ისტორიული პირი თუ ლიტერატურული ფიგურა? ხალხური გადმოცემები ალექსანდრე მაკედონელზე

Abstract

Georgian folktales about Alexander the Great show literary influences from Antiquity and the Middle Ages, followed by his development as an organic part of national oral folk tradition. Two traditions of narratives about Alexander of Macedon existed in Antiquity: historical and literary. Legendary material related to the Greek quasifabulous prose biography of Alexander is found in the Alexander Romance by Pseudo-Callisthenes (c. third century AD). This text is the basis of all the Alexander legends in the Middle Ages. In Europe Alexander Romance spread via the Latin translation of Julius Valerius Alexander (third to fourth centuries AD) and won great popularity. The original Greek text was the basis for medieval Persian, Syrian, Coptic, and Ethiopian versions. Between the fourth and sixteenth centuries, European and Eastern literature (including that of the Christian Orient, the Caucasus area, the Near East, and Central Asia) produced a major cycle of legends about Alexander the Great. The fiction occupies a honorary a place. Historic enterprises are not the main subject in this text. In Georgian folklore Alexander appears only in the folktales which might be classified as realistic tales (novelle). Caucasian folktales about Alexander show miscellaneous interpretations of the hero, perhaps in part also because of the variety of literary and oral traditions which influenced Georgian folklore. The folkloric character of Alexander is far from the ideal of medieval knighthood; his image in the realistic tales and novelle is in general less attractive than in the Alexander Romance. The Georgian folktales never depict Alexander thus, like a wonder-tale hero. He appears only in the realistic, non-magical, novelle. Wonder tales are marked by the high moral qualities of the hero. They are often tales of individual endeavour, and opportunities to become a moral, even perfect, human being. Even heroes who break prohibitions early on manage to atone for this: one’s salvation then depends on oneself. One could say that none of the narrative genres of folklore stresses the spiritual strength of a human being as much as the wonder tales do. Alexander the Great is a literary character converted into an insatiable king of the realistic tale. He thus shows generally negative characteristics. In the Georgian tales Alexander is represented as a strong king who wants to conquer the heavens and the earth, but he, as with any mortal, has his own weaknesses, too.