Thomas Stearns Eliot, „The Waste Land“ – Biblical-Mythological Allusions (Translator – Otar Chkheidze)

Abstract

The style and tone of Thomas Stearns Eliot were so new that the author did not manage to get anything published until 1915. True poetry, Eliot thought, is impersonal. The poet`s mind is a catalyst which causes disparate elements of experience to fuse into new wholes. Eliots first volume of criti­c­ism „The Sacred Wood“ (1920) though it infuriated co­nservative critics, became su­ddenly influential and his poem, „The Waste Land“ (1922) made him famous. The poem potrayed the desiccation of modern civilization by means of a ka­le­i-doscopic use of symbolic imagery, biblical and mythological allusions, and a care­fu­lly organized system of references to a variety of myths and literary works, both occi­dental and oriental. Eliot`s great achievement was to create rythms and images corresponding to the tensions and stresses of modern urban life. Eliot`s poetry makes a great demand on the reader`s education, on his capacity to understand the complex allusions, li­te­ra­ry, phi­lo­sophical, mythological, that characterize the poet`s verse. There are Georgian tran­sl­ations of „The Waste Land“ by Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Medea Zaalishvili, Zviad Ratiani, Gri­gol (Gia) Jokhadze and Otar Chkheidze. We have studied translation of Otar Chkhei­dze, one of the most important and interesting representatives of modern Geo­r­gian literature. By the way of rendering the working of the poem`s characters`s minds the translator introduced the so-called stream-of-consciousness teqnique recording the flow of their thoughts and sensations with all complex associations attached to them. The author and the translator reflect the chaos of existence. The poem remains a highly subjective epic of futility whose extreme naturalism is blended with symbolism in Georgian translation as well as in original.