely
by modern
ist figures
outside the Blue Horn
to or raised in the
group, native
city and
its
ethnic
the
Zdanevich
who
"discovered"
brothers,
reflecting
diversity:
the great Georgian
Nik'o Pirosmanishvili,
the painters
primitive
Zygmunt
Waliszewski
and Lado Gudiashvili,
and the poet Ioseb Grishashvili.
It was
all
above
Gudiashvili
and
van
who
codified
the
Grishashvili,
they,
city's
for
Another
local
of
the
ishing heritage
subsequent
generations.62
figure
time was Georgii
a
Tiflis
Armenian
(1894-1967),
Evangulov
Russophone
soon to
to Paris, who was
the first inhabitants
of
poet
emigrate
among
to represent
Tbilisi
the local traditions
a
of popular
in
revelry
recogniz
verses
drama
ably modernist
literary idiom. The following
by Evangulov
in
61. Nik'olo
Mits'ishvili,
tu azia? 219.
Evrop'a
62. Grishashvili
codified
"Barrik'adis
gadaghma,"
Barrik'adi,
no.
1 (1920),
republished
the
of old Tbilisi
traditions
in Iosif Grishashvili,
popular
in 1927,
translated
Tarkh
bogema starogo Tbilisi, published
originally
by Nodar
nishvili
For a discussion
of the
of old Tbilisi
in the art of the modern
(Tbilisi,
1977).
place
ist painter
see lu.
"VI. Gudiashvili,"
Lado Gudiashvili.
Gudiasvhili,
Degen,
Kniga
vospomi
nanii.
o khudozhnike
Stat'i. Iz perepiski.
Sovremenniki
I address
220-25.
the
(Moscow,
1987),
collision
between
Blue Horn
modernism
and Tbilisi's
in my article
culture
"The
popular
Sonnet
and the Mukhambazi:
on the
Genre Wars
of the Russian
Edges
Empire,"
Remapping
1548-70.
Genres, PMLA
122, no. 5 (October
2007):
Literaturnaia
Masks
of the Poet, Myths
with a k'int'o, the celebrated

Tbilisi
than for his sartorial
sexual
style,
of bodily gesture
and song:
tize the poet's encounter

