THE BLACK BOX OF LOVE
CHANTURIA TARIEL
The poetry which Tariel Chanturia has been writing for many years is a special phenomenon in Georgian literature. A distinguished poetic voice, a sharp-witted mind, a lightness which does not put up with irony or sarcasm have created an entirely new world that imbues readers with impressions and motivations for life which may have been hitherto alien to them. The author has at his command a great hermeneutic and informational knowledge, which is why he is able to manoeuvre freely in various strata of language and thus stage remarkable artistic and literary performances, mixing together various paradigms, contexts and texts. In his case, such linguistic devices take on the quality of something greater than language games, and they extend into definite forms of interplay of examples of ideas. An effective use of a limited lexical resource is typical of him, as is minimalism and the use of slang forms. Tariel Chanturia’s poetry’s universality is a result of the different layers in it: his work is meant for an intellectual reader and, at the same time, it is accessible to recipients of all sorts of background. This is poetry which is invariably up-to-date, young in attitude and full of soulfulness. This is why it is always attractive and interesting for people of any taste and any age.
‘Tariel Chanturia is a striking figure in contemporary Georgian literature. Who is he? – a master of innovation, a virtuoso of paradoxes, the king of experimentation, a magician in rhyme, or an architect in rhythm? It is hard to say. 1His verse is hard to define, is slips out of your hands like a fish, and the more you study it, the more elusive it becomes. But one thing is certain: everything he creates is full of light and life, wit and humour.’
I. Amirkhanashvili, literary critic
‘It is as if the poet is faced with a gigantic lottery-ticket drum filled with words and objects that exist in space or in abstraction, paradigms and contexts. Tariel Chanturia picks out from it at random a few of these things and by using his unique talent and mastery manages to induce a chemical reaction between them and thus create a completely new, brilliant concept and combination: sounds with their echoes.’
L. Doreuli, literary critic
EXTRACT
Translated into English by Donald Rayfield
GOD THE GRANDMASTER
(ironically) from the cycle The Cut-Off Serpentine
God is carrying out simultaneously a session of games
On six and a half billion boards:
‘The grandmaster has won
Every single game!’
THE NEIGHBOURING
(a bad choice)
children are throwing snowballs at each other,
the adolescents are using mud
THE TEACHERS
over the age of thirty-one
as far as your memory can keep it,
the softest prints
of our fingers raised for the lesson…
AN ELDERLY HUSBAND AND WIFE
raise each other’s blood pressure,
then take each other’s blood pressure!
THE NEXT DAY, AFTER THE FLOOD
at a Biblical breakfast
a dove sizzles on the fire, after
bringing an olive branch:
Mr Noah liked to have red wine
with his bird meat!..
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