Transformation of War Narrative – „Encounter“ in Literature (Abkhaz writers on war and peace)

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to study the importance of culture as an unconditional leader in the process of restoration of Georgian-Abkhazian relations. This lever is highly reliable and impressive in its results. In the Georgian-Abkhaz space, which is still divided by war, culture undertakes to take care of the transformation of the emotional traces of the conflict and to ensure its prevention in the future. It is constitutional that, despite individual efforts, this mission of culture cannot be covered by a national narrative,
since the memory of Georgians and Abkhazians preserves an impressive period of cultural-literary coexistence. The most satisfied with the results of the conflicts that arose in the post-Soviet space was the system whose mental traces, unfortunately, have not yet been erased from people's memories. in memory. Literary-cultural relations determine that the euphoria of enjoying the victory is transformed into higher, moral-ethical feelings, and it is deconstructed into the feeling of regret, unconditional understanding of
mistakes. In the post-conflict period, the start of this process is related to the Georgian side. The peaceful accents of Guram Odisharia's novels and self-reflections on the causes of war, his informal meetings with the Abkhaz side gave us the first results, the continuation of which is the project "Meeting" published in 2023. The article analyzes the prose of Abkhaz women writers participating in this project. Research has shown that this is a new perspective on war and peace that we believe is important and promising in the process of rebuilding trust.