less for his wares
known
and foppish
affectedness
?jeHb
I#e
Tax
HOHbK)
Tjxq
JleHHBbiH,
cojiHeneH
cjibiuiHo:
mom
Po,zjhoh
?jojior,
Tbi MHe
ropoA,
Tojiobhhckom,
inTaTCKHX
riOTOKa
street peddler
flirtatiousness,
Becejincb!
npa3AHHHHbiH
Ha
589
of thePeople
?jopor,
. . .
Th(})jihc!
?khboto
cpe^b
H MaHTO
J1k)6jik)
ero,
BCTpenaTb
3AopoBoro,
C 6pOH30BbIM
JIHHOM KHHTO.
CjIOBeHKH
MO/IHbie
TaK
Ba^CHO
oh pa#,
nepeHHMaTb
oh 3anoeT
npoTiDKHo:
Bceraa
Koma
Au, deKadenmcKu?
XMejibHo?,
6ecKOHeHHOM,
B TO, HTO TOJlbKO MHr,
BjIIO?JieHHblH
B khhto
eunozpadl
b HCKaHbe
cbo6o^hom
h ?ecnenHOM
BH^Cy, BH^Cy CBOH ?JBOHHHK.
(Where
cry]:
the day is so sunny and long, / Where
"Make
merry!"
My
native
city,
are
you
at night
to me,
dear
one hears
Indolent,
[the
festive
. . . // On Golovin
in the lively / Stream of
Tiflis!
[Rustaveli] Avenue,
civilian dresses and women's coats / I love to encounter
him, the healthy /
k'int'o. // He is always happy to adopt / The latest buzzwords
bronze-faced
with great solemnity, / [As] when he sings in a long drawl: / Oh, those deca
dent grapes! // Tipsy, endlessly seeking, / In love with what lasts only an in
stant, / In the free and insouciant k'int'o / I see, I see my double.)63
but exchanges
In these lines, Evangulov
fl?neur,
poses as a Baudelairean
the jostling
Paris for Tbilisi's main
crowds of modern
artery. As for Baude
to seize the evanescent
of
laire before
him, Evangulov's
pleasures
goal is
urban
and encounters
of modern
collisions
from the chance
the moment
a
aestheticized
Paris had provided
life. Yet if Baudelaire's
disquietingly
then Tbilisi's
and the grotesque,
vision of the destitute
dandy,
plebeian
an entirely dif
affords
carefree
the
among
citizenry,
wandering
bourgeois
his
the peddler
flaunts
of "decadent
ferent
grapes,"
Singing
spectacle.
of
urban
Tbilisi's
to
behavioral
the
verbal
codes
and
between
slip
ability
his
fin de si?cle. Indeed,
idiom of Europe's
and the imported
folk culture
it refers both to the pe
modernism:
than European
is older
"decadence"
in Georgian
culture and
themes of wine and song long established
rennial
of
mixed
to the linguistic
the
Georgian,
register
"impure"
heteroglossia,
since
his sung repertoire
that had marked
and Azeri
Armenian,
Russian,
an
the
In
k'int'o
his
cultural
the nineteenth
eclecticism,
proves
century.
a double,
to the deracinated
modern
artist.
and
equal,
63.
published
volume
"Kinto,"
Georgii
Evangulov,
two books
in Tbilisi
before
that
combines
verse
written
(1914),
Belyi
emigrating
in Georgia
dukhan
(Paris,
to France.
as well
as
Belyi
14-15.
1921),
Evangulov
is a transitional
dukhan
in emigration.
590
Slavic Review
than the
far better
knew France
the Georgian
modernists
Although
to
transformed
the
and
claimed
have
k'int'o,
capital
Georgian
frequently
cul
of the caf? and cabaret
into a new Paris, they were
speaking
primarily
ture that sprouted
facilitated
and
in Tbilisi during
the Menshevik
period
in a
the fraternization
between
and Georgian
artists. Immersed
Russian
and
from
and
with
their
modernist
Russia
counterparts
Europe
dialogue
on a means
were
of
of national
insistent
differentiation,
incapable
they
the code-shifting
the high
and the folk idiom of
between
literary register
in this poem
the street that the k'int'o
if
effortlessly,
displays.
parodically,
that the
So great were
of time and place, however,
the cultural
synergies
to
modernist
of
fuse
bohemian
and
theatrical
elements
the
opportunity
of festivity,
song, and street commerce
sociability with the local traditions
was
not
in
and leaving be
Tbilisi
lost.
However
uneven,
prevalent
entirely
was
hind fewer textual
vertical
this
nevertheless
traces,
dialogue
perhaps
con
as
as the horizontal
to this
cultural moment
significant
exceptional
versations
between
and
modernisms.
Russian,
European,
Georgian
more
We can now understand
differences
clearly why the considerable
to
not
between
Robakidze
lead
the same
and the Blue Horn
did
group
so
of
characteristic
of
and
enchantment,
crisis,
pattern
remythologization
movement.
in the Russian
their counterparts
modern
symbolist
Georgian
a belated
in which
ism experienced
chrono
and contracted
development
were
distinct
and
assimilated
forms
theoretically
logically
divergent
poetic
The hegemonic
and Iashvili,
T'itsian,
synchronously.
goals of Robakidze,
were not served
were
internal
real
their
adversaries
moreover,
by
disputes;
were
to be read, assimilated
the Russians?who
also
external:
but
deeply,
cul
the
and
alien
ethnically
vigorously
critiqued?and
popular
socially
ture of the new capital Tbilisi. The
of
via
Russia
the
mask,
figure
imported
two distinct
from Europe
lines of affiliation,
served as a marker
through
even
an
of multiple,
For
it marked
identities.
Robakidze,
incompatible,
sense of
a
to
in
masculine
nationhood
emphatic,
Georgian
opposition
itmarked
Russia. For the Blue Horn poets
and feminized
sterile, inchoate,
a new cultural
to western modernity
affiliation
but also
that was derivative
as
a
to the
For
of
self-reflexive.
all
the
mask
served
them,
lucidly
bridge
as
that
In
intuited
culture.
theatricality
they correctly
suffusing
popular
as in Russia,
the
fusion
of
and
national
Georgia,
symbolist mythopoesis
to be realized.
life was never
It would
be achieved
in other ways by a very
different
order.
political

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Masks of the Poet, Myths of the People: The Performance of Individuality and Nationhood in

Georgian and Russian Modernism

Masks of the Poet, Myths of the People:

has been made

in favor of theatrical metaphors

is the goal of this article.

case we take on the

(Tbilisi, 1919), 26. This book, of which more

later, was published

by the influential poet

of the Poet, Myths

surface form. Polemiciz

in Sherisgulni (Tbilisi, 1994), 313.

Masks of thePoet,Myths of thePeople

in Sud'ba Rossii: Opyty po psikhologii

7 (November 1922): 10.

Masks of thePoet,Myths of thePeople

is a trope of artifice as well as of mystery;

39. Efrat Tse?lon,

of the Poet, Myths

was a "foolish buffoon,

1917 (Moscow, 1968), 218-19.

that the reappearance

besedy, 141. In this article Meierkhol'd

Masks of thePoet,Myths of thePeople

ber 1923), 14.

Masks of thePoet,Myths of thePeople

strove for a literary norm

Masks of thePoet,Myths of thePeople

from the Russian

in a way that would

of the Poet, Myths

with a k'int'o, the celebrated

tize the poet's encounter

BH^Cy, BH^Cy CBOH ?JBOHHHK.

the day is so sunny and long, / Where

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