„ძველი“ და „ახალი“ პოეზიის გააზრებისათვის XIX საუკუნის დასაწყისის ევროპულ და ქართულ ფილოსოფიურ-ესთეტიკურ დისკურსში

Abstract

In terms of analyzing the typological coincidences of European and Georgian philosophical-aesthetic thought, it is important to study the translated works that introduce certain tendencies to us and contribute to the formation of a new worldview paradigm. Among them – they enrich the established knowledge with new terminology or a new understanding of this terminology. Thus, it is important to analyze the literary nature of the monuments translated at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the motivation of their translation, the stylistic features of the translations, the translations of the theoretical works, their problems, to understand how all these contributed to the formation of new Georgian literature. In the 19th century, Georgian literature was enriched with translated works containing philosophical, poetic and aesthetic issues. From the philosophical-aesthetic point of view, the fact of translating the following works into Georgian was especially important: “Theoretical Physics” by K. Wolf, “Metaphysics” by K. Baumeister, “Logic”, “Ethic”, “Philosophy”, “Logic” by Condillac, “Mythology” by M. Chulkov, “The Law of Mind” by Montesquieu, “Zadig, or Fate” by Voltaire, “Candid, or the Optimist”, “For Christmas”, “Oedipus”, etc., “Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Thoughts on Different Subjects” and “Discussion, or Treatise on Culture” by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Moral Philosophy” by A. Ferguson and “Aesthetic Judgments” by J. P. Ansillon. These works were well known to Georgian writers, who made a major contribution to the beginning of new Georgian literature. From the 18th century, a lot of translated literature was brought to Georgia. Among them were the works of Russian or foreign (mainly Western European) philosophers. These translations are noteworthy not only in the sense of literary relationsbut also from the viewpoint of how these relations influenced the beginning of new Georgian literature. The beginning of the new Georgian literature, which was marked by the origin of Romanticism, is imprinted with the tendency to overcome Eastern poetic thinking. This tendency was manifested in a powerful turning to the classical Christian past. It is in this context that the choice, according to which this or that work was translated into Georgian, is interesting. The translated works greatly contributed to the deepening and expansion of literary-aesthetic problems, including philosophical literature. Among the monuments translated during the Renaissance, from the literary-aesthetic point of view, the most important was the translation (1818) of Jean-Pierre Frédéric Ansillon’s (1767-1837) “Aesthetic Judgments”, a French philosopher and member of the Prussian Academy of Science, by David Batonishvili (1767-1819). This work, which is the subject of our versatile research, is extremely interesting for the study of aesthetic problems of the new Georgian literature. D. Bagrationi’s remarks are attached to the translation, and are presented as numerous footnotes. These remarks give a clear vision of the level of development of the history of literature or philosophy of that period. A number of concepts from the literary-aesthetic field are explained in the comments that were not previously known to Georgian thought. Among them, there are definitions of several terms, from which we discuss the terms related to poetry and poetics, aesthetics of new poetry. It is noteworthy that poetry with Ansillon is one of the genres of art and artistic creation. This is a novelty. As is well known, there was no conceptual definition of art as artistic creation until the 18th century. According to Ansillon, “Poetry is a celebration of the freedom of spirit”... Ansillon approaches the Aristotelian definition of poetry: “The historian and the poet differ from each other in that the former speaks of what happened and the latter speaks of what might have happened.” (Chelidze, 1984, p. 57). However, Ansillon’s understanding of the basic essence of poetry agrees more with Plato’s views on poetry than with Aristotle’s. As is well known, one of Aristotle’s major theses presents art as a field of philosophy. With Plato, however, it is given a more sensory-emotional meaning and creates an aesthetic phenomenon. Ansillon discusses the history of the origin and development of poetry andindicates that the main function of the poetry at different stages of development was to be understood differently. Ansillon considers the function of purification, catharsis to be the basic essence of art. And purification with it, as in Neoplatonism, is a condition of human ascension, which has not only epistemological but also ethical and aesthetic significance. According to Ansillon, as much as poetry is derived from the spirit of the epoch, so much of it is changeable over time. Modernity drastically differs from the past, which causes the difference between the old and new poetry. Ansilion characterizes the Hellenic and ancient eras of human development. These two epochs were similar from the socio-political or socio-economic viewpoints, which also led to the affinity of their cultural life. According to Ansillon, if Hellenic mythology and religion had an aesthetic function, the Christian religion has a mission of human moral catharsis. When contrasted with such reasoning, the controversy between “the new” and “the old” poetry unfolds. According to Ansillon, one of the main distinguishing factors of “the old” and “the new” poetry lies in its attitude towards women: the old theatrical performances considered the participation of men in the role of women. Ansillon gives a critical assessment of Greek art because of this. However, Ansillon also points out that in Greek poetry less of an elevated feeling of love was felt, but dominated the hedonistic-erotic motif. Ansillon’s sympathies go back to the era of chivalry, he laments the fact that this wonderful time is the property of the past: development of public life, the progress of scientific thought or economics was followed by a decline of the truest human dignity, devaluation of moral categories. In parallel with this discussion of Ansillon, several important literary terms are explained in D. Bagrationi’s comments, such as poetry, poetics, hymn, trope, metaphor, elegy, lyre, fantasy, prose, drama, synonym, epic, plastic, comic, tragic, stage, role, charm, etc. The fact of translating Ansillon’s “Aesthetic Judgments” into Georgian and D. Batonishvili’s comments represent a new stage in the development of the Georgian literature when even traditional problems are understood from a new perspective. Although that Georgian Romanticism did not originate on the basis of pre-developed theoretical guidelines, the expansion of literary-aesthetic problems was of some importance for the development of Romantic lyricism. And the study of these issues allows us to better understand the specific content of this or that work.