Poetry
გამზრდელი
Not translated into English
Akaki Tsereteli · 1898
Synopsis
One night, a horseman asks for hospitality at an isolated house in the mountains. The host, Batu, receives him and treats him as a brother: he is Safar-Beg, a young Abkhaz prince. Then Batu leaves to go to his guest's aid, leaving his wife at home, and Safar-Beg must decide what he does with the hospitality he has received. Behind them stands Hadji-Yusub, the man who raised the prince and answers for him.
Context
The poem appeared in 1898. It rests on an institution of the Caucasian mountains: the gamzrdeli, the man who raises another's child and answers for him before society like a father. What the young man does therefore implicates the one who formed him. Georgian critics have linked it from the outset to Ilia Chavchavadze's The Hermit, and the Abkhaz theme has in recent years given it a new place in the list of its author's most widely read works. There is no French translation.
Who it is for
A brief narrative poem, in Georgian, never translated; it is worth knowing what a gamzrdeli is, without which the characters' reactions seem excessive.
Prizes and reception
One of the two works for which its author is known, along with the lyrics of Suliko.