Abstract:
In 1957, the German writer Alfred Kurella came to visit Khevsureti, Georgia,
with his family. Georgian writer Guram Rcheulishvili appeared a direct
witness of the tragedy unfolding here. His sensational story, “A Death in
the Mountains” ,that was based on real events was written shortly after the
1957 incident. “A Death in the Mountains” was published in literary magazine
“Tsiskari” in 1958, during the writer’s lifetime.
Keen travelers and adventurers – the family (mother, father and son),
found themselves in an amazing spot, in the highlands of Khevsureti, looking
forward to seeing the celebrations of Saint’s days and attending rituals.
However, an unexpected accident during horse racing turned out to be
tragic for Alfred Kurella’s wife and her life came to an end on the rocks of
Khevsureti.
Death in the mountains is alien to the Georgian writer, because closeness
to the mountains is a vital force and “he is surprised both by death
and life, which he encountered there.” If others are surprised by the calm
and balanced behavior of the German writer, the Georgian writer feels the
weight of Kurella’s grief and even sympathizes with the German writer, who
restrains himself in every possible way so as not to disturb others with his
grief. As Rcheulishvili puts it: “keeps grief in perspective.”
The experience of death unites the characters. Both Georgian and German
writer, are the main characters in the space of a literary text. With
their experiences with other characters of the story, we can talk about the
development of the binary opposition “my/ other” in this story. We consider that the mentioned opposition is particularly interesting
in the handwritten copy of the story (so-called rough version), where
we paid attention to the extended internal monologue of the protagonist,
which was not included in the story. On this issue, it is also important to
analyze Guram Rcheulishvili’s personal letter to Alfred Kurella.
