Georgian Historical Epic – Searches and Assumptions

Abstract

Our interest towards the Georgian folk epic is determined not only by a professional attitude, but also by the necessity to know our national identity, because no matter how paradoxical it is, in the era of globalization as universal integration, it becomes even more topical to clarify one's own identity among independent nati­ons, which is best preserved by collective memory and folk orality.

It is noticeable that in the conditions of Georgian national identity and long-lasting state life, the deficiency of Georgian orality in terms of historical genre texts causes a kind of surprise, such a picture is created as if the memory of the ancestors refused to preserve such cultural heritage.

There are various explanations for this, and the majority of Georgian researchers agree with Vakhushti Batonishvili's opinion, who cites the "shor­tness of memory" of the people as the reason for the shortcoming, be­cause the artistic memory of the people does not exceed the common age of four or five generations.

We can compare folklore to a constantly renewable jewel, and for the sake of conspicuousness, we can imagine people's dwe­lling place – a house which gets old over time, its door, windows, and roof change. Sometimes a completely new house is built on an old foundation, but the function of the house never changes, its general architecture and purpose, which, if we take it as an example of a historical epic, always preserves a solid structural com­position, a style of artistic environment and metaphorical thinking, a set of signs whose exact identification is provided by the structural-morphological analysis of a text.

Here it is necessary to mention that the modern researcher will have to carry out this work not in museums and archives, in the forgotten cen­turies of history or in the deep annals of the history of literature, but in the living process of people's orality, in the depository of collective memory.

Our main support in the research process is the complete collection of "Amiraniani" published in the Shota Rustaveli Institute of Literature, along with other folklore materials. This epic, as an expression of the spi­ri­tual wealth of Georgia and a fundamental ar­gument for the historical in­tegrity of the country, is connected with its spread in all parts of Georgia in a unified cultural environment.

It has been noted by the researchers that traces of events repre­senting different historical eras can be found in this text. Some of them are so clear and indisputable that, I think, the time has come for a complex observation and interdisciplinary research on it, which will confirm the existence of other epic and historical songs in it, which will further clarify the authen­ticity of the original text and determine its genre context.

Nevertheless, "Amiraniani" does not contain specific geogra­phical to­po­nyms or historical eras, today's readers can see not only the signs of tribal battles in it, but also the motive of liberating one's country and the idea of national unity.

Our work is related to the search for a completely indepen­dent historical epic "Pharnavaziani" in the epic of "Amiraniani", as well as in the bottomless well of Georgian orality. We think that this kind of text already exists in the form of contamination and it is necessary to separate it and clean it from impurities. For this, we rely on the works of Georgian scientists about the folk epic, the general rule of folklore, the traditional research methodology, as well as the modern theories of sociology, which separate collective and individual creation patterns from each other, and determine the boundaries of genre identity.

Naturally, our point of view is legitimate in the manner of raising the issue, and we expect that this initiative will have both supporters and opponents. We hope that future opponents will try to justify or invalidate this opinion based on scientific arguments. Only such a mode of con­fron­tation will define the useful position, which will help to see the positive result of the cultural memory of our nation and preserve it in the future.