The Protagonist’s Suicide: Moral or Social Collapse? (Leo Kiacheli’s “Princess Maia”)

Abstract

The paradoxical nature of suicide's social impact has been repeatedly noted not only in scientific discourse but also within literary texts. So-called common sense considers suicide an utterly irrational act; however, it may be driven by a multitude of causes, making it impossible to unite under a single explanatory phenomenon.

In literature, suicide can be interpreted as a form of protest, often resulting from an individual's incompatibility with the external world — a reaction to a specific (sometimes personal) life circumstance, although one that is frequently intensified or conditioned by broader social factors. As such, suicide lacks a clear narrative definition due to its multifactorial origins.

Nonetheless, every act of self-destruction — despite its individualistic (sometimes selfish) nature — shares a common cognitive foundation: hopelessness. This is often linked to religion and patriotism and is predominantly viewed as both anti-religious and antisocial. It is typically accompanied by the subject’s suffering and a paradoxical perception of time.

Suicidal motifs trace a persistent thread through world literature. However, beginning in the last century — in the context of the technocratic and modernist era, alongside war, the disintegration and reevaluation of values — the desire to voluntarily withdraw from the world has intensified under the condition of existential alienation, and this, too, is reflected in literature.

This tendency has become increasingly visible in Georgian literature as well, particularly in the works of Egnate Ninoshvili, Shio Aragvispireli, Chola Lomtatidze, Grigol Robakidze, Konstantine Gamsakhurdia, Niko Lortkipanidze, Leo Kiacheli, and others.

In this paper, we will analyze this phenomenon through the lens of Leo Kiacheli’s short story “Princess Maia,” focusing on how the protagonist’s existential condition, inner world, and psychological portrait are framed within the context of her suicide.