Poetry
უფლისციხესთან სისხლისფერი ყაყაჩოს წვეთი
Not translated into English
Murman Lebanidze · 1974
Synopsis
Poems that return again and again to Georgia, to its ancient stones and to war. The title poem stops before a poppy that has grown near Uplistsikhe and reads in it the announcement, not of blood already shed, but of blood that remains to be shed; then it counts the twelve columns of Svetitskhoveli and the fourteen fortresses planted in the azure, and repeats that it has no other homeland than this one.
Context
The collection, published in 1974, brings together poems from the early seventies and takes its title from the one that stands before the cave city of Uplistsikhe, in Kartli. The homeland is enumerated there in monuments rather than in ideas, a way of expressing attachment to the country without going through the vocabulary of the regime. The form comes from classical Georgian verse and from popular song: direct speech, quick rhyme, repeated refrain. No volume by the poet has appeared in French; it was a Polish anthology that had made him known outside the Union as early as 1961.
Who it is for
A volume of verse, never translated into French. It is necessary to know that Uplistsikhe, Mtskheta and Svetitskhoveli are the places where Georgia reads its own antiquity.
Prizes and reception
The poem that gives the collection its title is among the forty or so pieces cited by the Chota Rustaveli State Prize, awarded to the poet in 1973.