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eBook - Poem of Shota Rustaveli: The Knight in the Tiger Skin A word on Shota Rustaveli by Irakly Abashidze
Eight centuries separate us from the author of this immortal epic, but even today its life-affirming passion, shining humanity and heroic spirit, the ideas of patriotism and internationalism that it embodies and the elevated human feelings and moral ideals it expresses link this great literary monument of the distant past with the spiritual world of all freedom-loving peoples. Rustaveli's epic has become part of the heritage of all mankind. No less than the people for whom it was written, Europeans and Asians, Americans and Africans can gain from this work something more than a romantic, knightly tale brilliantly told in verse. For centuries Rustaveli's work, the product of an unknown world and written in a still unstudied tongue, survived only in the native land of the poet, out of the Caucasus mountains in the gorges of the rivers Chorokhi, Rioni, Kura and Alazani. For world culture the appearance of The Knight in the Tiger Skin was akin to a major archaeological discovery. The Russian public figure, Yevgeny Bolkhovitinov, was the first person of the larger world to take note of this priceless treasure. Writing soon after Georgia joined Russia in 1802, he observed enthusiastically of the poem that "the scenes of action resemble those of Ariosto's poem Orlando Furioso, but the beauty, the originality of the pictures, the naturalness of the ideas and sensations are Ossianic". Bled white by its enemies, Georgia had slumbered for six centuries. Now, through the North, it was returning to the European civilization to which it had been linked for many centuries through the South before the Mongol invasion. The Knight in the Tiger Skin was written on the eve of the fatal catastrophe which befell Georgia in the "golden age" of its history, when this small but powerful feudal country stood at the height of its political, economic and spiritual renaissance. Scarcely had the book appeared than Georgia was for many centuries torn from the outside world, its once famed culture known only to very few. Even in the 19th century, although Rustaveli's epic had been noted and many had tried to bring it, if only in part, to the knowledge of the world. The Knight in the Tiger Skin remained an enigma to the foreign reader. It was only at the turn of the century that the veil concealing the work was drawn aside. "As Homer is Greece, Dante Italy, Shakespeare England and Calderon and Cervantes Spain, so Rustaveli is Georgia.... A people, if it is great, will create song and carry in its bosom a world poet. Such a monarch of the ages, still unknown to Russians, was Georgia's chosen one, Shota Rustaveli, who in the 12th century gave his motherland its banner and call 'Vephistkaosani' - Wearer of the Snow-Leopard's Skin. This is the best poem about love ever written in Europe, a rainbow of love, a fiery bridge linking heaven and earth." These words belong to the poet Konstantin Balmont, who translated The Knight in the Tiger Skin into Russian. He recalls his first encounter with Rustaveli thus: "I first became acquainted with Rustaveli amid the expanses of the ocean, not far from the Canary Islands, on an English ship bearing the name of Athene, beautiful goddess of wisdom. On board I met Oliver Wardrop, who gave me an English translation of The Snow-Leopard Skin, of which he had a proof copy, to read. The translation had been done with great affection by his sister, Marjory Scott Wardrop. To touch the Georgian rose amid the immensity of the ocean dawns, with the kindly complicity of Sun, Sea, the Stars, friendship and love, of wild water-spouts and fierce storms, produced an impression which I shall never forget." Balmont's translation, the first full and truly poetic rendering of the work, began to appear as early as 1916 in magazine instalments. The English writer Marjory Scott Wardrop visited Georgia in the 1890s. There she met the outstanding Georgian poet and public figure, Ilya Chavchavadze, who introduced her to Rustaveli's poem. Filled with admiration for the work, she threw herself into study of the Georgian language and in 1912 Shota Rustaveli was brought to English readers in a prose translation. Thus this ancient Georgian poem appeared almost simultaneously in two world languages. In discussing The Knight in the Tiger Skin we must inevitably begin by discussing its author. Who was Shota Rustaveli? Do Georgian historical writings contain any mention of him? The earliest references to Georgia and the Georgian people are to be found in Herodotus, "the father of history". Still earlier. Homer mentions a Georgian tribe, the Khalibi, while writing of the Trojan war. Descriptions of the state of Iberia and ancient Colchis are contained in the writings of Strabo and many Greco-Roman authors.  |
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The Knight in the Tiger Skin by Shota Rustaveli is recognized as one of the greatest works to have been created by human genius.
