Nestan Ratiani
Ilia State University
American-Georgian Initiative for Liberal Education
Tbilisi, Georgia
Nestan Ratiani
Ilia State University
American-Georgian Initiative for Liberal Education
Tbilisi, Georgia
The Twisted, Coiled, and Boiled Snake
(Based on Guram Odisharia's novel "Return to Sokhumi")
Abstract
In "Return to Sokhumi," Guram Odisharia highlights the negative image of the snake in three different contexts.
1. When spoken/read, specific words create certain images in people's minds. Mostly, these images stem from the word's meaning and more or less coincide with one another. That's why illustrators use a universal language when creating drawings. The matter becomes more complex when the phonetic aspect of the word determines the images formed in the mind, as associations arising from the pronunciation of sounds may vary from one person to another. The words "weapon," "war," "revolution," "coffin" don't fit into any of the above-described frameworks when Guram Odisharia says they twist like snakes. In this case, we're dealing with the biblical, religious-cultural biography of the word "snake." For followers of all three Abrahamic religions, the snake is guilty of causing death. Therefore, words associated with death should be compared to this damned creature.
2. The snake is a seemingly insignificant "character" in one of the episodes of the novel. It slithers into the yard, but the Abkhazian grandmother won't let anyone kill it. The snake "coils up" at the grandmother's words, "as if listening to her words, and after a while continues on its way, leaving the yard." If the reader reconstructs the omitted, unwritten, unspoken words of the text, they will surely understand that the snake wouldn't go far and would freeze somewhere in the grass, coiled up waiting for a better time - to ambush innocent people. Innocent people. If we combine this reconstructed part with the word "coils up," which resembles the word "Russification" [in Georgian language: “gailurseba” and “garuseba”], we will surely recognize the symbol hidden behind the image of the snake.
3. The writer titles the chapters of the work. He calls one of them "The Crow's Church" and tells us a strange legend. According to the legend, a snake was boiled in a pot intended for food, and if not for the crow's sacrifice, people would have fallen victim to a deadly portion. This legend, recorded in the nineteenth century, is followed by a very strange story - on the same day, a woman jumps under a metro train and commits suicide. Guram Odisharia tries to make the reader connect the suicide of the crow and the passenger after searching for an answer to an openly left question.
Based on the existing scientific research on the artistic image of the snake and the three contexts listed above, the presentation answers the question proposed by Guram Odisharia. The answer should shed light on the position expressed by the writer multiple times in the novel about the complex Abkhazian-Georgian-Russian relationships that developed in the past century, by bringing forward many other interesting details collected from the work, gathering them, and analyzing them sequentially. The roots of these relationships are not in the Abkhazian-Georgian connections that emerged centuries ago, but rather originate from the nineteenth century, from Russia's appearance in the region, and culminate in the tragic war. This important issue is key both for understanding the novel as well as for Georgian or non-Georgian readers interested in the topic.