Rafiel Eristaviuli's poetic versions of Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani's fables

Abstract

The year 2024 marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great Georgian writer and public figure, Rafiel Eristavi. His work, "Homeland of Khevsuri", remains one of the best examples of patriotic poetry to this day. Rafiel was an elder contemporary and like-minded person of the 60’s generation. There was no topical issue of that era that Rafiel Eristavi failed to address in his writings. In his time, not only his poetry but also his short stories, plays, and vaudevilles were extremely popular. Just like the 60’s generation, Rafiel Eristavi believed that literary writing should primarily serve public interests and contribute to the spiritual and moral improvement of people. Rafiel Eristavi perfectly understood the great moral and aesthetic impact that the fable genre possessed. Therefore, his interest in this genre was logical. Based on Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani’s "Wisdom of Lies", he versified 15 fables in 1878. He was also one of the first to translate the fables of I.V. Krylov.

It is noteworthy that in the preface to the collection, Rafiel specifies why he chose Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani's work. Rafiel considered children to be his primary target group. According to him, after reading these fables, young people would be morally elevated and, most importantly, enrich their conversational language. For this same purpose, he included folk proverbs in the moral of each fable.

When reworking the fables, Rafiel treated Saba’s text with relative freedom: in some cases, he changed not only the title but also somewhat adjusted the fable's main message. This kind of freedom was possible because R. Eristavi presented the fables as artistic units independent of the plot. Obviously, had he versified the entirety of Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani's work, he would not have been able to take such an approach. As for the quality of the poetic versions of the fables, it must be said that Rafiel offered worthy competition to Saba, although he was not always able to maintain Saba's own refined style of narration.