Zurab Rtveliashvili and Georgian Poetic Performance

Abstract

The moment we mention Georgian poetic performance, we immediately think about Zurab Rtveliashvili; he was a poet-performer, who passed away at a young age recently, although during his passionate and explosive life, just like his poetry, left us many wonderful verses, performances and memories. Performance is a syncretic form of art, where alternates word, sound, rhythm, music, gesture and etc. Postmodern, time-relevant poetry in a performance is far more acceptable (for listeners and spectators) than poetry in a book (for readers), due to lack of time, deficit of concentration and postmodern superficiality. Zurab Rtveliashvili’s “sound poetry” is the latest art-form saturated with inexhaustible energy, in which the poet varies with political and social topics; his poetic vice is often aggressive and pretentious and is distinguished by civil and personal uncompromisingness. Despite such poetically “heavy” thematic, he still remains as lingual poet – he explores its depths, uses its potential and transforms it into his own, unusual language; in his poetry topical is Zaum, the linguistic material of Dadaists and Futurists. However, Zaum does not mean absence of thoughts and Zurab Rtveliashvili’s language is also rich with utterances and content passages.A stream of new consciousness is born by overcoming or even avoiding the mainstream culture; or vise-versa. One of the essential parts of culture is language and a new consciousness also appears through “overcoming” existing languages, a clear example of which is Zurab Rtveliashvili’s poetry. The paper also discusses contemporary Georgian performance, its representatives and Zurab Rtveliashvili’s special position in this space. It would be right to say that Georgian poetic performance is uniquely associated with Zurab Rtveliashvili’s name.