ირმა რატიანის წიგნი „დრამის პოეტიკა ქართული აქცენტით“

ანოტაცია

Who is Irma Ratiani’s The Poetics of Drama with Georgian Accent intended for? Naturally, it is written for philologists and future philologists, since drama is a literary category that demands deep understanding of its origins and historical deve­lopment. At the same time, it is equally relevant for theater professi­onals and students of theatrical arts, who must grasp the genre’s specific features and perceive the imprint of different eras within it. And of course, it is for every culturally minded reader who loves literature – not merely as a story, however stirring or tragic, but as a complex artistic structure. The book opens with the genesis of the genre of tragedy and gradually outlines the process by which tragedy evolved into a literary form. Irma Ratiani not only explains the Aristotelian essence of poetry but also clarifies its function. However, her aim is not to provide a comprehensive analysis of Aristotle’s Poetics. Her primary interest lies in the poetics of drama, which is why she focuses on the rigorously structured framework of tragedy as a form of mi­mesis. Ratiani traces the trajectory of tragedy from antiquity to modernism – a history as compelling as the course of human civi­lization itself. Even a genre as “majestic” as tragedy, she reveals, can lose its “royal” status in cer­tain epochs, only to reemerge in transformed guises in others. In describing this evolution, the author devotes special attention to William Shakespeare, recognizing his contribution as marking a new era in the history of tragic drama. Ratiani does not limit herself to examining the creative principles of dramatists across periods; she also brings in the perspectives of key theorists of the genre. The author approaches literary values from a scholarly stand­point. Her position – possibly controversial but resolutely principled – is clearly articulated in the following statement: “No­thing of value, including literary texts, is created within a set of prede­ter­mined rules defined in ad­van­ce by the author. However, the interpreter – the researcher – who re­con­structs a text by considering its explicit or im­pli­ed rules, often arrives at a more accurate explanation of its hidden and obs­cure layers than the author themselves” (Ratiani, 2025, p. 95). This stance permeates the entire book. For Georgian readers, the most intriguing section is the third chapter: "Ref­lections of the Tragic Genre’s Canon in Georgian Literature and Possibilities for Theoretical Readings." This chapter begins by noting that since the era of “late realism,” Georgian literature has aligned it­self with the leading trends in European dramaturgy and has assimilated new theories of tragedy. Des­pite the fact that the repertoire of early Geor­gian drama does not include classical tragedies, Ratiani argues that “original Georgian prose texts are constructed on the framework and techniques of drama and possess a hybrid character.”. Moreover, she suggests that Geor­gia’s relatively “modest” dra­ma­tic tradition is bolstered by specific examples of fictional prose that, both in content and structure, align with the principles of classical drama. For this reason, the author conditionally refers to these works as examples of “Geor­gian dramatic prose,” through which Georgian literature both engages with the theories of tragedy and expresses its own original nature. The book’s particular significance lies in its inter­pretation of Georgian literary texts wi­thin the context of global literary processes. What makes this study distin­ctive is that the researcher identifies in original Georgian prose the structu­re, techniques, principles, and develop­mental tendencies of drama – thus connecting Georgian literature to the global theory of tragedy and analyzing it in relation to European literary tra­ditions. This original approach renders Irma Ratiani’s work especially va­luab­le from an academic standpoint.