The Poetics of Ioseb Grishashvili's “Unpublished Poems”

Abstract

After the establishment of Bolshevik rule in Georgia in the 1920s, creative freedom gradually diminished as writers were compelled to serve the ideological machine. Those who rejected this metho-dology were declared “enemies of the people” and faced physical destruction. Despite outward obedience, some poets secretly composed anti-Bolshevik poems. Ioseb Grishashvili, an outstanding figure in the history of Georgian poetry during 1910s, was one such poet. The poetics of his “Unpublished Poems” (published only in 1992) draw attention, above all, to the profound pain the poet experienced due to the calamities befalling his country.

In this study, we examine the issues of meter, and poetic stylistics in Ioseb Grishashvili's “Unpub-lished Poems.” We also explore the relationship between the textual structure and semantics. Certain poems in the collection faced intense criticism during the period of socialist realism due to their anti-Bolshevik content.