Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-45l2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T11:26:56.569Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Sonnet and the Mukhambazi: Genre Wars on the Edges of the Russian Empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Harsha Ram
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Genres travel in multiple directions. This article maps the evolution and movement of two lyric genres in Georgia, a small nation situated south of the Caucasus mountains, between Russia, Turkey, and Iran. The mukhambazi arose from a polyglot urban culture rooted in Near Eastern traditions of bardic performance and festivity, while the sonnet was imported around the time of the Russian Revolution as a marker of European modernization. The brief coexistence of these two genres allows for a reexamination of the foundational opposition between East and West. Moving beyond the familiar dichotomy of tradition and modernity, this essay explores the texts and debates of more than a century, reconstructing the discrepant cosmopolitanisms and multiple modernities that typified the Caucasus region. In doing so, it seeks both to make available a literary archive unknown to American readers and to contribute to ongoing debates on the relations between the local, the national, and the imperial as cultural formations.

Type
Special Topic: Remapping Genre Coordinated by Wai Chee Dimock and Bruce Robbins
Information
PMLA , Volume 122 , Issue 5: Special Topic Remapping Genre , October 2007 , pp. 1548 - 1570
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Anchabadze, Iu. D., and Volkova, N. G. [Old Tbilisi: The City and Its Inhabitants in the Nineteenth Century]. Moscow: Nauka, 1990.Google Scholar
Bakanidze, O. A., G. D. Javakhishvili, and Gerasimov, K. S., eds. : [The Harmony of Opposites: Aspects of the Theory and History of the Sonnet]. Tbilisi: Tbilisskogo universiteta, 1985.Google Scholar
A., Baramidze, ed. . [Sayat Nova—the Georgian Poems]. Tbilisi: Merani, 1963.Google Scholar
Tamar, Barbakadze. “” [Toward a History of the Study of the Sonnet in Georgia]. [Literary Georgia] 11 (1985): 135–42.Google Scholar
Tamar, Barbakadze. [The Sonnet in Georgian Literature]. Diss. Shota Rustavelis sakhelobis kartuli lit'erat‘uris inst'it‘ut'i, Sakartvelos metsnierebata ak'ademia, 1998.Google Scholar
Charles, Baudelaire. Œuvres complètes. Ed. Ruff, Marcel A. Paris: Seuil, 1968.Google Scholar
Bermann, Sandra L. The Sonnet over Time: Studies in the Sonnets of Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Baudelaire. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1988.Google Scholar
Levan, Bregadze. “” [The Ritual Toast and Its Compensatory Nature]. [The Georgian Feast and Civil Society]. Ed. Gia Nodia. Tbilisi: IPRI, 2000. 9–15.Google Scholar
Vladimir, Cherednichenko. “” [The Sonnet Is a Theorem (Valerian Gaprindashvili on the Problem of the Sonnet)]. [Literary Georgia] 4 (1988): 204–11.Google Scholar
James, Clifford. “Traveling Cultures.” Cultural Studies. Ed. Grossberg, Lawrence, Nelson, Cary, and Treichler, Paula A. New York: Routledge, 1992. 96–116.Google Scholar
[Documents and Materials on the External Politics of Transcaucasia and Georgia]. Tbilisi: Tipografiia pravitel'stva Gruzinskoi respubliki, 1919.Google Scholar
Charles, Dowsett. Sayat'-Nova: An Eighteenth-Century Troubador: A Biographical and Literary Study. Louvain, Belg.: Orientaliste, 1997.Google Scholar
Valerian, Gaprindashvili. [Lyric and Narrative Poems, Translations, Essays, Articles from the Writer's Archive]. Tbilisi: Merani, 1990.Google Scholar
Ioseb, Grishashvili. “” [The Sonnet in Georgia]. [The Popular Cause] 385 (1918): n. pag.Google Scholar
Ioseb, Grishashvili. [Collected Works in Five Volumes]. Tbilisi: Sabch'ota Sakartvelo, 1963.Google Scholar
Leonid, Grossman. “” [The Poetics of the Russian Sonnet]. [The Struggle for Style: Essays in Poetics and Criticism]. Moscow: Nikitinskie subbotniki, 1927. 122–44.Google Scholar
Heredia, José María de. [José María de Heredia: Trophies]. Trans. Mikel P'at'aridze. 2nd ed. Tbilisi: Nak'aduli, 1971.Google Scholar
Iashvili, P'aolo. [P'aolo Iashvili: A Jubilee Archival Edition in Two Volumes]. Tbilisi: Cézanne, 2004.Google Scholar
Stephen, Jones. Socialism in Georgian Colors: The European Road to Social Democracy, 1883–1917. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2005.Google Scholar
