The Principle of Provoking Astonishment in the Poetry of Georgian Baroque Authors

Abstract

The 17th century was a period of significant cultural and artistic tran­sformation, characterized by the collision of traditional and emerging forms. This cultural shift gave rise to a diverse and eclectic style in various artistic disciplines, including painting, architecture, and literature. The prevailing ar­­tistic ideas and aesthetic perspectives of the time underwent a transfor­ma­tion, giving way to a new and distinctive style known as Baroque. A foun­dational principle of the prevailing European Baroque culture is the broa­dening of the aesthetic function of literature, which is founded on figurative thinking and the integration of diverse artistic forms within the context of a single work (verbal text, fine art, music). The Baroque pe­riod was distingui­shed by a pursuit of astonishment through imagination, wherein elements of strangeness, unusualness, unconventionality, and bizar­reness played a pivotal role in its aesthetic principles. As demonstrated in the following ana­lysis, Georgian literature of the 17^th-18th centuries serves as a prime example of the aforementioned general principles. The present work examines such poetic texts in Georgian Baroque poetry that surprise and amaze the reader due to their unusual form and multiplicity of mea­nings. They are as follows: ‘rvuli’, pattern poem, acrostic, telestic, and the cryptogram.

The present article concerns precisely such poetic texts, which are perceived simultaneously by sight and sound. These texts are built on the principle of wit and aim to stunning their readers. Sulkhan Saba Orbeliani’s verse form ‘rvuli’ (რვული) is a four-line poem that exhibits eight identical internal and external rhymes: four before the caesura and four at the end. In the Baroque context, the ‘rvuli’ verse form is notable for its capacity to en­gender multiple interpretations, aligning with the Baroque era's fascination with poetic play, sometimes using the principle of mirror reflection, popular in Baroque poetics. This period was characterized by an inclination among authors to captivate, amaze, and surprise their readers with elements of uni­queness and innovation in their poetry. The poem's original structure enab­les its reading and interpretation in three distinct ways while preserving its content, thus resulting in three variants of a single poem. In this manner, the Baroque author's objective to astonish his audience with innovation is accomplished. Poems of this nature, which encompass two, three, or more reading options, are based on the principle of play.

Archil II's "Verse Rotating Like Grinding Wheel", is a particularly no­teworthy example of a pattern poem. Verse consists of single line – “This is ba­­sed on a parable about Vanity” and in ten-strophe verse this one line is repeated 44 times with different order of the words in the line. Archil II has effectively transformed the poem, infusing it with a novel dimension of mo­vement and rotation. This transformation is characterized by a dynamic in­terplay of velocity, with the pace of rotation varying across the verses. This dynamic interplay, when graphically represented, evokes the sensation of acceleration, a phenomenon that mirrors the prevailing scientific interest du­ring the Baroque era. Moreover, poet utilizes a circle, made of this single line, rendered in red ink, to crown the poem, thereby imbuing his religious-philosophical notion with an additional visual dimension, one that further enhances its impact, thus elevating this pattern poem to the status of a splen­did exemplar of Baroque aesthetics.

Other notable verse forms include the acrostic, telestic, and the cryp­tog­ram verse, which are distinguished by their unusualness and ornamen­tation characteristic of the Georgian Baroque. Archil II's seven iambics, cha­racterized by profound religious sentiment, are embellished with acrostics and teletics. Furthermore, the acrostics and teletics of all seven iambics, when read sequentially, form an independent poetic text.

The "recognition" or "decoding" moment is a conceptual element of the Baroque style. In Georgian Baroque poetry, Vakhtang VI was fascinated by this type of cryptogram, puzzle. The characteristic "unusualness" and quick wit of the Baroque period are the combination that underlies the works cre­ated on the principle of the aesthetics of surprise of this era.

In the context of Georgian Baroque poetry, a significant category of po­etic works is grounded in this principle, thereby offering a discernible glim­pse into the aesthetic predilections and intellectual inclinations of Georgian authors and their readership during this historical era. These po­ems are characterized by their intricate structures, unusual and enigmatic ele­ments, and their capacity to elude facile interpretation.