As the Alert Reader (that Mythical Best) noticed in yesterday’s entry into this record of Musings of No Particular Importance, Your Humble Narrator of Said Musings was recently in Annapolis and as the Cartographilic (cartographophilic?) Alert Reader instantly realized Annapolis is either a Long Car Ride or a Short Plane Trip away from Your Humble Narrator’s place of Permanent Residence (well, “Permanent Residence” insofar as “Permanent” means until Your Humble Narrator moves or shuffles off this mortal coil), and if the latter means of transportation was chosen (probable, since as your Humble Narrator has noted (though, whether this has ever been noted in this space or not is left as an exercise for Google and the Insatiably Curious), Philadelphia is the break point for when Your Humble Narrator thinks driving is the preferred option and as those versed in Aristotelean modes of inquiry will deduce if A is the maximum and B is greater than A, then B is above the maximum (note the impressive display of logic there)), then there was necessarily a Plane Book. The Mythical Aristotelean Cartographophilic Alert Reader has thus spent the time since reading the last entry asking: What was the Book?
We’ll get to that.
First, the back story of the Book in Question.
Teaching at Mount Holyoke has a number of attractions. One of these is the impressive number of students
from around the Globe whom I have met. Over
the years, the countries of origin of said students has migrated around following
whatever bizarre Admissions patterns govern such things. In the last few years,
I have become well acquainted with Georgia (the Republic of, not the State
of). Suddenly, for Reasons Unknown,
there were about a half-dozen Georgians at Mount Holyoke, and I think I know
all of them well. If one judges by these
students of mine, then Georgia is one of the most amazing countries on the planet. (If one judges by the only Georgian of
significant world historical importance, then the world would have been better
off if Georgia had never existed. That’s
not an exaggeration by the way. Imagine (if
you can) there is no Joseph Stalin.
Already, the death toll drops. But,
if there was no Stalin, then maybe there is no Mao or Pol Pot or any of the other
Great Butchers of the late 20th century. That is a lot of Death coming from a native
of Georgia.) (But, to return to more pleasant
things—none of my students from Georgia strike me as the Future Mass Murderer
types.)
When one of the aforementioned Georgians graduated, she gave
me a book. She noted with pride when
handing me the book that it is the Georgian National Epic. I had never heard of the Georgian National
Epic. Written by Shota Rustveli (or Shot’ha
Rust’hveli) in the 12th century, The
Knight in the Tiger Skin is an epic poem.
(Think Homer or Virgil or Beowulf or Gilgamesh.) I’ve had this book for a while, but never read
it for reasons unrelated to the content of the book. The problem was its size. Now normally the problem of size is that the book
just looks too long and formidable. This
book had a different problem of size. The
copy I have is 514 pages long. But, and
here is the source of the problem, it is a small book: 5.75 inches high, 4 and one-eighth inches
wide, 1.5 inches thick. So, where do you
shelve such a short book? It has been
migrating all over my office, never really in the right place to notice it when
looking for a book to read. But, when looking
for a book for a short plane trip, I chanced upon it and thought, ”Aha. Behold! Therein lies the solution to the quandary
of which book to take with me on this impending journey.” In one sense, it was an appropriate choice—this
is a book full of journeys.
But before evaluating it, I must needs relate a story from
my past. Many moons ago, I was wont to
make the following claim: “Beowulf is only famous because it is the only extant
old manuscript from that era. It isn’t good
in and of itself.” Then I read the
Heaney translation and realized I was rather ignorant in my past (then again, I
suppose by definition every time one learns something, one necessarily reveals ignorance
in the past; so perhaps I should qualify that—I was inexcusably ignorant in my past on matters of evaluating the literary
merits of Beowulf.)
With the Beowulf example firmly in mind: The
Knight in the Tiger Skin is really only famous because what else do we have
from 12th century Georgia? Or
13th, 14th, 15th, 16th…century Georgia? Now I hasten to add that this very much may
be a problem of translation. The copy I
have doesn’t even try to replicate poetry.
If one read an uninspired translation of The Odyssey, it would undoubtedly come across as flat and a bit
tedious. So, let us fully acknowledge
that in its original language, this may be a beautiful work of High Art. Irakly Abashidze may be a Dastardly Destroyer
of Art in delivering such a translation as this.
All in all, the story was rather…convoluted. Our hero is madly in love with the princess, then
queen, of Arabia and goes off in search of the titular character because the
queen’s father is mad that the titular character wandered through the kingdom
without stopping by for a drink. It
turns out that the titular character is madly in love with the princess of India
and is on a quest to find her and thus can’t be bothered with such things as
asking the Regent of Arabia if he knows where the love of his life might be. Inexplicably, after years of looking, our
hero finds the titular character, who even more tells our hero his life story, after
which even more inexplicably our hero decides he is best friends with the titular character, so our hero tell the titular character
to stay put in his cave while he goes off to find the True Love of the titular
character and then he teams up with someone else whom the titular character had
previously met and then suddenly all three of them are best friends looking for
the girl of the dreams of one of the friends while leaving the girl of the dreams
of another character back home cooling her heels. And, oh by the way, the fathers of the two
Dream Girls can’t seem to wrap their mind around the fact that it might be OK
for the most amazing warriors and heroes of their respective countries to marry
the beautiful heirs apparent to the thrones; kings can’t seem to manage to have
sons in this day and age. And, by the
way, that is just the rough outline of the plot; suffice it to say that the real
story is vastly more convoluted. I didn’t
even mention the maid to the titular character’s Dream Girl who is hanging out in
the cave whenever the titular character returns every now and then. Egads.
This plot is even worse than I remember it being.
So, if the Georgian poetry isn’t good, then this book is a
real mess.
The theme of the book:
Love conquers all. Except it isn’t
clear which love is doing the conquering.
Is it Eros; the heroes get the
girls? Or is it Philos: the heroes are bound by deep bonds of friendship? We know love is the theme because the author
tells us so in the Introduction., But,
how to interpret this:
There is a noblest love: it does
not show, but hides its woes; the lover thinks of it when he is alone, and always
seeks solitude; his fainting, dying, burning, flaming, all are from afar; he
must face the wrath of his beloved, and he must be fearful of her.
He must betray his secret to none, he
must not basely groan and put his beloved to shame; in nought should he
manifest his love, nowhere must he reveal it; for her sake he looks upon sorrow
as joy, for her sake he would willingly be burned.
How can the sane trust him who
noises his love abroad, and what shall it profit to do this? He makes her suffer, and he himself
suffers. How should he glorify her if he
shame her with words? What need is there
for man to cause pain to the heart of his beloved!
I wonder why men show that they
love the beloved, Why shame they her whom
they love, her who slays herself for them, who is not covered with wounds? Why do they disgrace what they hate? But an evil man loves an evil word more than his
soul or heart.
Determining a connection between those stanzas in the Introduction
and the epic poem which follows is the sort of thing that is presumably best
left as an exercise for the Reader. I
can determine absolutely no connection between the author’s message and the
poem which follows.
And while on the subject of Puzzles from Georgia: enjoy.
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