literaturaTmcodneobis Tanamedrove problemebi Contemporary ...

Juli Gabodze
Georgia, Tbilisi
Akaki’s Unknown Poem “Hundred Years’ Story”
Appeared Hundred Years Later
summary
In July of 1912, Akaki traveled to Racha-Lechkhumi. Luckily this trip
was shot in documentary film produced by Vasil Amashukeli.
Soon the Georgian newspaper informed with joy that Akaki wrote a
remarkable poem “Racha-Lechkhumi”. To Gutsa Parkosadze’s question,
how he managed to write the poem so quickly, Akaki replied: “Mother
gives birth to a baby in several hours, but bears it for nine months. So do my
writings. I nurture them for years but write for an hour.”
This statement indicates the principles of the poet’s creative work
perfectly well. Akaki carried this or that idea for months, sometimes for
years and then wrote. A good example of this is Akaki’s masterpiece
Gantiadi (“At Dawn”) which was dedicated to commemoration of the
patriot - Dimitri Kipiani, foully murdered. As it turned out, the poet lived
with this pain in heart for years and only five years later he could finally
express his bitterness.
In the conference theses, we present Akaki’s newly found poem -
“Hundred Years’ Story” which has not been published in any editions of the
poet’s compositions so far (neither in his lifetime, nor after). The reason for
this was a keen criticism of the Russian regime which runs through this
poem.
The poem “Hundred Years’ Story” was first published by Georgian
scholar Nana Pruidze in her book “Unknown Akaki” in 2001. The
manuscript of the poem is kept at the Museum of Georgian Literature. The
poem is composed of five chapters. As is seen it was known to such
publishers as Ioseb Grishashvili and Pavle Ingorokva. They included the
first chapter titled “Hundred Years’ Story”- Termshovaant Kekela” into the
seven-volume edition of Akaki’s compositions. Presumably, they were
familiar with a complete version of the poem but due to the political
situation at that time they could not manage to publish it in the volumes. By
the same token two of Akaki’s poems (“Andrew the First Called” and
“St.Nino”) failed to be published in fifteen-volume edition.
The above mentioned poem is of totally different content in terms of
reflecting tough consequence of Russian policy in Georgia. It renders all
that process which was traversed by Georgia after loosing the statehood up
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