Jost, François. Le sonnet de Pétrarque à Baudelaire. Berne: Lang, 1989.Google Scholar
K'armeli, Shalva. [Babylon]. Tbilisi: Dedaena, 2000.Google Scholar
Khintibidze, A. G. “” [The Limping Sonnet in Georgian Poetry]. Bakanidze, Javakhishvili, and Gerasimov 132–36.Google Scholar
Kikvadze, M. K. “” [The Developmental Paths of the Georgian Sonnet]. Bakanidze, Javakhishvili, and Gerasimov 145–63.Google Scholar
“” [A Peddler's Poem]. [Iveria] 12 Aug. 1886: 3.Google Scholar
Mallarmé, Stephane. “Crisis in Poetry.” Divagations. Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leitch, Vincent. New York: Norton, 2001. 841–51.Google Scholar
Paul, Manning. “‘Renters’ and ‘Real Tbilisians’: Historicizing the Georgian ‘City’ as an Ethnolinguistic Category.” Unpublished essay, 2007.Google Scholar
Terry, Martin. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2001.Google Scholar
Givi, Mikhadze. “” [On the Georgian Sonnet]. [Studies from the History of Georgian Poetry]. Tbilisi: Metsniereba, 1974. 120–48.Google Scholar
Tat'iana, Nikol'skaia. “, 1917–1921 [”Fantastic City“: Russian Cultural Life in Tbilisi, 1917–1921]. Moscow: Piataia strana, 2000.Google Scholar
Grigol, Orbeliani. [Lyric and Epic Poems, Translations]. Tbilisi: Sabch'ota mts'erali, 1948.Google Scholar
Orbeliani, Vakht'ang. [The Complete Poems]. Tbilisi: Kartuli ts'igni, 1928.Google Scholar
Harsha, Ram. “Andrej Belyj and Georgia: Georgian Modernism and the Reception of the ‘Petersburg Text’ in Peripheral Space.” Russian Literature 58 (2005): 243–76.Google Scholar
Ram, Harsha, and Shatirishvili, Zaza. “Romantic Topography and the Dilemma of Empire: The Caucasus in the Dialogue of Georgian and Russian Poetry.” Russian Review 63 (2004): 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grigol, Robakidze. “ [Leila]. [Leila] 1 (1917): 1.Google Scholar
Grigol, Robakidze. “” [The Sonnet in Georgia]. [Georgia] 214 (1918): 3.Google Scholar
Grigol, Robakidze. “” [Around the Sonnet]. [Georgia] 221 (1918): 3.Google Scholar
Grigol, Robakidze. 13 [Thirteen Sonnets]. Tbilisi: Saari, 1999.Google Scholar
Bruce, Robbins. “Comparative Cosmopolitanisms.” Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation. Ed. Cheah, Pheng and Robbins, . Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1998. 246–64.Google Scholar
Boris, Romanov, ed. XVIII- XX beka [The Russian Sonnet: The Sonnets of Russian Poets from the Early Eighteenth Century to the Early Twentieth Century]. Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1987.Google Scholar
Shul'govskii, N. N. [The Theory and Practice of Poetic Creation: The Technical Foundations of Versification]. Saint Petersburg: Tovarishchestvo M. O. Vol'f, 1914.Google Scholar
Sk'andarnova, Giorgi. [Popular Gatherings and Various New Songs]. Tbilisi: Mikhel'son, 1878.Google Scholar
Ronald, Suny. The Making of the Georgian Nation. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Ronald, Suny. “Russian Rule and Caucasian Society in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: The Georgian Nobility and the Armenian Bourgeoisie.” Nationalities Papers 7 (1979): 53–78.Google Scholar
Ronald, Suny. “Tiflis: Crucible of Ethnic Politics, 1860–1905.” The City in Late Imperial Russia. Ed. Hamm, Michael F. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986. 249–81.Google Scholar
T'abidze, Nina (Nino Maqashvili). [Rainbow at Dawn: Memoirs]. Tbilisi: Merani, 1992.Google Scholar
T'itsian, T'abidze. “” [About Me and the Sonnet]. [Georgia] 225 (1918): 2–3.Google Scholar
T'itsian, T'abidze. “” [From My Autobiography]. [Self-Portrait: Selected Lyric and Narrative Poems]. Saint Petersburg: Vsemirnoe slovo, 1995. 15–24.Google Scholar
T'itsian, T'abidze. “” [Limping Sonnet]. [Works in Three Volumes]. Vol. 3. Tbilisi: Lit'erat'ura da khelovneba, 1966. 237. 3 vols.Google Scholar
T'itsian, T'abidze. “” [Dada and the Blue Horns: An Introduction]. [The Dreaming Gazelles] 10 (1923): 12–16.Google Scholar
T'itsian, T'abidze. [Poems, Narrative Poems, Prose, Articles]. Tbilisi: Merani, 1985.Google Scholar
T'itsian, T'abidze. [Sonnets, Selected Verse, Essays]. Tbilisi: Metsniereba, 1999.Google Scholar
Titarenko, S. D. “‘ 20-x30-X . XIX beka” [Mickiewicz's Crimean Sonnets in Russian Translation and the Development of the Sonnet in the Late 1820s and Early 1830s]. Bakanidze, Javakhishvili, and Gerasimov 101–16.Google Scholar
Vatsuro, V. E. “” [The Russian Sonnet of the 1820s and the European Romantic Tradition]. Bakanidze, Javakhishvili, and Gerasimov 88–100.Google Scholar