Besik Kharanauli’s collection comprises his poems written in 1954 – 2005, thus presenting 50 years of his poetic legacy. The feeling that the universe, whole and harmonious, cracked up as early as in the 19th century at the end of the 20th changed its character completely: “the universe, considered to be Godless” and the world of absurdity seemed to return to the chaos. Various kinds of cataclysms and the giddy rhythm that drew us into its revolution like a hurricane, the ambivalent commotion of the greatness of mind and senselessness made the author the son of his time, and marked him with its brand. Nurtured on the traditions of the Georgian and world cultures, he also is highly innovative and creative. Alongside genuine buoyancy, the poems are marked with deep thought and pain, written in the language which is rooted in the metapoetry. An extremely strong feeling of his contemporaneity, of the devaluation of morals, the painful feeling of man’s helplessness and insignificance, and in addition the substitution of cheap pathetic feelings by a moderate, deeply emotional verbal influence create the essence of Besik Kharanauli’s literary work.

Free a solitary spirit, seeking novelty up to the present day, thirsting for it, one of the founders of today’s Georgian free verse, careful and sober dissident, extremely sincere and at the same time the owner of a rich collection of masks; an innovator by nature, brisk, wise and eternally youthful this is how I see Besik Kharanauli today, the writer of poetry and prose.

Lali Avaliani, Literary critic

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