Poetry
ელენე დარიანის დღიურები
Not translated into English
Paolo Iashvili · 1915
Synopsis
The verse diary of a young woman, Elene Dariani, who speaks of her desire without detour, her expectations, her rendezvous and her jealousy, in a country where a woman did not write such things. The pieces follow one another like the pages of a diary and the reader feels he is reading a life rather than a collection: the voice remains the same from one poem to the next, that of a woman who waits, gives herself and takes herself back, and who holds the body to be her subject.
Context
The cycle was written over about ten years and appeared in instalments in the literary press. From the fifties onward, Georgian literary history regarded Dariani as a figure invented by the poet: at his rehabilitation, the first collection that gathered his verse included the cycle under his name, and the woman who then tried to claim these poems was not heard. The philologist Giorgi Javakhishvili reopened the case after going through the archives of Elene Bakradze and publishing a book on the legend and the reality of Elene Dariani; the literature museum published Bakradze's papers in 2021, and the discussion continues.
Who it is for
A short cycle, with no French edition. It helps to know that a woman signs these texts, that the catalogue files them under the poet's name, and that this attribution is contested.
Prizes and reception
The freest verses in Georgian poetry of the beginning of the century, and one of the most debated attribution cases in the country's letters.