The Kartvelologist

The Kartvelologist” is a bilingual (Georgian and English) peer-reviewed, academic journal, covering all spheres of Kartvelological scholarship. Along with introducing scholarly novelties in Georgian Studies, it aims at popularization of essays of Georgian researchers on the international level and diffusion of foreign Kartvelological scholarship in Georgian scholarly circles.


“The Kartvelologist” issues both in printed and electronic form. In 1993-2009 it came out only in printed form (#1-15). The publisher is the “Centre for Kartvelian Studies” (TSU), financially supported by the “Fund of the Kartvelological School”. In 2011-2013 the journal is financed by Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation.





Shota Rustaveli - Avtandil’s Testament

 

In the present issue of the Journal Avtandil’s Testament from Rustaveli’s MPS is published together with all of the English language translations to date. Avtandil's Testament is characterised by a poetic value as well as by a true Georgian phenomenon - a demonstration of the best qualities of the spiritual world and an attempt to harmonically synthesize Christian Theology and Classical Greek Philosophy - two main sources of Rustaveli's world outlook. Rustaveli's poetic and philosophical language arouses discord not only among the translators but also among the glossarians of the Romance. This is the primary reason for our decision to supply the English language reader with all the translations of the text of Avtandili’s Testament. This attempt naturally has another no less important purpose: parallel observation of the four translations will clearly reveal the poetic merits of each of them. These are by Marjory Wardrop, done at the turn of the 19th-20th c. (the text is taken from the 1912 London edition - The Royal Asiatic Society); Venera Urushadze (first issue 1968; the text is printed according to the author’s revised edition (Tbilisi: Sabchota Sakartvelo, 1986); Katharine Vivian (London: The Folio Society, 1977); Robert Stevenson (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977). The Georgian text is printed according to the edition of the Commission for the Establishment of the Academic Text of MPS (Tbilisi: Metsniereba, 1988).

Editor


keywords: ვეფხისტყაოსანი, შოთა რუსთაველი Category: GEORGIAN LITERATURE IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION Authors: Tamar Barbakadze
Sources on Georgians in the Holy Land: The Publication of the Syriac Life of Peter the Iberian in English Translation

 

In 2008, the Society of Biblical Literature published the book John Rufus: The Lives of Peter the Iberian, Theodosius of Jerusalem, and the Monk Romanus by Robert Phenix and the present author. This volume brings together for the first time the Syriac texts and English translation of three works that are central to developments of the anti-Chalcedonian movement in Palestine in the fifth century.


keywords:John Rufus , Peter the Iberian, Syriac texts Category: SCHOLARLY STUDIES Authors: Tamar Barbakadze
The History of Georgia through the Eyes of an American

 

About two months ago "Narikala Publications" published Peter F. Skinner's extensive monograph on the history of Georgia - Georgia: The Land below the Caucasus. The present article will introduce this monograph to Georgian society. As far as we know this book will soon be sold in Tbilisi bookstores; and it will become an object of serious research for Georgian scholars. 


keywords:History of Georgia, Foreign Kartvelologists Category: SCHOLARLY STUDIES Authors: Tamar Barbakadze
New Details from the History of Georgian Emigration

 

The main field of activity of a large portion of Georgian emigrants who left the country in order to escape from the dictatorial regime of the Soviet Union was a political, cultural, public, and creative arena. Unfortunately, because of the limited access to many important documents relating to the history of Georgian emigration, the history of emigration has not been studied adequately, and a lot remains to be discovered.

 To partially fill this gap, we present the life story and works of Lado Arveladze, an almost unknown emigrant, Georgian writer and public figure. Unfortunately, the works and heritage of this talented fiction writer and ardent patriot are unknown, not only to the general public, but also to specialists. Out of Arveladze's works, the Tbilisi State University Georgian Emigration Museum holds only three manuscripts of books published in New York: 1. Stories (1965); 2. Short stories (1965); Between Motherland and Foreign Land (memoires), book 4 (1966).

L. Arveladze's creative energy is mostly manifested in his stories. These circumstances are of a great importance, since Georgian emigrant writers' literary abilities showed mostly in poetry and journalism, whereas their prose was markedly weaker and smaller in amount.

Apart from writing fiction, Arveladze wrote articles for journals. In these articles, which relate to Georgia's past and present, the author discussed many burning issues of Georgian reality from a patriotic point of view.


keywords:Georgian emigration, Lado Arveladze Category: CHRONICLE OF EVENTS Authors: Tamar Barbakadze
Love of The Man in the Panther Skin – a New Philosophical Concept

 

The concept of love in the MPS is related to the Late Middle Ages stage of the Christian civilization.  It is Renaissant by nature; it is based on the Rustavelian model of interpretation of Christian love for the neighbor and represents the original philosophical conceptualization and artistic representation of the world outlook of the transitional  epoch – from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance thinking.


keywords:The Man in the Panther Skin, love, neighbor, Middle Ages, Renaissance Category: SCHOLARLY STUDIES Authors: Tamar Barbakadze