The Lame Doll

"Besik Kharanauli, now 78 years old, is perhaps the most important contemporary Georgian poet there is. He began literary career in 1954, and his first collection was published in 1968. From the very beginning, his poetry stood out as non-traditional, modernist; at the same time, it demonstrated close ties with Georgian folk poetry, with shades of Shaver dialect (Fshavi is one of the mountainous regions of Georgia). In the 1970s, when Georgian literature mostly recognized only traditional poetic forms, Besik Kharanauli’s works did prove revolutionary. His poetry managed to ‘legalize’ and fully establish blank verse as a standard poetic form in Georgian literature. Galaktion Tabidze, meanwhile, an epochal Georgian poet, had committed suicide in 1959, about a decade before Kharanauli’s first efforts. Tabidze had declared himself the King of Poetry in his own lifetime, and the vast influence of his work has been difficult to avoid for every poet after him, including major contemporary poets. But Kharanauli refused to follow writing norms. He brought something genuinely new to the sound of Georgian poetry, while simultaneously undermining future attempts to deify him by famously saying ‘I am just a tear more than you are’. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter In the 21st-century, you will find a great number of followers of Kharanauli’s poetic path, and Kharanauli himself still carries out deliberate poetic experiments, demonstrating new opportunities in Georgian poetic form. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize several times and his works have been translated into several languages. Indeed, his works are becoming more and more popular globally—this year, the German publishing house Dagyeli Verlag are publishing Besik Kharanauli’s poetry collection Sprich Mir Vor, Angelina (Talk to Me, Angelina), translated by Nana Chighladze and Norbert Hummelt; a few months ago, an American literary magazine, The Common , published an English translation—by the American translator Ilan Stavans and myself—of Besik Kharanauli’s poem “Digging Out Potatoes”. Corvinus Presse Berlin published “Digging Out Potatoes” in an anthology of the same name, translated by Norbert Hummelt again, earlier this year, too. Speaking of this book, Besik Kharanauli recalled that, like many other poets, he was to a certain extent inspired by Galaktion Tabidze; however, the inspiration soon exhausted itself, and the poet confessed that he would no longer be able to write in such manner, as the traditional or the classical poetic forms prevented him from fully expressing himself. This is why The Lame Doll (1972)—which represents a pivotal moment in Kharanauli’s career and Georgian poetry as a whole—was composed in blank verse. The poem describes an ordinary day in the life of a single person, with a focus on existential problems. “As soon as the editor looked at the text—perhaps reading only three or four lines—he returned the book to the author, telling him it wouldn’t be possible to print it” The main character is a passive person, accustomed to his monotonous way of life—he is “a man who, due to his inaction and inert nature, cannot keep up with contemporary life”. One ordinary morning he wakes up feeling something extraordinary and strange. He realizes that his life is being wasted, and he vows to strive for perfection and absolute truth; however, God remains dead. The poem is sad and ironic at the same time. The poet mocks this lyric person who cannot form his own ideas of events and issues, who prefers to have someone else make decisions for him—he longs for someone more powerful to obey and to free him from the burden of responsibility. The main character also finds true love to be too great a burden, so he proves a loser in love as well. This poem was not a direct attack against the Soviet Union, yet when Kharanauli presented the work to the publishing house, the editor found it impossible to proceed. Apparently, as soon as the editor looked at the text—perhaps reading only three or four lines—he returned the book to the author, telling him it wouldn’t be possible to print it. This was down to the form of the poem—blank verse! It’s a vivid illustration of how the regime avoided the introduction of any novelty or deviation from the mainstream. Kharanauli was then assisted by a friend employed at the publishing house. This friend tricked the publisher into printing The Lame Doll by leading him to believe that he was signing off on a second edition of Kharanauli’s first collection instead. The book received favourable reviews, and this might explain why the author was not punished for his ‘fraud’. That first publication came out under the title Poem, Poem, Poem , with the true title, The Lame Doll , printed in a much more modest font on the title page: such phrases would indeed have been deemed improper for Soviet book covers."