Mythical Imagination and Real Touches in Georgian Literature

Abstract

It is not at all new to claim that Georgian literature is a mythological me­tamorphosis created through the spirituality of its authors and refracted through the prism of individual imagery. What is new are our attitudes toward and connections with myth and, more broadly, with art as a mystery. It is new in the sense that the pu­rpose of art has been defined since ancient times – to serve the moral upbringing of humanity. Its influence on human consciousness is characterized by transformation and a heterogeneous reception.

      The mysterious power of art exerts an intense influence on the human soul and shapes the moral perfection of the individual, in the manner envisioned by the inspired artist. Accordingly, heroes imagined through artistic fantasy do not merely gaze at us from the galleries of artistic creations; they begin to migrate into our inner selves. Our intensive contact with works of art fosters meditative states, and human consc­io­u­sness, saturated with earthly existence, acquires the ability for spiritual thought, whose current flows toward the higher worlds. This is its magical power and immutable pri­n­ciple, the very force that created and shaped the primordial myth and, in general, the artistic world.

      The all-encompassing sense of the human personality is a quality of the immortal soul, which possesses the ability to itself become a work of art. We believe this ap­pro­ach is relevant in all times. In this sense, colors created by human imagination are more vividly perceptible than our integrated self-consciousness in everyday existence. With the help of art, the human soul is filled with novelty, and the newly constructed category of personality thus emerges before society as a kind of spiritual institution.

In the topic we discuss, we juxtapose the world of messianic heroes created by artistic fantasy with the literary characters conveyed in the realistic works of Mikheil Ja­va­k­hi­shvili. We examine which of the two more accurately reflects our national reality. Mi­kheil Javakhishvili, as an incomparable writer-psychologist, offers an interesting direction to Georgian literature. His work is the most transparent mirror he places into the hands of the Georgian reader, so that we may truly come to know ourselves. He draws aside the curtain, and behind it, instead of the messianic-mythical figures tra­n­s­formed through Georgian literature, we encounter Teimurazes and Margos. Facing the harsh reality of Georgia, the writer himself provides us with an analysis of what has determined our current state of existence. Of particular interest is the question of how the god-man imagery, represented through mythical strokes, and the depiction of woman through deification, correspond to one another and how these two extremes coexist within the reality of Georgian consciousness.